Immediately after issuing the comforting decree that the death toll from Katrina would be far less than previously anticipated, the US acted quickly to sidestep any skepticism from anti-American elements with agendas by ordering an additional 50, 000 body bags. Some, they said, were for Iraq, which was consistent with news stories of plans for a new massacre there.
Frustrated by failure to keep the discovery of 45 corpses* in Memorial Hospital out of the press, the gunmen who now occupy the former New Orleans went on the offensive:
Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside.
Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.
“No photos. No stories,” said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret. more
With Blackwater operatives long deployed to help with certain aspects of cleanup that might cause some of the fussier local police from various cities sent in to assist to balk, Washington wisely obtained the expertise of the Kenyon company, a long-time ally of the Bush tribe with a proven track record in the crucial areas of corpse vanishing technology. As Rigorous Inuition reminds us:
FEMA has relieved volunteers of their emergency mortuary services in Louisiana only, and contracted out to Kenyon, a “wholly-owned subsidiary of Service Corporation International” of Houston, Texas…
You may remember Service Corporation International, SCI, as it was part of the case against confirming Alberto Gonzales due to his involvement in the Texas and Florida scandals known as Funeralgate. As we covered back in February, Service Corporation International was “recycling” graves, removing the bodies that were there originally and throwing them in the woods to use the space to house new customers at two Jewish cemeteries in Florida . Service Corporation International, the world’s largest funeral service company, is headed by Robert Waltrip, a longtime friend and generous financial patron of the Bush family..more
And in all fairness, it must be pointed out that during the weeks following the hurricane, thousands of individuals in New Orleans did die from natural causes.
Death, after all, is the natural result of untreated lack of oxygen in attics, dehydration, thirst, heat stroke, bacterial infections, not to mention the obvious facts that if people needing medication, oygen, dialysis, etc. do not receive it, they will quite naturally lose their lives. Even drowning is natural. Human beings cannot breathe water.
“I’m very hopeful, with the devastation we’ve had, that the number (of deaths) will be much more reasonable than people think. There are not thousands of people floating around.”
— Terry Ebbert, New Orleans’ homeland security chief
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Mr. Ebbert, be assured that the full resources of the United States government will be brought to bear to ensure that your hope is realized.
*This story began with a breaking news interrupt a few days ago, as CNN’s Karl Penhaul reported that 14 bodies were being removed from the hospital. No further updates were issued until yesterday, when the story of the 45 leaked out, and various explanations were offered, the winner that emerged: the 45 had coincidentally died prior the the storm, the evacuation, or both, and were just left in their beds.