BBC: British Citizens in Dome Evacuated in Secret by Military

[autorank]

If this is a dupe, I'm sorry...but

THIS IS JUST MIND BLOWING.

BRITISH CITIZENS...IN THE DOME...EVACUATED BY OUR MILITARY...
OUR CITIZENS ARE LEFT TO SUFFER...WHY? WHY? WHY?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4214746.stm


JENNY SACHS
Jenny Sachs, of Sheffield, told how soldiers had to smuggle her out of the Superdome in secret.

She was one of about 30 Britons who, realising they could not escape the city, had fled to the stadium for shelter.

The military got us out, which we were all thankful for

"It has hit me more now I am at home, when you can have clean water, how bad it was," she said.

She said people had been raped and that others were beaten up.

"A guy was brought in who had seven stab wounds and was covered in blood."

The military told all non-US citizens to stay together for safety, Ms Sachs added.

They later told them they would be secretly smuggled out in groups of 10 under cover of darkness as it had become too dangerous for them to remain in the stadium, she told BBC News.

"When we were leaving, people were going 'Where are you going?' and giving us looks.

"But the military got us out, which we were all thankful for."

[Benbow]

1. Jenny Sachs' father is an American citizen, if it makes you feel better

but, yes, the military smuggled out all the foreign nationals - eventually.

[autorank]

2. Well, if they can smuggle a few out why couldn't they smuggle

about 500 MP's in the dome and restore order. Everybody is afraid of our military and, in this case, they would have stopped any violence quickly.

It's like the people in the Dome were confined for some reason.

:wtf:

[aquart]

3. Charming.

Small question: were they white?

[autorank]

9. In a word YES!

I hope I havn't shocked you in the wee hours. This is fucking outrageous. Unbelievable.

[VolcanoJen]

15. What? How dare you turn this into a racial issue! Race card player!!

Of course they were white. And they had cute accents.

[autorank]

17. Well, at least some of them were white...if you can believe these pics

:sarcasm:But hey, I'm just playing "the blame game" with a full deck of "race cards."

The idea that anybody was trapped there is an outrage. Why couldn't some troop carriers show up with some serious MPs or someting, unload, and restore order...then move them out.

There is an incredible ugly story here

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Sooooo, it's better to be a foreigner, living in America, than to be

an American? Hell, the military also took care of the Saudi's with 9/11.

[autorank]

10. Ah, my memory fades. Of course, it's standard operating procedure.

[FormerRepublican]

5. Send it to the US Press.

If the military could get in there to evacuate non-US citizens, they could get in there to evacuate US Citizens.

The US press needs to know that our citizens were left to suffer.

[high density]

6. Huh? This is contradictory

I thought a few days I read a report from the Guardian here on DU that said the opposite. It said that the National Guard was specifically refusing to help the foreigners stranded in New Orleans or some such crap.

[Benbow]

25. It took five days ... n/t

[Dr Fate]

7. How much time, energy & manpower was spent on this special treatment?

I would have rather had more dudes handing out food & water than setting all this up.

[Maple]

8. As a foreign policy matter

and especially when you're looking for help with a biggie...it's better not to have massacred, accidently or otherwise, foreign nationals from Australia, UK, Canada, Russia...etc.

And in any case, people from those countries are still missing, and the countries involved are putting pressure on the US to cough em up.

Wasn't the first thing you wanted to know about the Indonesian tsunami...where are the Americans, and why aren't we getting them out of there pdq?

[autorank]

12. ...but not at the expense of our own citizens. But the point is different

If they're smuggling in people to take people out, why not smuggle a lot more in to take control of the damn dome? It's wacky...As I read this, I wondered if there was some strange logic to keep our folks "contained" in the Dome? Strange thought but maybe not under the circumstances.

[Maple]

18. That's what you do in other countries

You intervene to look after Americans first. Did you think other countries would leave THEIR nationals on their own?

I agree that more should have been done for the Americans in the dome...but foreign countries can't control that. Only Americans can.

So other countries have to apply pressure to get their own people out. Same as you in foreign upheavals or crises.

[bpilgrim]

11. are only the foreigners left who are hyping the VIOLENCE

and praising their rescue.

the violence that i have seen confirmed still seems to compare with a slow tue in philly :shrug:

peace

[autorank]

14. Really. In another part of the article, the English talk about "looting"

themselves to get food. Good ting they were not interviewed by Newsweek, it would have been corrected to "liberated" food.

[bpilgrim]

21. i don't count that as 'LOOTING' that is survival

as everyone knows but won't stop the RW from spinning it as such and once you subtract that there ain't much of a story considering the circumstance.

peace

[Joebert]

16. Philly

It always strikes me when I'm back in my homeland, how dire the news is every night.

I live in Colorado, so little happens here. I get to Philly, and the news just goes on and on about the murders.

And now, you have made the KYW... News Radio... Ten Sixty... song stick in my head. :-)

[bpilgrim]

22. yep

same here... i was born and raised there but joined the navy at 18 to get out. when i go home for whatever the news is striking and the policy helicopters flying nightly over the old hood is weird as well.

:hi:

peace

[Bluebear]

13. A la the bin Laden family after 9/11? nt

[bigbrother05]

19. Watched that last night on BBC1

Was a special hour program. 1st 40 minutes went thru the whole Katrina timeline. Fla then building in the Gulf and finally the landfall with each day after. Showed the Gov and Mayor requesting aid and Bush continuing his vacation. It was hard to see it all condensed like that, really packed a punch. The last 20 minutes included the interview with a UK couple. They had been taken to the Superdome on Sunday night, so had endured it all with the NO residents until they got out after the troops came. The point they made was that it was terrible for everyone, but they were in no more danger than any others in there. The reason for the secrecy was to avoid the uproar that would have occurred when anyone was taken out. Ones that came out in later groups were jeered and things were thrown at them. They weren't sure why/how it was decided to get them out, they were just grateful to go. Her husband was crying when talking about what had happened to the people of NO.

[NorthernSpy]

20. incidents like this are probably what inspired the rumor...

... among black survivors that the authorities intended to get all the whites to safety, and then kill the blacks. The fact that relatively healthy whites (like these Britons) were given priority in evacuation over people who were actually nearing death was likely taken as evidence that the ethnic cleansing rumors were true. You can imagine how frightening this was to many survivors. From Allen G. Breed's widely reprinted article from the AP:

After several days in the street with little water and less food, people around the convention center began imagining that the storm was somehow a vehicle for ethnic cleansing.

One black man insists that authorities want everyone corralled into the convention center -- not to facilitate an orderly evacuation, but so police can ignite the gas and blow them up.

"They want us all crazy so they can shoot us down like dogs!" a woman shouts.

Interestingly, these rumors of ethnic cleansing seem not to have been nearly so widely reported as the rumors of survivor savagery. And tellingly, when enthic cleansing rumors have been reported, they have been presented explicitly as "rumors" -- never as facts, or even just more neutrally as "reports". The question is, why the disparate treatment of rumors according to whether it is blacks or whites who are put in a bad light?

[autorank]

23. Well, NOLA=Kosovars: Bushco=Serbs

That equation occurred to me as I watched. Very depressing and infuriating.

[aquart]

24. If you didn't feed me for a few days, I would have no trouble

Believing you intended to kill me. Basically, it's a logical conclusion.

Of course, without the blacks, New Orleans is another Milwaukee, but don't you think the tourists will adore it?