HURRICANE
KATRINA: Indexed Quotations etc. | September 5, 2005
Scope
| FEMA | Security
| Flood Prevention |
Political/Economic Fallout
SECURITY:
COAST
GUARD,
NATIONAL
GUARD,
& IRAQ
Researched
by
Douglas Drenkow, "Progressive
Thinking" "America is
once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting,
raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered
infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels,
and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's
happening in America." -- Maureen
Dowd
"Who on earth
could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by
flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read
the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs. Who on earth could
have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal
insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any
official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports. Who on
earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at
risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the
endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy
fishbowl." -- Maureen
Dowd
"The Superdome
resembled a scene from the Apocalypse on Wednesday morning, with
thousands of refugees trapped in a hellish environment of short
tempers, unbearable heat, and the overwhelming stench of human
waste." -- The
Times-Picayune
"They're
treating us like crap. They have us living like not even
pigs." -- Tina
Wilson, survivor of the Superdome
"It's worse
than being in prison in there. They don't have nothing for
me." -- Cleo
Wilson, 86, heart-patient, survivor of the Superdome
"'They're treating people like prisoners in there,' said
Shelton Alexander as he left the Dome for the thigh-high waters of
Poydras Street. 'It's so hot in there, and people are s--ting on
the floors.'" -- The
Times-Picayune
"Degenerates roamed the
city, shooting at rescue workers, beating and robbing distraught
residents and tourists, raping women and girls. The president of
the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world
didn't seem to notice." -- Bob
Herbert
###
"The historic
jazz city has fallen prey to armed looters since Katrina tore
through and it now more closely resembles Haiti or another Third
World trouble spot in a refugee crisis than one of America's most
popular vacation centres...
"Police units,
rescue teams and even hospital workers came under gunfire today...
"Bush said
looters should be treated with 'zero tolerance'..."
-- Reuters,
as reported in "The Age" (Melbourne, Australia)
###
"Four days
after Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the northern Gulf
Coast, tired and angry people stranded at the convention center in
New Orleans welcomed a supply convoy carrying food, water, and
medicine with cheers and tears of joy...
"The president
said he is 'satisfied' with the federal government's response to
the Katrina disaster, although there is not 'enough security in
New Orleans, yet.'"
-- CNN
(Friday, Sept. 2, 2005)
###
"The
Coast Guard has rescued more than 17,000 people from the flooded
areas of New Orleans. These rescues were performed by Coast Guard
helicopters, boats, and cutters, as well as ferries organized by
the Coast Guard." -- US
Coast Guard official website, as of 8 am local time, Sunday,
Sept. 4
###
"Overnight,
police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct,
trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city...
"One New
Orleans police sergeant compared the situation to Somalia and said
officers were outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks.
"'It's a war
zone, and they're not treating it like one,' he said, referring to
the federal government...
"...after
working 60 hours straight in the flooded city. He has not decided
whether he will return.
"He broke down
in tears when he described the deaths of his fellow officers,
saying many had drowned doing their jobs. Other officers have
turned in their badges as the situation continues to deteriorate.
"In one
incident, the sergeant said gunmen fired rifles and AK-47s at the
helicopters flying overhead.
"He said he saw
bodies riddled with bullet holes, and the top of one man's head
completely shot off."
-- Chris
Lawrence, CNN (Thursday)
###
"I actually
think the security is pretty darn good. There's some really bad
people out there that are causing some problems, and it seems to
me that every time a bad person wants to scream of cause a
problem, there's somebody there with a camera to stick it in their
face." -- FEMA
Director, Michael Brown (Thursday)
"I've had no
reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means
that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on
walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever.
I've had no reports of that." -- FEMA
Director, Michael Brown (Thursday)
"Who are we if
we can't take care of our own?" -- Maureen
Dowd
"Some people there [in the
convention center] have not eaten or drunk water for three or four
days, which is inexcusable. We need additional troops, food, water;
and we need personnel, law enforcement. This has turned into a
situation where the city is being run by thugs." -- Joseph
W. Matthews, the director of the city's Office of Emergency
Preparedness
"I think it
puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern
Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't
respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf
for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a
nuclear or biological attack?" -- Newt
Gingrich
"This plan was
no plan." -- A
New Orleans cop
"...things are
going relatively well." -- Michael
Brown, Head of FEMA, Thursday night, the same day as...
"This is a
desperate SOS." -- New
Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
###
"Three out of every four dollars the agency provides in local
preparedness and first-responder grants go to terrorism-related
activities, even though a recent Government Accountability Office
report quotes local officials as saying what they really need is
money to prepare for natural disasters and accidents.
"'They've taken emergency management away from the emergency
managers,' complained Morrie Goodman, who was FEMA's chief
spokesman during the Clinton administration. 'These operations are
being run by people who are amateurs at what they are
doing.'"
-- Los
Angeles Times
###
"They [the
National Guard] are invisible. We have no idea where they are. We
hear bits and pieces that the National Guard is around, but where?
We have not seen them. We have not seen FEMA officials. We have
seen no one." -- Phyllis
Petrich, tourist stranded at the Ritz-Carlton (Thursday)
"Now, of
course, a critical element of what we're doing is the process of
evacuation and securing New Orleans and other areas that are
afflicted. And here the Department of Defense has performed
magnificently, as has the National Guard, in bringing enormous
resources and capabilities to bear in the areas that are
suffering." -- Director
of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff (Thursday)
"In addition to
local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans
as we speak today." -- Director
of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff (Thursday)
"I continue to
hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the
city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional
300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and
other military personnel who are primarily focused on
evacuation." -- New
Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (Thursday)
"We're going to
have to ask if troops and materiel of all kinds could have arrived
faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire...thanks
to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident, and hubristic
mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire
world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation,
the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect
homeland security at the same time." -- Frank
Rich
"...almost
one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard,
and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard,
were 7,000 miles away, fighting in Iraq. That's an even bigger
loss than the raw numbers suggest because many of these part-time
soldiers had to leave behind their full-time jobs in police and
fire departments or their jobs as paramedics." -- New
York Times Editorial
"Louisiana
National Guard soldiers and equipment, such as high-water Humvees
for example, are sitting today in Iraq while hundreds or even
thousands die because there are not enough hands to reach out and
pull them from the water." -- William
Rivers Pitt
"It is not a
function of more people, but how many people can you move on the
road system that exists now in Louisiana and in Mississippi. How
many people can you put through that funnel that a storm has taken
four lane highways and turned them into goat trails?" -- Lt.
Gen. H. Steven Blum, the head of the National Guard Bureau
"Did they not
have a contingency for a disaster of this magnitude?" -- John
Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org
"FEMA has known this for 20
years. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent,
in studies, training and contingency plans, scenarios, all of that."
-- Martha
Madden, Louisiana secretary of environmental quality from
1987-1988
"Americans who
had been humbled by failures in Iraq saw that the authorities
could not quickly cope with a natural disaster at home." -- New
York Times Editorial
"More than 950
people were killed and hundreds more injured Wednesday morning
when rumors of a suicide bomber provoked a frenzied stampede in a
procession of Shiite pilgrims as they crossed a bridge in northern
Baghdad...Most of the dead were crushed or suffocated...but many
drowned after falling or jumping into the Tigris River after the
panicking crowd broke through the bridge's railings. The disaster
was by far the greatest one-day loss of life since the
American-led invasion in March 2003." -- New
York Times
"It appears
that the money has been moved in the president's budget to
handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose
that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees
can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make
the case that this is a security issue for us." -- Walter
Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish,
Louisiana, June 2004
"'The corps,'"
an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles
in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, 'never tried to hide the
fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as
homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts --
was the reason for the strain.' In 2002 the corps' chief resigned,
reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the
administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including
flood-control spending." -- Paul
Krugman
Scope
| FEMA | Security |
Flood Prevention |
Political/Economic
Fallout
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