 Video of Bush on GMA with Diane Sawyer. The ignoramus says, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” — Via Crooks & Liars |
Wolfie (CNN) just interviewed a man who found a phone at the Convention Center (the Superdome is a different location):
They have no food or water. There are dead bodies all over. Girls are getting raped. They have to walk to stores, still open and unlooted, to buy food — mostly cookies — and water. He said the mayor told them to go there days ago, but has provided nothing except six cops with big weapons outside. (SEE MORE BELOW from this man.)
Laura Rozen at War & Piece adds:
No one in charge. DHS Secretary Chertoff is making a whole bunch of excuses for the most staggering federal failure I have ever heard of. Here’s Chertoff’s interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel. The unflappable NPR Texas correspondent John Burnett now on the scene in New Orleans is almost shouting at the conditions at the NO convention center. The fact that no one is on top of this is very upsetting. Why isn’t Chertoff in New Orleans? Or at least Baton Rouge?
Here’s my rough transcript of Burnett’s interview with the NPR host Robert Siegel on All Things Considered tonight. It followed Chertoff’s chilling interview with Siegel.
John Burnett: There are 2,000 people living outside the convention center. There is no food. There is absolutely no water. There is no medical treatment. There are no police. There are two dead bodies on the ground and in a wheel chair around the convention center, both elderly people. We understand two more died earlier.
We understand that a 10 year old girl was raped in the convention center in the last two nights. Pople are absolutely desperate there.
I have never seen anything like this.
They have seen buses go past, they have seen police go past, but no one has brought them food. They are living like animals.
Now the Superdome is being evacuated, and that’s a very good thing. I think these people want to know when on earth are you going to look after us? they feel abandoned…
A lot of the looters distributed the food and water they got to the rest of the group … READ ALL
Now FEMA Director Mike Brown is despairing about the people who didn’t heed warnings to leave the city. Fuck you.
Wolf then asked the man calling from inside the Convention Center what he thought of FEMA DIrector Brown’s statements.
Let me give you — him — a piece of advice.
Do not send the Nat’l Guard to this place without sending someone in authority to talk to the people about what is going on and what is going to happen.
if they send Nat’l Guard into this place — there are guys running around here with guns. What do you THINK is going to happen, Wolf, if the Nat’l Guard shows up?
Quite a few people running around here with guns. Thirty different lines waiting for buses … in an hour and half it’ll be dark … the bus won’t come … they’ll be like crazy people tonight.
Send someone with a bullhorn to TALK TO THESE PEOPLE FIRST. Don’t just send in the Nat’l Guard.
Rozen also relays this: “Oh No. The evacuation of New Orleans’ Charity Hospital, long awaited by its desperate staff and patients, has been halted because of sniper fire.”
