August 2008: Case Closed

Photo: Captain DJ
The FBI pins the 2001 anthrax attacks on Bruce Ivins. The Fort Detrick scientist won't be around to answer questions, having committed suicide late last month.

One more thing we're meant to put behind us. No reason for further concern about the mailings one week after 9/11, designed to look like the work of Islamic terrorists and aimed at media figures and Democratic senators. Some poor working stiff Post Office employees are among the several murder victims.

Glenn Greenwald on August 5—"The FBI's emerging, leaking case against Ivins,"—

If even the government-loving Time Magazine is now beginning tepidly to wonder "How Solid is the Anthrax Evidence?" -- and is even enumerating several important grounds for skepticism about the case against Ivins -- that's a very good indication of the fact that the FBI's claims are plagued by glaring holes.

A few days earlier, Greenwald outlined some of nagging questions about the media's role in promoting the story in 2001—

•The actions of ABC News represent "the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade." After the attacks, the network repeatedly broadcasts false claims that bentonite has been found in the tested bacteria, linking the anthrax to Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. This is based on information from what ABC calls "well-placed sources"—in the government, and/or its political operatives. ABC has never revealed who told these lies.
• ABC reports in October 2001 that the bentonite was discovered in tests made at Fort Detrick. By 2008, the same facility is being claimed as the source of the anthrax.
• January 2002: profiting from fresh memories of the anthrax mailings, Bush claims Iraqi plans to develop anthrax, during his "Axis of Evil" State of the Union speech.
• Greenwald quotes a 2008 Slate article by Richard Cohen: "I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it."

Greenwald adds—

That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about an anthrax attack?

Besides his questions about ABC's and Cohen's sources, Greenwald in another piece poses questions about additional actors:

• Why were White House aides given cipro weeks before the anthrax attacks, and why "on the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, [did] the White House Medical Office dispense... Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David"? [Washington Post, 10/23/2001]
• Why, if Cheney was given cipro on the night of the 9/11 attacks, was he allegedly "convinced that he had been subjected to a lethal dose of anthrax" on October 18, and that this fear is what led him to seek refuge in "undisclosed locations" and thereafter support an array of hard-line tactics against suspected terrorists? [Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, 2008];
• If -- as was publicly disclosed as early as 2004 -- Bruce Ivins' behavior in 2001 and 2002 ... was so suspicious, why was he allowed to remain with access to the nation's most dangerous toxins for many years after, and why wasn't he a top suspect much earlier? [USA Today, 10/13/2004];
• What was John McCain referencing when he went on national television in October, 2001 and claimed "there is some indication... some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq"? [Late Show with David Letterman, 10/18/2001];
• What was Joe Lieberman's basis for stating...in the midst of advocating a U.S. attack on Iraq, that the anthrax was so complex and potent that "there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program"? [Meet the Press, 10/21/2001];

The latter would be Joe Lieberman, Chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Who promised–when his Senate seat was threatened in 2006–to hold hearings on the administration's Katrina non-response. Thanks to his Republican backers, the threat was over in 2007–when he proclaimed, "looking back, and assigning blame would be a waste of Congress' time," and, "We don't want to play 'gotcha' anymore."

It's never been a matter of "play" to the victims. As hurricane season begins, Athenae asks Americans to–

Think of elderly woman down the street, who wheels her little metal cart to the grocery store each Monday afternoon, who calls a cab to take her to the doctor and pays the driver from a little clutch purse, and doesn't own a car. Think of how you never see her children or any younger relatives at all; think of how you've often wondered if she has any. Think of how she would get in a car and drive 10 hours to safety, all by herself.

An eloquent piece that should be read in its entirety.

August 2007: In The Path Of Destruction

"Isn't that terrible!" Cruella and Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant exclaim over the Minneapolis bridge collapse.

There's no connection, after all, between the kind of Republicans they vote for and this starving public works of funds...

"Nation's Crumbling Infrastructure Probably Some Sort Of Metaphor," suggests The Onion.

But not to worry, says whitehouse.org—"Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: President Comforts Grieving Families With Pledge to Continue Rebuilding Iraq's Infrastructure."

In Utah, while miners remain trapped in the collapsed Crandall Canyon mine, owner Robert Murray commandeers press conferences to blame the union—to which his workers do not belong. Tula Connell covers the scenario, in which Murray also claims a non-existent an earthquake caused the collapse. Anything to deflect from the mine's being cited—by Bush era inspectors—for 325 safety violations since January 2004.

How unsurprising: workers' lives in jeopardy, and the media can't get enough of a camera-hog Republican activist who previously called concern over worker safety, "anti-American." Meanwhile, the trapped miners die, and three rescue workers are killed trying to reach them.

This month also marks the 20th anniversary of the hit job on the fairness doctrine, by Reagan-appointed FCC commissioners. Since then, two decades of ownership concentration, plus the rise of christianist broadcasting have done the job of destroying any semblance of information in the public interest.

Media Matters attempts the month's worth of debunking in seven pages, starting here. Ranging from "Wash. Post's Marcus ignored key info in concluding Gonzales not guilty of perjury" (8/1), to "Media ignored Mississippi's use of waivers to redirect funds designated for low-income Katrina victims" (8/30).

A Mother Jones piece by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway—Windfall: How Conservatives, Contractors, and Developers Cashed In on Katrina—is a second anniversary review of events. It's also a reminder of how the media woke up for a few moments, expressing outrage not to be sustained for long.


On August 16, Jose Padilla is found guilty on all counts, after a day and a half of jury deliberations. Since its start in May, Lewis Koch has covered the trial for firedoglake. Links to stories are here, here, and here. Koch on July 13–

The prosecution has concluded its case against Jose Padilla, and two others charged with conspiracy to help support violent Islamic extremist groups worldwide. The total hard evidence against Jose Padilla consists of an alleged Al Qaeda training camp application form document Padilla allegedly signed in July 2000. The paper was among a myriad of documents handed to a CIA agent in a remote area of Afghanistan by a complete stranger.

Koch does an admirable job of covering the issues created by Padilla's imprisonment and trial. An American citizen stripped of all constitutional rights after being classified an "enemy combattant," to be held in isolation and under 24-hour observation, for three and a half years. The shackled Padilla is then taken to court wearing blinder goggles, for a trial that would never have been held if the administration hadn't needed to head off a Supreme Court challenge.

Democracy Now interviews forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty. After interviewing Padilla for 22 hours to evaluate his mental health, she concludes, "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind...[Padilla's] personality was deconstructed and reformed," the final product of the severe isolation being consistent with brain damage.

More detail from Dr. Hegarty's observation of "Padilla's absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness"—

It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like—perhaps like a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he would...subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened...

Also he had developed...a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were "unfair to the commander-in-chief," quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was "good," quote/unquote.

Scott Horton in "Bush and the Art of Breaking Human Beings" concludes, "The Padilla case is important as a demonstration of the power of isolation tactics to destroy a human being—without producing anything of gain."


"As flies to wanton boys are we to the Mainstream Media; They kill us for their sport"—driftglass, on the death of Richard Jewell at 44. From the AP report: "The Jewell episode led to soul-searching among news organizations about the use of unattributed or anonymously sourced information. His very name became shorthand for a person accused of wrongdoing in the media based on scanty information." From driftglass—

It is well to remember that once you have had a target painted on your back and the shelling begins, you are never whole again.

...And it is also well to remember that this ever-hungry slaughterbeast that rips men apart and drives them falsely to infamy, despair, suicide and ruin is the favorite pet of the GOP...

And that it was not Richard Jewell who murdered and maimed so many in Atlanta, but White Conservative Christopath Terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph.

Who, like White Conservative Christopath Terrorist Timothy McVeigh, did nothing more than implement in deed the kind of homicidal Jebus Jihad against liberals and government employees that the Mullahs of the Christopath Right like Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell, Pat Roberston, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage (to, sadly, name only a few) have been relentlessly and hysterically fomenting for the last 30 years.

God's peace be with you, Mr. Jewell, and with your loved ones.

I'm sorry our culture destroyed you.

August 2006 (II): War Declared!

Clever Sister dubs it, "The War On Moisture"...
Dumping varied and supposedly dangerous substances together into bins—now that's what you call "safety"! There are news photos of travelers being ordered to open these suspicious liquids and empty them en masse, into vats of other potentially hazardous substances...

I can't find some of the most outrageous photos now, but xopl captured the one at top, and this one.

John Aravosis brings up some pesky historical context—

Another point about this "liquid explosive." It was liquid explosives that were suspected in the plot back in 1995 that Clinton foiled, the one to blow up numerous US airlines over the Pacific. Why is it that since that time it's been okay to bring liquids on board planes, but now suddenly it's not? Why was it safe on Monday, but not safe on Friday?

As the label of tonight's dinner assures me, "THE QUALITY & H'YGIERCE OF FOODS ARE SAFELY GUARARTEED"

I know these vegetarian spring rolls from Vietnam may be laced with of our old gift of Agent Orange. But even that label is more convincing than this latest "security" measure.

I wouldn't eat a steady diet of Vietnamese imports, but pan-fried in sesame oil, those rolls are tasty. Unlike our regime's daily menu of shit sandwiches.

This comes just a few days after the fifth anniversary of the August 6, 2001 "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Presidential Daily Briefing. In the face of which, Condi Rice later claimed that "No one could have predicted..." To be recycled last year as Bush's, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees"...

Nothing suprising about the new report that Bush's reply to the CIA briefer on 8/6/01 was, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Glenn Greenwald covers this month's ruling by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor — Federal court finds warrantless eavesdropping unconstitutional, enjoins the program.

Followed by the predictable media attack on Judge Taylor—here and here, for instance.

Greenwald quotes Jonathan Turley on reasons for the attack—

...If this court is upheld or other courts follow suit, it will leave us with a most unpleasant issue that Democrats and Republicans alike have sought to avoid.

Here it is: If this program is unlawful, federal law expressly makes the ordering of surveillance under the program a federal felony. That would mean that the president could be guilty of no fewer than 30 felonies in office. Moreover, it is not only illegal for a president to order such surveillance, it is illegal for other government officials to carry out such an order.

No wonder the powers-that-be promptly dispatch the ruling into the memory hole.

August 2006 (I): Counting

One year after Katrina, Greg Palast reports from New Orleans for Democracy Now: video segment starting at 13:00, and transcript here.

Among Palast's interviewees is Steven Smith—

Like 127,000 others in this town...he didn't have a car in which to escape...Stranded in the heat on a bridge, he closed the eyes of a man who died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.

Palast reveals that FEMA's supposed evacuation plan had been contracted to an outfit called IEM, for "Innovative Emergency Management"—which had no disaster experience, but did have an owner who made big contributions to Republicans. And after awarding IEM the contract, FEMA never received a plan.

After being ejected from IEM's office, Palast interviews local scientist and hurricane expert Dr. Ivor van Heerden. Pre-Katrina, he and colleagues at the Louisiana State University Center for the Study of Hurricanes were shut out of the FEMA planning process, and van Heerden's job was threatened when he persisted in his efforts.

Another interviewee, lawyer and former city councilman Brod Bagert, reacting to the suppression of van Heerden's warnings—

Ongoing protection that should have been occurring was...done negligently. Not only wrong, negligently. And not only negligently, but reckless negligence, the kind of negligence for which an individual would be indicted, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and spend their life in jail. Negligence that killed people, lots of people...Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose, over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that’s unanswered for.

Anger is an understandable and cogent reaction. But there are many possible responses to trauma.

An 8/9/06 item (no longer online), from Editor & Publisher:

...John McCusker, a photographer for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans - and a local jazz expert - was arrested Tuesday night after a car chase ended with McCusker begging the police to shoot and kill him. He cited what could be called post-traumatic stress syndrome from experiencing, and covering, the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

Thanks, Katrina posts about the story, including this from a recent interview with McCusker—

"Imagine going to bed one night, and waking up and everybody in your entire neighborhood and everybody that they know and everybody that they know is gone and you don’t know where they are. And some nights, you know, I gotta tell you, some nights that just in despair you lay in your bed, and like you’re a three-year-old and you just lay there and say, Oh my god. I want to go home. And you can’t go home."

Followed by a photo McCusker took during last year's traumatic events.

Toxic FEMA trailers have begun to get some national notice—

Are FEMA trailers 'toxic tin cans'?

For nearly a year now, the ubiquitous FEMA trailer has sheltered tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. But there is growing concern that even as it staved off the elements, it was exposing its inhabitants to a toxic gas that could pose both immediate and long-term health risks.

Just as there's a countdown to Bush's leaving office, NOLA needs a count up—to note the passage of time since August 2005, as victims continue to be denied any measure of justice.

Clever Sister alerts me to one bit of the regime's campaign to smother reality under mountains of organization-speak. Among the official publications CS has found—

Report on Gulf Coast recoveryPresident's Council on Integrity and Efficiency

Lessons learned for protecting and educating children after the Gulf Coast hurricanes Government Accountability Office May 11, 2006

The federal response to Hurricane Katrina: lessons learnedExecutive Office of the President, 2006

The last two are only part of the "lessons learned" motif that CS is seeing over and over. As in—

Lessons learned during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and ongoing operations in the United States Central Command Region : hearing before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, One Hundred Eighth Congress, first session, July 9, 2003.

"Lessons learned," as in, "been there,done that/it's history/move on"...

August 2005 (II): History, Lost And Found;Disputed And Denied

It's the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (8/6) and Nagasaki (8/9).

And the 10th anniversary of the Smithsonian's bow to right-wing pressure over its proposed Enola Gay exhibit. The media joined in the attack, as described in FAIR's 1995 piece, "Media to Smithsonian: History Is Bunk"—

...words were often turned on their heads: Because the proposed exhibit contained more than one viewpoint on the bombing, it was called "one-sided"; because it relied on contemporary documents rather than later apologetics, it was called "revisionist"; because it didn't strictly adhere to the official version of history, it was called "politically correct."

...The planned exhibit was often condemned as bad history, although evidence was rarely offered to contradict the Smithsonian's proposals.

Instead, pundits and editorialists decreed that dropping the bomb had been the only way to end the war and save American lives. Which is refuted, FAIR notes, by wartime "indications that... U.S. officials knew that Japan was on the verge of surrendering."

A view confirmed by well-placed observers of the events—

"My belief [was] that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary," Gen. Dwight Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs (Mandate for Change, p. 312).

"The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan," declared Adm. William Leahy, who presided over the Joint Chiefs of Staff (I Was There, p. 441). "Wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

As FAIR notes, the opinions of Eisenhower and Leahy are now considered "anti-American." And on the media's role in guarding against airing of "anti-American" views—

There are many other historical questions about Hiroshima that pundits have not only failed to answer seriously, but have declared unaskable. A high-water mark in this sort of know-nothingism was achieved on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley (8/28/94), when all four commentators present agreed that even raising such issues was reprehensible.

...Cokie Roberts concurred [with George Will] that questioning history is pointless: "I think that this business of trying to rewrite history in the context of 50 years later makes very little sense."

Two years after all this, a book is published about the incident,Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy.

This book, on what FAIR calls "one of the great intellectual scandals of American history," is out of print now. A good review from 1997 is Jennifer Scarlott's, "The Legend of Hiroshima."

The right's outrage over "revisionism" led the Smithsonian to censor "controversial" references to the Eisenhower and Leahy memoirs. Scarlott notes some key points:

• The current view that dropping the bomb was a matter of military necessity and an uncontroversial decision was not a foregone conclusion, but was cultivated by the Truman Administration in the weeks and months after August 1945.

• Director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, insisted the bomb was meant to threaten the USSR, not Germany. Leading informed witnesses "to wonder whether the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only the final act of World War II, but the opening act of the Cold War as well."

• The targets—and main victims—of the bomb were civilians.

• 155 Manhattan Project scientists signed a July 17 petition to Truman, imploring that he not use an atomic weapon against Japan.

Over a dozen years after the Smithsonian incident, Adam Harrison Levy's, "Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs" tells the story of how a nearly-buried piece of history came to light.

The day after Japan's August 14, 1945 surrender, President Truman commissioned the United States Strategic Bombing Survey for the Pacific Theater of War. Paul Nitze, Vice Chairman and "de facto author of the Survey" later said the goal was to "measure as precisely as possible the exact effects of the two bombs...so that people back home would have a factual frame of reference within which to draw conclusions about the bomb’s capacities as well as its limitations."

Photo: National Archives

A Physical Damage Division created teams of 150 military engineers, ordinance experts and other technicians, including photographers.

Photography was crucial to assessing and documenting the damage, and a few pictures from the Survey pictures were later published by the government, in a 1946 limited edition report.

But soon after the surrender, the U.S. had imposed strict censorship on Japan, including the dictate that "nothing shall be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility." Levy notes—

The U.S. government was ostensibly wary of the emotions of grief and anger that could be unleashed in Japan as a result of the circulation of images of the destroyed city; it was probably just as concerned to keep the physical effects of its new and terrible weapon a secret. But this suppression of visual evidence served a third purpose: it helped, both in Japan and back home in America, to inhibit any questioning of the decision to use the bomb in the first place.

Levy tells of the chance events by which the photos fell into the hands of someone haunted by their power. He didn't know what to do with them—just kept them for almost three decades, until accidentally losing them in a house move. They were retrieved by a second man who recognized their importance—and also didn't quite know what to do. Ultimately, the photos were given to the International Center for Photography, and its Hiroshima collection pages begin here.

It's a fascinating story, and a testament to the good instincts of a couple of ordinary citizens who wanted to do the right thing.

And a reminder of how we're now mired in a devastating war that we've caused, and that won't be televised. And how it's only through some rare individual actions that there have been small breaks in the regime's secrecy.

In 2004 Russ Kick of [the late] memoryhole.org filed a Freedom of Information Act request for military photos of coffins being returned to the U.S. The Air Force released photos directly to Kick, angering the Pentagon, but leading to publication around the Web and in some newspapers.

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse photos came to light in 2004 because Spc. Joseph Darby acted on his conscience.

As for benefiting from a knowledge of history: Cheney long ago learned "the lessons of Vietnam"—hide your wars from public view.

Even in Japan, rightists—and apathy—are threats to memory of the bombings and efforts to promote peace, as The Times reports this month.

An ultranationalist's desecration of the Hiroshima peace cenotaph was the most recent of periodic vandalism at the memorial. This particular vandal wanted to obliterate the cenotaph's inscription, which he thought blamed the Japanese for the bombing.

Bomb survivors who travel Japan to tell their stories in schools report incidents of abuse and taunting by bored students. The Times cites a peace activists' term, heiwa boke, translated as, "'peace senility'...or the complacency of the generation that has not known war."

It's a description that fits generations of Americans only too well—our wars are out of sight, out of mind. As for the part of the populace whose only economic opportunity is the military—they're just fresh fodder for the perpetual manipulation of the lower classes into acting against their own interests. There will be no exposure of the general public to pictures of the war, but there will be 24/7 sloganeering—"fight 'em over there"/"support the troops"/"freedom isn't free"...

Naturally, the Disinformer-in-Chief does his own bizarre versions of the sales pitch. Defending his invasion: "This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history--revisionist historians is what I like to call them."

Said with the usual smirk...Maybe he believes he's coined the term his handlers have fed him. Or else he assumes—no doubt correctly—that the term, "revisionist," is new to his audience, who will believe Bush thought it up all by hisself.

Some historians respond, with needed "revisionist" correction of the lies Bush told to start his war.

August 2005 (I): Dates That Will Live In Infamy

Early this month, Cindy Sheehan speaks at a Veterans for Peace meeting in Dallas. Inspired by the locale, Sheehan suggests to fellow activists that they make a detour—

I heard today that George Bush said our kids died for a noble cause. Why don't we just go down to Crawford and ask him, What Noble Cause?

Which leads to the encampment and vigil outside the "ranch.""It seems to stretch forever..."
Quote and photo: Dru

The media begins paying attention. The NYT publishes a story headlined, Of the Many Deaths in Iraq, One Mother's Loss Becomes a Problem for the President.

And when the media pay too much attention...
...the need to distract them becomes so important that Bush's vacation is halted. He's hustled out of Crawford and dropped into photo ops around the country.

Think Progress does a timeline that starts here—

August 26
• Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares State of Emergency in Louisiana
• Gulf Coast states request troop assistance from Pentagon

August 27
• Gov. Haley Barbour declares State of Emergency in Mississippi
• Gov. Blanco asks Bush to declare Federal State of Emergency in Lousiana
• Federal Emergency is declared later that day, with DHS and FEMA given full authority

August 28
• 2 AM CDT, Katrina upgraded to category 4 hurricane...at 7 AM, upgraded to category 5...
• 9:30 AM – Mayor Nagin issues first ever mandatory evacuation of New Orleans
• Approximately 30,000 evacuees gather at superdome with roughly 35 hours worth of food
• Louisiana National Guard requests 700 buses from FEMA for evacuations: FEMA sends only 100 buses

August 29
• 7 AM Katrina makes landfall, as category 4
• 7:30 AM Bush Administration notified of levee breach
• 11:13 AM White House circulates internal memo about breach
• Later that morning – National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warns Bush about levee danger

That last is the same day Bush flies to Arizona for

...McCain's 69th birthday, and on the tarmac, Bush presented his old political rival with a cake. The two posed, holding the cake up for cameras, and within seconds, went their separate ways. The cake, melting in the 110-degree Arizona heat, was left behind, uneaten.

To paraphrase Think Progress, Bush spends the rest of the day in Arizona and California appearances, promoting monstrous giveaways to Big Pharma, via the Medicare drug "benefit" plan.

Back to the timeline, resuming on the 29th—

• 8PM – Gov. Blanco again requests assistance from Bush
• Late* PM – Bush goes to bed without acting on Blanco's requests [*I'm completely unconvinced about this part]

August 30
• 11 AM – Bush speaks on Iraq at Naval Base Coronado
• Midday – Chertoff claims he finally becomes aware that levee has failed
• Pentagon claims there are enough National Guard troops in region
• Mass looting reported, security shortage cited.
• U.S.S. Bataan sits off shore, virtually unused
• 2 PM – President Bush plays guitar with Country Singer Mark Willis
• Bush returns to Crawford for final night of vacation

The timeline lays it all out: no official response from Bush until the 31st, when a task force is organized to coordinate the Feds' response. While supplies have not been reaching the area; tens of thousands are trapped in the Superdome; an estimated 80,00 are stranded in the city. Bush makes a flyover on the 31st...the same day Blanco's request for troops is ignored by the White House.

And by at least the 31st—if not earlier—Bush insider/former FEMA head/Iraq contracts fixer Joe Allbaugh is in Louisiana, "helping coordinate the private-sector response to the storm." The quote is from Dan Balz, in is from Dan Balz, in this Washington Post story. Allbaugh talked by phone to Balz, whose piece was published September 1—so researched and written before then.

Josh Marshall concludes that Allbaugh was "in Louisiana wearing the Allbaugh Company hat, seeing as how a few months back he signed on as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary KBR to "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues."

The usual pattern is on display immediately—

The regime's deafness to warnings—both as the storm arrives and earlier, as scientists for years issue warnings about the levees.

The effort put into distracting the media with Bush photo ops.

The results of agencies having been stacked with cronies. In this case, sabotaging the formerly effective FEMA by installing the unqualified, and making the agency subservient to the sham that is DHS.

The amount of National Guard manpower and equipment that are unavailable, having been diverted to the neo-con adventure in Iraq.

The contracts showered on cronies—while people are still trapped on roofs.

The ultimate ethnic cleansing of swaths of New Orleans—purging Democratic voters and opening new real estate opportunities for cronies.

A mountain of sickening detail will emerge in the months and years ahead to confirm all this. But the basic outline is visible from the start.

Official actions causing phenomenal devastation of a major city, with so much death and injury to its citizens—had this happened in any other country, the government would have fallen in no time. But for Bush and crew—sure, there's some bad PR at first, but it's a small price to pay for turning the worst human disasters into profit.

If there were any justice, on earth or elsewhere, what happened to New Orleans would rank high on the staggeringly long list of what these psychopaths would have to account for.

Instead, the costs are borne by people like this—

Draped in his mother's casket flag, Robert Green, Sr. stands on the steps that once led into his mother's Lower 9th Ward home in New Orleans, which was directly in the Industrial Canal breach during hurricane Katrina. Green's mother died while clinging to the roof, and his granddaughter perished in the floodwaters.

"Searching for Solace—Katrina Survivor"
Photo: Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune