"This time around ... they're not working undercover. They've abandoned all pretense of morality. They're in our faces -- in every critical position in this government -- put in place to create the madness, cruelty, torture, and massive genocide that will form the foundation of their World. And destroy ours."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111805G.shtml

Brave New Bobcat World


By Sheila Samples

Intervention Magazine
http://lnk.nu/interventionmag.com/687.php
(Supporting links at original post's URL)

Thursday 17 November 2005



The New World Order has run into some nasty bobcats who prefer their own world.

.

    "Preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader - a dictator - willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures,' which few know how, or are willing to employ." - Michael Ledeen

.

    Goodness gracious! Henny Penny! Since defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and vice president Dick Cheney teamed up to lead the charge to create a New World Order, the whole universe has become untidy. Very untidy. My friend Bernie says Dick and Rummy's big plan to take over the world by waging continuous war is kinda like baptizing a bobcat - ain't gonna happen.

    You can't hold him," Bernie said. "You can't turn him loose. All you can do is jump up and down and run around in circles with your hands around his neck and hope you can choke him to death before he tears you to pieces."

    And that's just in Iraq. We've got miles to go before we sleep in a brand New World. There we are, sandwiched between a gigantic Iran and a tiny Syria, both of whom have been warned that they're next on George Bush's list of countries to receive his gift of freedom and democracy. Will Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yell, "Hold the Mayo!" and take a bite out of Bush's ass, or will he back off in an effort to salvage his standing with the European Union that was badly damaged as a result of his "Wipe Israel off the map" comment?

    I suspect the answer to that will be up to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who appears to be Ahmadinejad's "Cheney," or controller, and who said shortly after the Israel remarks, "We will not commit aggression towards any nations..." Khamenei then added a veiled warning to the New Worlders - "But if the power-seekers of the world - out of habit - want to infringe our nation's rights, it will not tolerate oppression by anyone or any powers."

    Unfortunately, Bush doesn't respond well to warnings, threats, challenges, suggestions, or even questions. So, with more bobcats circling and all that blood splattering around, it's hard not to look back at the Old World Order with more than a bit of longing. But Bernie says it's too late for that. "The Old World is gone, and good riddance," he said. "It's a sore that began festering on Reagan's watch with behind-the-scenes atrocities, undercover drug trafficking, assassinations, death squads and the chipping away of the ethical foundation of our democracy. It's come to a head now, spewing out the same old Reagan-era mass murderers, and they don't intend to leave.

    "This time around," Bernie said, "they're not working undercover. They've abandoned all pretense of morality. They're in our faces - in every critical position in this government - put in place to create the madness, cruelty, torture, and massive genocide that will form the foundation of their World. And destroy ours."

    The New World Order looks good on paper, but it is based on the theory that leaders of nations throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East will recognize the futility of challenging the massive power of the US military and will passively hand over their resources, their treasures, their governments, their cultures and their gods, and will eagerly accept the gift of freedom and democracy that comes with US control.

    The New Worlders - Cheney, Michael Ledeen who, ironically, sits in the "Freedom" chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI); William Kristol, idiot "intellectual" editor of the rabid right-wing Weekly Standard; Paul Wolfowitz, author of the Iraq war who now heads the World Bank; and Lewis Libby, recently indicted in the Valerie Plame CIA Leak investigation, among others, built their "grand vision" on a revolutionary 24-page document, "Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy," penned by Cheney in January 1993, which outlined a new foreign policy of pre-emption in order to gain - and maintain - US global dominance.

    Most Americans are familiar with the phrase, "New World Order." It's been out there for so long it's almost passe. Besides, what's wrong with being Number One? What's a few regime changes between friends? Few realize that the "noble" cause for which 2,080 Americans have lost their lives is nothing but maximation of profits - a war for global financial and military industrial domination. As the incomparable Mary McGrory said, the United States "is the SUV of nations. It hogs the road and guzzles the gas and periodically has to run over something - like another country - to get to its Middle Eastern filling station."

    Does no one ever wonder what life will be like in the New World Order? As far back as 1987, Republican Senator Jesse Helms was raising the alarm on the floor of the Senate - "This campaign against the American people - against traditional American culture and values - is systematic psychologcal warfare," Helms said. He warned about insiders such as Wolfowitz and Richard Perle directing foreign policy..."The influence of establishment insiders over our foreign policy has become a fact of life in our time," Helms said. "...It is an influence which, if unchecked, could ultimately subvert our constitutional order." (Emphasis added)

    There's nothing wrong with psychological operations (PSYOP). It's a weapon as old as war itself; a critical force multiplier that has been used throughout history to intimidate an enemy so that he will either surrender prior to conflict or throw in the towel before he is wiped out. But in the grotesque new world of Cheney and Rumsfeld, PSYOP is a savage, insensate world of chaos, anger and hate. It's a world of abuse, murder, degradation, assassination, secret hidden torture camps where PSYOP has mutated into full-blown "Psycho" operations. From Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib to the remote mountains of Afghanistan, Rumsfeld's Psycho Raiders are on the move - abusing, torturing, and murdering all those who dare resist occupation. Men, women, children - it doesn't matter. If it pleads, it bleeds.

    At the same time, the Bush administration and its complicit corporate media are using PSYCHO-OP with spectacular success against the American people by relying on fear to impel them to accept an increasingly fascist regime rather than physically beating them into submission.

    We are entering a new world; one of informants and secret police and torture. It's a Machiavellian world where the end justifes the means. As Ledeen wrote in his 1999 book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago, "There are several circumstances in which good leaders are likely to have to enter into evil: whenever the very existence of the nation is threatened; when the state is first created or revolutionary change is to be accomplished; when removing an evil tyrant; and when the society becomes corrupt and must be restored to virtue..."

    In Katherine Yurica's April 7, 2005 report, "Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen," Yurica quotes Ledeen as he clearly lays out a roadmap denizens of the world will be compelled to follow in the new order. Ledeen, Karl Rove's full-time adviser and Pat Robertson's best friend, says the religion within that order will be that of evangelical Christianity.

    "Good religion teaches men that politics is the most important enterprise in the eyes of God. Like Moses, Machiavelli wants the law of his state to be seen, and therefore obeyed, as divinely ordered," Ledeen wrote. "The combination of fear of God and fear of punishment - duly carried out with good arms - provides the necessary discipline for good government."

    Bernie says Americans have been "psycho-opped" upside the head by guys like Ledeen, Cheney and Rumsfeld until we are senseless. "Somebody oughta tell that creepy Ledeen guy that this isn't Machiaveili's 'state,' and that love and compassion will trump politics in the eyes of God - every time! Where are the freaking Christians?" Bernie bellowed as he headed for the door. Somebody oughta tell that bunch of jackals over at the Pentagon's Murder, Inc. that our founding fathers gave us the necessary discipline for good government - the US Constitution..."

    Bernie's right. We are the bobcats now. Cheney and Rumsfeld may ultimately force us into the madness of their world, but it will be after the race - and then after the damndest fight they ever saw. Because in a sane world, only a crazy person would try to baptize a bobcat...

.

    Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer.

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Newton's Third Law : Law of reciprocal actions...

Whenever one body exerts force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1120-24.htm

Published on Sunday, November 20, 2005 by the Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)

Bush People Have Cranked Up the Ol' Fog Machine

by Barb Guy
 
The Bush team has been taking potshots at anyone who dares to note the overwhelming evidence that the administration manipulated - if not downright manufactured - pre-war intelligence in order to sell the American people on the Iraq war.

People have pointed these things out for years, for all the good it's done. So what has brought on the recent nasty counterattacks? Sidney Blumenthal said in Salon.com Thursday: "The Senate's decision last week to launch an investigation into the administration's role in prewar disinformation, after the Democrats forced the issue in a rare secret session, has provoked a furious presidential reaction."

He went on to say, "The Senate Intelligence Committee, under Republican leadership, connived with the White House to prevent a promised investigation into the administration's involvement in prewar intelligence. Its revival by Democrats is precisely the proximate cause that has triggered Bush's paroxysm of revenge."

Seems like as good an explanation as any. Clearly, more and more Americans who supported the president have become disillusioned.

Like the manager of a sagging rock band, Karl Rove must have decided it's time for a fog machine. As campaigns to shift blame go, this one is only slightly more sophisticated than "I know you are but what am I?" and "who smelt it dealt it."

It's interesting that, in the face of approval ratings dropping to unprecedented lows, the Bush team has chosen to defame Americans with legitimate questions. Vice President Cheney, who on another occasion replied to a valid criticism with the super-classy "Go f- yourself," has been called in by the president to help turn the pointed finger around.

At least Cheney's manners are better now. Without even employing the f-bomb, he says allegations the Bush team lied us into war are "the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired."

Wow.

Let's see. The most dishonest and reprehensible. What about Cheney's quote in March 2003? Tim Russert asked him on "Meet the Press," "Even though the International Atomic Energy Program says [Saddam Hussein] doesn't have a nuclear program, we disagree?" Cheney replied, "I disagree, yes. And you'll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community, disagree. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Later that year, Cheney returned to the program. Russert played a clip of the previous conversation and said to Cheney, "Reconstituted nuclear weapons. You misspoke." Cheney replied, "Yeah. I did misspeak . . . We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon."

In 2004, in a unanimous decision, the bipartisan 9/11 commission, selected by President Bush, confirmed what a lot of people knew all along - there is no connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

Then there's Colin Powell. He gave a speech to the U.N. in February 2003 that laid out the rationale for war. This pivotal speech, given by arguably the most respected person in the Bush administration, has been cited by many moderates, Democrats and Republicans, as the most persuasive argument they heard for supporting the war. It certainly gave me pause.

But now, as reported by ABC News: "Colin Powell says his speech making the case for the U.S.-led war on Iraq is 'a blot' on his record. Powell has also said that he had 'never seen evidence to suggest' a connection between the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States and the Saddam regime." Said Powell: "It may not have turned out to be such a mess if we had done some things differently."

Now the Defense Intelligence Agency has declassified a report, DITSUM 044-02. According to Robert Scheer in The Nation, "This smoking-gun document proves the Bush administration's key evidence for the apocryphal Osama bin Laden-Saddam Hussein alliance, said by Bush to involve training in the use of weapons of mass destruction, was built upon the testimony of a prisoner who, according to the DIA, was probably 'intentionally misleading the debriefers.'"

There's so much more. Remember Donald Rumsfeld assuring us that U.S. troops would be greeted with flowers and victory parades in Baghdad? Remember "Mission Accomplished"? The Downing Street memo? The shame and disgrace of Abu Ghraib?

And Bush's people say it's Americans with questions who are dishonest and reprehensible?

Killer fog machine, man.

© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune.

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"...the most outspoken of the war’s supporters are all but impossible to persuade. Some of them are simply venal, eager to curry favor with the regime no matter how idiotic or intellectually insulting the line they are expected to tow. Others, whether they realize it or not, look at the world as a giant baseball game, with the U.S. government as our team. They’ll rush out of the dugout to protest an obviously sound call at first base or a called strike that was in fact well within the strike zone. When in matters of foreign policy their team sets forth a barrage of propaganda they would have laughed at had it come from the Soviet Union in the 1980s or Syria today, they cannot defend it enthusiastically enough. Go, team..." The Case Against This Monstrous War by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods51.html

http://lnk.nu/mcall.com/683.story

November 20, 2005
From The Morning Call

Germans: Bush misused data to justify Iraq war

Informant's handlers say they repeatedly warned of unreliability.

By Bob Drogin
and John Goetz Special to The Morning Call

BERLIN | The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims before the Iraq war.

Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with the Los Angeles Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's claims in his pre-war presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly second-hand and impossible to confirm.

''This was not substantial evidence,'' said a senior German intelligence official. ''We made clear we could not verify the things he said.''

The German authorities, speaking about the case for the first time, also said that their informant suffered from emotional and mental problems. ''He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy,'' said a BND official who supervised the case. ''He is not a completely normal person,'' agreed a BND analyst.

Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate pre-war U.S. claims that Baghdad had a biological weapons arsenal, a commission appointed by President Bush reported earlier this year. U.S. investigators did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story was true, or the German officials who handle his case.

The German account emerges as Washington is engaged in a political battle over pre-war intelligence. The White House lashed out last week at Senate Democrats and other critics who allege the administration manipulated intelligence to go to war. Democrats have forced the Senate intelligence committee to resume a long-stalled inquiry. Democrats in the House are calling for a similar inquiry.

An investigation by the Times based on interviews since May with about 30 current and former intelligence officials in the U.S., Germany, England, Iraq and the United Nations shows that U.S. bungling in the Curveball case was far worse than official reports have disclosed.

The White House, for example, ignored evidence that United Nations weapons inspectors disproved virtually all of Curveball's accounts before the war. President Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq's germ weapons as the invasion neared, even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed.

At the Central Intelligence Agency, senior officials embraced Curveball's claims even though they could not verify them or interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability, punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after invasion.

After the CIA vouched for Curveball's information, President Bush warned in his State of the Union Speech in January 2003 that Iraq had ''mobile biological weapons labs'' designed to produce ''germ warfare agents.'' The next month, Bush said in a radio address and a statement that Iraq ''has at least seven mobile factories'' for germ warfare.

Curveball told his German handlers, however, that he had assembled equipment on only one truck and had heard second-hand about other sites. Moreover, he could not identify what the equipment was designed to produce.

''His information to us was very vague,'' said the senior German intelligence official. ''He could not say if these things functioned, if they worked.''

David Kay, who headed the CIA's post-invasion search for illicit weapons, said Curveball's accounts were maddeningly murky. ''He was not in charge of trucks or production,'' Kay said. ''He had nothing to do with actual production of biological agent. He never saw them actually produce agent.''

Powell also highlighted Curveball's ''eyewitness'' account when he warned the U.N. Security Council on the eve of war that Iraq's trucks could brew enough weapons-grade microbes ''in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people.''

The BND supervisor said he was aghast when he watched Powell misstate Curveball's information as a justification for war.

''We were shocked,'' the German official said. ''Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven. … It was not hard intelligence.''

In a telephone interview, Powell said CIA director George J. Tenet and his top deputies personally assured him before the Feb. 5, 2003, speech that intelligence on the mobile labs was ''solid.'' Since then, Powell said, the case ''has totally blown up in our faces.''

Powell said no one warned him that veterans in the CIA's clandestine division, including the European division chief, had voiced growing doubts to supervisors about Curveball's credibility.

''This is one we really pressed on, really spent a lot of time on,'' Powell recalled. ''We knew how important it was.''

Copyright © 2005, The Morning Call

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In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful : Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy : Russian author, 1828-1910

(Story lead fromHuffingtonPost.com)

http://lnk.nu/time.com/682.html

Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005

New Orleans Today: It's Worse Than You Think

Neighborhoods are still dark, garbage piles up on the street, and bodies are still being found. The city's pain is a nation's shame

By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS NEW ORLEANS

On Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, the neon lights are flashing, the booze is flowing, and the demon demolition men of Hurricane Katrina are ogling a showgirl performing in a thong. The Bourbon House is shucking local oysters again, Daiquiri's is churning out its signature alcoholic slushies, and Mardi Gras masks are once again on sale. But drive north toward the hurricane-ravaged housing subdivisions off Lake Pontchartrain and the masks you see aren't made for Carnival. They are industrial-strength respirators, stark and white, the only things capable of stopping a stench that turns the stomach and dredges up bad memories of a night nearly three months ago. Most disasters come and go in a neat arc of calamity, followed by anger at the slow response, then cleanup. But Katrina cut a historic deadly swath across the South, and rebuilding can't start until the cleanup is done. In much of New Orleans, the leafy coverage of live oaks is gone. Lingering in the sky instead is a fine grit that tastes metallic to the tongue. Everyone's life story is out on the curb, soaked and stinky—furniture and clothing, dishes and rotting drywall, even formerly fabulous antiques. Dump trucks come periodically to remove the piles, taking some to a former city park, now a heap of rubbish several football fields long, towering above the head. The smell is sweet, horrific.

They're still finding bodies down here 13 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit—30 in the past month—raising the death toll to 1,053 in Louisiana. The looters are still working too, brazenly taking their haul in daylight. But at night darkness falls, and it's quiet. "It's spooky out there. There's no life," says cardiologist Pat Breaux, who lives near Pontchartrain with only a handful of neighbors. The destruction, says Breaux, head of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, depresses people. Suicides are up citywide, he says, although no one has a handle on the exact number. Murders, on the other hand, have dropped to almost none.

Mayor Ray Nagin opened up most of the city to returning evacuees last week, but only an estimated 60,000 people are spending the night in New Orleans these days, compared with about half a million before Katrina. The city that care forgot is in the throes of an identity crisis, torn between its shady, bead-tossing past and the sanitized Disneyland future some envision. With no clear direction on whether to raze or rebuild, the 300,000 residents who fled the region are frustrated—and increasingly indecisive—about returning. If they do come back, will there be jobs good enough to stay for? If they do rebuild, will the levees be strong enough to protect them? They can't shake the feeling that somehow they did something wrong just by living where they did. And now the money and the sympathy are drying up. People just don't understand. You have to see it, smell it, put on a white mask and a pair of plastic gloves, and walk into a world where nothing is salvageable, not even the mildewed wedding pictures.

Beyond an island of light downtown, most of Orleans Parish is still in the dark. Of the city's eight hospitals pre-Katrina, only two are open to serve a population that swells to 150,000 during the day. The public school system—destroyed by back-to-back hurricanes—is in limbo while the state considers a takeover and charter-school advocates vie for abandoned facilities. One lone public school for 500 students is set to open this week. The once flashy city has become drab. The grass and trees, marinated for weeks in saltwater, are a dreary gray-brown. Parking lots look like drought-starved lake beds, with cracks in the mud. Within a few hours, anyone working outside is covered in a fine layer of grit. The trees that gave New Orleans such character—the centuries-old live oaks with their grand canopies and graceful lines—are toppled, exposing huge root balls 10 ft. or more in diameter. It's all the more surreal because the Garden District, which survived the flood, is lush and beautiful once again.

The tax base has been shredded, forcing New Orleans to limp along on about a quarter of its usual income of $400 million to $500 million per year. The city has lost an estimated $1.5 million a day in tourism revenues since Katrina, and only a quarter of the 3,400 restaurants are open. Moody's has lowered the city's credit rating from investment grade to junk. The latest insult? The nation's flood-insurance program ran out of money for the first time since its founding in 1968, and some insurers temporarily stopped issuing checks.

That may have consequences for people like Marguerite Simon, 82. She worked hard cleaning other people's homes, earning just enough to buy into the Ninth Ward, one of New Orleans' poorest neighborhoods. She was wearing rubber gloves, rubber boots and a paper face mask last week, cleaning black amoebic splotches of mold off precious family treasures. Inside the small house, her well-made furniture, with its carved arms and curved legs, lay scattered as if some giant Mixmaster had been whirling away. Sitting on her tiny porch, she managed a laugh. "You have to laugh," she said, "but it don't come from the heart." She wants to stay in her neighborhood, even though bodies are still being found there. Across the street, a widower was found dead by his visiting son just last week. Simon had a small flood-insurance policy, but even so, she's not sure she can afford to rebuild or that she will be allowed to. The cost of demolishing a house is several thousand dollars and rising. For now she's living with her daughter Pamela Lewis in nearby Algiers, but Simon hates the loss of independence. "Inside, I'm hurt," she says. "I miss having things my way." Lewis is helping her complete Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) paperwork to get a trailer to place at the back of the lot in Algiers. "I believe there's a lesson and a blessing in everything. We just haven't found it yet," says Sharon Welch, another daughter who is visiting from Chicago, and the women laugh.

Real estate agent Sherry Masinter, 46, lived with her lawyer husband Milton, 73, in the Lakeview neighborhood until the 17th Street Canal levee broke and flooded their house with 8 ft. of water. Today mold grows up the walls. The couple paid for flood insurance faithfully for 20 years and were reimbursed, but their neighbors are still battling with their insurance company over arcane formulas. Milton argues—as did independent experts from the National Science Foundation and the American Society of Civil Engineers recently—that poor levee design by the Army Corps of Engineers caused the flood, not Katrina. That puts the burden on Washington to help, he says. The breached levee, shored up with sandbags, is still leaking onto city streets. "It's very frustrating," says Sherry, "to the point where we've talked of going to Washington for a peaceful protest just to say, ‘You've forgotten us.'"

Repair and cleanup are linked, to some degree, with planning what New Orleans should look like five years from now. The Louisiana Recovery Authority, appointed by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, met in November with hundreds of New Orleans residents to develop priorities, brainstorm ideas with planners and businessmen, and present a unified voice. The Authority vice chair Walter Isaacson petitioned Congress last week for help in establishing a "recovery corporation" as a vehicle for the city's rebuilding neighborhoods. Donald Powell, the new hurricane czar appointed by George W. Bush, said his job is to listen and gather facts to help the President "understand the vision of the local people." The one-time banker, who admits he has a little boning up to do on levees, says he will spend the next few weeks shuttling in and out of the hurricane area, developing a blueprint for federal reconstruction help. Washington approved $62.3 billion to help hurricane victims after the trifecta of Katrina, Rita and Wilma. With an additional $8.6 billion in tax breaks and programs for the region, the total tab of nearly $71 billion is far beyond the $43.9 billion dedicated to emergency spending after the 9/11 attacks. But congressional Republicans are picking up strong signals from the White House that the Administration is not going to move forward with any grand coastal plan. "There's not a sense of urgency anymore," says a senior House Republican aide.

Louisiana's recent request for $250 billion, perilously short on details, got a contemptuous reception from Republicans ("Nonstarter," said a Senate aide), editorial writers (who dubbed it the "Louisiana looters' bill") and even a few Democrats ("They're thieves," said a House aide involved with budgeting for Louisiana relief). Michael Olivier, Louisiana's secretary of economic development, points out that Katrina devastated a far larger area—23,000 acres—than 9/11 did and destroyed nearly 284,000 homes. With 71,000 businesses shut down by Katrina and a further 10,000 by Rita, and with local governments short on tax revenues, he says, "We're looking at potentially the largest business insolvency since the Depression, and a government insolvency." FEMA continues to be a four-letter word in Louisiana. In Kenner and Metairie, suburbs west of New Orleans, blue tarps provided by FEMA dot the roofs of homes damaged by wind, but there are few in the worst-affected neighborhoods like Lakeview, the Ninth Ward and East New Orleans—a policy defended by the agency. "What's to protect?" asks FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews in Washington. She argues, like the insurance companies, that most of the damage east of New Orleans was from floodwaters, not wind. Tarps, she says, would be a waste of money. "There are still houses left standing, but you wouldn't let any living thing you cared about get near them [after they had soaked in] standing black water for four weeks," says Andrews.

FEMA trailers for temporary housing are a rare sight in East New Orleans, largely because there is no electricity and inundated city inspectors are behind on approving utility hookups. Entergy New Orleans, which filed for bankruptcy protection after Katrina, plans to double its repair work force so that most of the remaining 75,000 customers will have power by year's end, thus clearing the way for trailers to be installed. The move comes none too soon, since FEMA is cutting off payments for hotel rooms by Dec. 1 to encourage families to move into permanent homes, using money they were given for apartment deposits. Olivier told a gathering of planners in New Orleans that FEMA's trailer parks had been held up by epa requirements for an environmental study. "They told us that we have to protect the endangered species," said Olivier, who then delivered his applause line. "I told them, ‘Hell, we are the endangered species!'" Andrews says the agency does not mandate such studies.

The delays and squabbles mean that Congress's $62.3 billion largesse has mostly gone unspent. More than half—$37.5 billion—is sitting in FEMA's account, waiting for a purpose. Under fire for being slow to respond, the Bush Administration had rushed two emergency supplemental bills to Congress with little thought about how the money would be spent or how fast. Now FEMA is "awash in money," says a Democratic appropriations aide. Of the nearly $25 billion assigned to projects, checks totaling only about $6.2 billion have been cashed. As a result, a third supplemental-funding bill sent to Congress suggests taking back $2.3 billion in aid. Mayor Ray Nagin attempted to shore up support for the city's recovery before Congress last week, but he came home with little new. The comment of a G.O.P. aide was typical: "We want to see them helping themselves before they ask us for help."

The mayor's Bring New Orleans Back Commission has created buzz in the city by involving thousands of people in public life. But what residents want most is something the mayor pragmatically believes may be impossible for the moment—levees that will protect against Category 5 hurricanes. The Corps of Engineers plans to repair 40 miles of the 300-mile system before the next hurricane season. Nagin won promises from the Corps to rebuild the system to withstand a Category 3 storm "plus some," which means they plan to fix the flaws that reputedly caused the levee breaks that flooded 80% of the city—for as long as four weeks in some areas. The improved levees will be 17 ft. high, vs. 12 ft. to 13 ft. pre-Katrina. With $8 million pending for a two-year Category 5 study, the mayor seems content to bide his time. "There is no science to build a Category 5 levee protection now anyway," says Nagin.

New Orleans has a more immediate problem: its health-care system. "Should we have another hurricane, multiple accidents, a major fire or a flu epidemic, it could overwhelm our system," warns Dr. Breaux. Fewer than 15% of the doctors are back, nurses are in short supply and medical records are missing or destroyed. The Navy hospital ship is gone, replaced by a makeshift treatment center that moved out of tents and into the New Orleans Convention Center last week. Level One trauma care, for the most seriously wounded, is available only in the next parish. "If you're in a major car accident, have been stabbed or shot or hit over the head with a pipe, the soonest you could go into the operating room now is about an hour—and that's if you ‘schedule' your trauma between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.," says Dr. Peter DeBlieux, an internist at the temporary convention center site.

Eighteen months before Katrina, business leaders in New Orleans created an economic development vehicle, GNO Inc., with a five-year goal of creating 30,000 jobs. They may make their goal quicker than that, but the jobs will be in Baton Rouge, or perhaps Houston and Atlanta, thanks to the hurricane. At a downtown job fair last week, Leo G. Doyle, a sales-training manager for UPS, said his company lost 30% of its work force after Katrina and was looking for drivers and package handlers. "We have a lot of good workers who have been displaced, a lot of good workers with loss-of-family issues, loss-of-spirit issues," says Doyle. "If we had housing, they would return." Burger King is offering a $6,000 signing bonus to anyone who will work in New Orleans for at least a year.

New Orleans will never again be the New Orleans of Aug. 28, 2005, the day before Katrina hit. But that New Orleans was not the city of 30 years ago either. There is no reason to think New Orleans will not once again be a vibrant place, but it will take time, and more time than one might have thought just a month ago. As Jim Richardson, director of the Public Administration Institute at Louisiana State University, puts it, New Orleans is not a traditional hurricane-recovery model. "It's more like a war zone. You're looking at a 10-year recovery, not two years."

Copyright © 2005 Time Inc.

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"If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out" - Oscar Wilde

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/20/rumsfeld-invasion/

INCOMPETENT ESTABLISHMENT

Rumsfeld’s Rewrite: “I Didn’t Advocate Invasion”

In a striking sign of faltering U.S. efforts in Iraq, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is now trying to distance himself from the decision to invade Iraq.

In last Sunday’s Washington Post, Rumsfeld downplayed his role significantly: http://lnk.nu/washingtonpost.com/67z.html

For there comes a point when even the secretary of defense must realize that “it’s not your decision or even your recommendation,” Rumsfeld reflected with Woodward. By which he meant the Iraq war wasn’t Don Rumsfeld’s decision or recommendation.

*** Rumsfeld went even further this morning on ABC’s “This Week,” telling George Stephanopoulos that he “didn’t advocate invasion” and in fact, “wasn’t asked” about the decision. [Full transcript below.] ***

Rumsfeld can’t rewrite history. The truth is, as early as 1998, he signed a letter urging President Clinton to turn his attention “to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. http://zfacts.com/p/780.html This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts.”

Hours after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld was already urging his aides “to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.”

According to notes, he wanted “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit [Saddam Hussein] at same time. http://lnk.nu/cbsnews.com/680.shtml Not only [Osama bin Laden].”

Indeed, a Newsweek article from September 2002 described Rumsfeld as “the most visible and certainly the most colorful frontman for attacking Iraq.” http://lnk.nu/keepmedia.com/681

Full ABC transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: If you had known that no weapons of mass destruction would be found, would you have advocated invasion?

RUMSFELD: !!!---> I didn’t advocate invasion.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You didn’t?

RUMSFELD: No, I wasn’t asked. <---!!! If you read all the books and the things —

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why weren’t you asked? That’s very puzzling.

RUMSFELD: Well, I’m sure the president understood what my views were. But as a technical matter, did he ever look and say, “What should we do? Should we go do this or not do that?” This something the president thought through very carefully.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you trying to distance yourself from the war with that –

RUMSFELD: Of course not. Of course not. I agreed completely with the decision to go to war and said that a hundred times. And don’t — don’t even suggest that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m just asking.

RUMSFELD: Well, you know better.

Posted by Nico at 12:21 pm

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein