Those were the words spoken by rescuers on CNN just now.
They are outmanned and working around the clock. They can’t save them all. If they had just gotten there a day sooner. If they just had more resources…. they were beaten down and demoralized men that had seen so much death and sorrow.
They don’t even know what day it is anymore they are working around the clock. They are seeing so many dead people who couldn’t hang on.
They are losing hope.
They are our heros.
Chertoff, Bush and Brown are liars.
They don’t have enough RESOURCES to get the job done, but goddamn are they trying their best.
How shameful for America that this is what you allow to happen to your fellow citizens. (not you personally of course, but all those fuckers who voted for Bush and by association voted for the cuts to FEMA’s budget and the war in Iraq, etc. etc.)
So yes, Chertoff, the National Guard being in Iraq does matter. It has everything to do with how quickly you can rescue people.
Every offer of help from Chicago or Canada or the Netherlands that you turned down would have put more RESOURCES in play.
Allowing the Red Cross into NOLA would have put more RESOURCES in play.
Let me say this again for the record.
EVERY extra person on the ground doing search and rescue, providing security, fixing levees, putting out fires, providing food and medicine would have helped save lives in time. At the very least it would have shown that you actually cared and tried your best to help.
You say you need to search house to house and that will take time. No one is disputing that. What we are disputing is that:
a) Having more bodies on the ground to go house to house would speed things up
b) starting the widespread searches 4 days earlier would have saved lives… and you could have started sooner with more National Guard in state
I refuse to accept your bullshit excuses and platitudes. People are still trapped and dying as the Coast Guard and NG in the CNN piece so hauntingly told us. It is almost too late now to save them all.
They haven’t had food or water in 6 days. They are living in filth. There are wild dogs roaming the streets as Nagin told us today. There are alligators and snakes in the water in some neighbourhoods as one of the rescued victims told us yesterday.
Pregnant women and children are still trapped in attics, on roofs, in filth.
Firefighters and police are committing suicide because they don’t have ENOUGH HELP to be able to rest and sleep and not go insane with the tragedy all around them.
The elderly are still drowning in nursing homes as Broussard broke our hearts with his tale today.
The levees are not being repaired as Landrieu cried to the BBC today.
THESE ARE ALL RESOURCE RELATED YOU SOB’S.
More troops. More Coast Guard. More emergency medical personnel. More engineers. More doctors and nurses. More firefighters and police. More of everything.
And it must come now or it is too late and they are dead. It can’t wait.
No more press conferences. No more lies. No more Brown and Chertoff and Bush and Rumsfeld taking credit for their swift response considering “it takes time to mobilize people”.
What a load of bullshit.
In no other first world country (especially one with the resources of the US) would it take 5 days to get food and water into the city. In no other FW country would it be 6 days later and people are still trapped and dying on mass. You KNEW the levees could break. Everyone knew it. You took money AWAY from FEMA’s programs. You knew Katrina was heading for the Gulf on Thursday of the week before. Your excuses now are pathetic.
Sorry guys. You criminally failed here. There are no more excuses. At all.
You peaked around a corner on Friday, you certainly did not “turn a corner”. Turning a corner would mean things were under control.
Why the hell did the people of NOLA pay any taxes for fucks sake if they are left to die in their hour of need?
*** WTF?? Someone just asked Rumsfeld to explain about “major combat operations are under way to retake the streets of NO?” WTF??
Rummy said “the DOD doesn’t do law enforcement” but I am worried anyway. I’ll see if I can find anything else out.
This is the only reference I’ve been able to find yet ~
In all, 3000 troops were being sent by the elite 82nd Airborne Division, to be followed by 2700 from the 1st Cavalry Division and 2000 more from 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces.
“They (looters) have a gun, and they think it is a game they are playing.
“They are going to learn very quickly the 82nd Airborne does not like to be shot at,” Mr Brown said.
The National Guard was also expected to have 40,000 troops in Louisiana and Mississippi within the week, supplementing a police force estimated to be at a third of its strength.
But New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley accused the National Guard of neglect.
“For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and a handful of citizens were alone rescuing people,” he said. “We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards.”
Guard commander Lt-Gen Steven Blum said this was a “low blow”; the Guard had not anticipated the police collapse.
A temporary detention centre for criminals was being built at the city’s Greyhound bus station.
is valid, ie. they don’t move people in until the hurricane has passed, but having more people ready to respond is what is the key point here.
I am so sick of the excuses why people die.
“Something is wrong here. We have become a “can’t do” country. We have a so-called “life” culture that calls for death and destruction. We have a Homeland Security Department that has killed, just in the last week, thousands of people, most of them poor whose only crime was not having the resources to evacuate. During the early aftermath of Katrina, FEMA turned back the Red Cross from LA, FEMA turned back a boat convoy of people going to help rescue people in LA, FEMA turned back a group of experts in disaster rescue who were on their way to LA, FEMA told a diesel tanker not to let the locals have fuel in New Orleans during the time when the fuel could help rescue efforts and FEMA even cut emergency communication lines in New Orleans. Why did it take 5 days to just start the rescue?”
Who knows if they will print it.
Exactly. I imagine we may read even more reports of groups of people/doctors, relief units that were there by Wed. only to be told their help, expertise even was being refused, at times at gunpoint.
It’s simply unbelievable the amount of help that was turned away. If they(bushco)had purposely planned to commit genocide on NO they couldn’t have done a better job and at this point I wonder how purposeful it was. Death and destruction are the only things they seem to excel at(besides making money for themselves).
What they say is bullshit. Look, they have search and rescue resources. Here’s 500 in Dallas. And it’s clear and obvious that the danger in NO isn’t as great as they’re claiming and never has been at least after people got food and water.
I see Harry Connick walking about for hours unharmed. I watch the reporters, all unharmed. Watching BBC is particularly revealing. They have 60,000 troops in the city to ‘establish order’ amoungst a population numbering less than 10k. It’s a disaster rescue and the feds are treating it like a war zone.
What the feds are doing makes as much sense as the invasion and occupation of Iraq and indeed resembles Iraq in eerie ways. It’s insanely dysfunctional and inappropriate.
It’s sickeningly obvious now. Bush’s only response to Katrina – his only response – was to use the destruction as a photo op. Real aid, real help, real rescue was put on hold until he could pose as a hero and prance around playing god. And now that he’s had his fun, he’s going to leave the poor people to die so he can save his “beautiful mind” for managing more wars and death and killing abroad.
It’s Ethnic Cleansing, pure and simple.
Any politician that’s stayed silent on this needs to have their career ended. Dramatically and immediately. Who’s actually been doing work to help? Dean and Gore have. Who else?
Ethnic cleansing? Please dude. I am really getting tired of the hyperbole. I am on my way to the shelter here in Tyler to deliver a load of newly purchased underwear.
Maybe I shouldnt bother, since the govt is ging to kill them all anyway, according to you.
Get a grip.
THE ONES THAT ARE STILL THERE!
Are you being intentionally obtuse and divisive? if so, to what end?
Didn’t you say you were taking your load of underwear yesterday? Or is this a second load?
What exactly is your problem?
I went once. I posted comments about it elsewhere. Read them if you wish.
I just posted a diary w a comment. I am offering for you and anyone else to troll rate me off the site.
Yes, I am being divisive. I am dividing myself from the paranoid comments such as yours from a couple days ago.
Sorry to include you in that group. I believe you were heavily influenced by so many paranoid ramblings of others. Too bad for all of us.
I am calling halt or going away. You decide.
He was fired from his last job, at a horsebreeding association, for strutting around and acting like he was answerable to nobody. Then, he cries and plays the victim and repeats the whole process again.
They turned away others helping as well.
I would think as time goes one and that the information comes out that they failed, period, that we, the ppl will surely find out the immediate truth in all of this mess. As far as I am concerned, it already has started to become the truth of the matter. I am sure we will all know very soon everything. I know now enough to know that they are responsible…..It does not take a brain surg. to figure this out.