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