Wednesday, September 21, 2005
BUSH WAS WARNED
George Galloway accuses the President of murder:
This is not simply manslaughter through incompetence, though the White House’s incompetence abounds. It is murder—for Bush was warned four years ago of the threat to New Orleans, as surely as he was warned of the disaster that would come of his war on Iraq.
Why, evil Bush should have evacuated the city four years ago, when he was first warned. At the very least he should have shared this information; then local authorities may have able to do something. Instead he kept private the terrible secret knowledge that a hurricane, of all things, was aimed at New Orleans.
His is the America of Halliburton, the M-16 rifle, the cluster bomb, the gated communities of the rich and of the billionaires he grew up with in Texas. There is another America. It is the land of the poor of Louisiana, it is the land of the young men and women economically conscripted into the military. It is the land of the glorious multiethnic mix that was New Orleans ...
The M-16 is also manufactured in Ontario (his is the America of Canada!); Germans developed the first cluster bombs (his is the America of the Fatherland!); gated communities are now appearing in Toulouse (his is the America of France!). The “glorious multiethnic mix that was New Orleans” featured a murder rate 7.54 times the national average. Meanwhile, here are the latest casualty figures from Hurricane Katrina:
ALABAMA: 2
FLORIDA: 14
GEORGIA: 2
LOUISIANA: 736
MISSISSIPPI: 219
TOTAL: 973
The Mississippi toll hasn’t received much press, which suits Gov. Haley Barbour just fine:
“We’re not into whining or moping around or victimhood,” said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who has avoided the blame game that started in Louisiana as soon as Katrina made landfall …
Mr. Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, says he’s not bothered by the comparatively scant national press coverage given to his state’s suffering.
“I would rather [have made] the progress that we’ve made than get a lot of press attention by not making progress, so it doesn’t bother me that we’re not on the front page of the news.”