Decius wrote:
They are not letting people leave. The Astrodome has stopped accepting people. Rattle's theory is that they have a disease problem and so they don't want to evac people until they are ready to quarantine them. This spin, however, is terrible. Some people couldn't leave. Some people didn't get the memo. The Governor of Mississippi has gone on record saying that as of Friday they had no idea it was going to be this bad, so blaming the people on the street is unconsionable.

You can call it unconsionable if you like, but there's tons and tons of people down there who have absolutely no justification for not having left, and who by their *mere presence* are making the situation a magnitude of order worse. You can see them on every newscast with live footage. Just look at the pictures of the crowds around the convention center--we should be seeing a majority of infirm and crippled but instead we're seeing tons of otherwise healthy and mobile people who could have gotten on the buses and left when evacuation was declared mandatory. Every single one of those people who did not leave when they had the chance is one more person the evacuation forces have to deal with and are detracting from saving the lives of the people who really could not get out of there. Every one of those people are proudly exhibiting non-survival traits by sitting there waiting instead of banding up and moving north on their own. Remember, there was a time in America where "mass transit" meant "wide dirt roads". Although it appears that now is the time in America where an "emergency response" is something only the U.S. Army is allowed to give, since they've just told the Salvation Army they're not allowed past their barricades. (...yet news agencies have been doing fine going in and out.)

Unfortunately now we're finding out how badly Bush has fucked this country over in his pursuit of personal goals (i.e., the "war on terror" to protect the interests of big oil), and it's making all the stupidity and hubris of the residents of the former city of New Orleans irrelevant.

We're finding that FEMA was supposed to have gotten a large sum of cash specifically earmarked for them so they could set it aside specifically to deal with a problem like this at New Orleans. Instead Bush apparently pillaged that fund and put that money towards The War.

We're finding out that mysteriously we can send forces and supplies to help out Asia literally _overnight_ but we can't seem to get more than a handful of buses and a few truckloads of bottled water to somewhere _on our own damn soil_ after _almost five days_. When the postal service could have delivered something faster than the rescue forces, you've got to consider that something's severely broken.

...and in the tradition of lemmings everywhere, other people have clearly followed Bush's mighty example of living with his head up his ass. Martial law was declared practically overnight, but I've yet to hear about anyone actually using military _force_ against the _banditry_ that has sprung up all over, and I kinda doubt CNN's sitting on that kind of a report. It really looks like Martial Law was declared and then they didn't bother to use those powers to do anything more than glare real hard at people.

...and speaking of the military, they're _finally_ amassing to go "restore order" to New Orleans, and may actually make it in before Monday, but if we can get squads of troops _in_ there, I'd like to someone to explain to me why that equipment wasn't already being put to use to get evacuees _out of there_. I'd like to know why people shooting at the police will get a priority response, when crowds of people who are in imminent risk of dying from starvation and dehydration isn't enough by itself. The victims in the former case are are miniscule in number by comparison.

As to possible quarantine efforts being the reason that evacuation efforts from the Dome and Convention center have crumbled, that's either entirely wrong or the most cold-hearted contingency plan ever. By allowing a cessation of evacuation efforts and _not_ sending in medical supplies (that we damn well have to have SOMEWHERE) they are effectively abandoning all those people to die a slow, horrible death.

Of course, the people could always get up and start walking out of there, perhaps to go find out where the evacuation buses have been hidden, but then they'd have to deal with unsanitary conditions, lack of water, lack of food, and no air conditioning, and some of them would probably die. Excepting that currently they're already being subject to a lack of water, lack of food, no air conditioning, and people are already dying, so we can't blame them for not trying.

To put it bluntly, I blame _Bush_ for this massive collection of fuckups. If his war on terror were anything more than a smokescreen for taking some oil fields, they'd at least be able to use all the so-called emergency plans that everywhere is supposed to have been drafting up to deal with a massive terrorist attack to get _some_ of those people out of there. Bush, on the other hand, has apparently refused to allow some spoiled peasants in New Orleans to screw up his vacationing plans with actual work.

RE: CNN.com - FEMA chief: Victims bear some responsibility - Sep 1, 2005