KATRINA REPORT: US REFUSED AID, CITIZENS PERISHED

[kpete]

Report details US refusals of foreign aid after Katrina Nick Juliano
Published: Friday July 27, 2007

http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/29651

A new report reveals the US government turned down offers of help from across the globe in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, telling one diplomat "human assistance of any kind is not on our priorities list."

The report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington relies on a review of 25,000 documents obtained from the State Department. The report reveals the US was interested mostly in cash assistance and materials, rather than direct aid from foreign relief workers and doctors, after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005.

"A review of the State Department documents reveals distressing ineptitude," CREW's executive director Melanie Sloan said in a prepared statement. "Countries were trying to donate desperately needed goods and services, but as a result of bureaucratic bungling and indifference, those most in need of these generous offers and of aid never received it."

Offers to help came from 145 countries and 12 international organizations. The US did accept help from its top allies around the globe, but CREW's report shows it left unclaimed hundreds of thousands of prepared meals, water pumps, doctors and medicine.


more at:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Report_details_US_refusals_of_foreign_0727.html

[Donnachaidh]

1. People need to HEAR this Loud and Clear

I was getting calls from Canadian cousins asking WHY the authorities in Washington were refusing to allow planeloads of aid to come to the States. This issue cannot die -- it needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

[rucognizant]

30. WHy???????????????

My son died 3 weeks later on Sept 23, 2005. This news did NOT escape MY notice, where was everyone else?????
If I sound testy, I've been yelling the "sky is falling for 6 years now, " been shunned by my neighbors, I'm tired of shouldering the burdon on my $5.00 per hour SS. They raised the minimum wage a bit. Guess we oldsters are supposed to move in with the kids, or roll over & die.

[whistle]

2. BushCo's refusal of foreign aid, not U.S. refusal...Bush's reTHUGlicons

...refused the aid!

[Catherine Vincent]

3. I remembering reading about our government turning down aid from other countries

weeks after Katrina. But sometime before that a co-worker of mine was moaning about how other nations should help the US since we are always helping others. Well, when that article came out I email it to her so I could hear what she would say about that. She's a republican. She didn't say much. Said something like "I can't believe that" and we never talked about it again.

[PDJane]

4. Canada tried.

Cuba tried. Venezuela tried.

The US wouldn't take most of it. Canada did manage to send our URBAN rescue guys, and they were sometimes the first rescue workers folks saw, but that was because we asked the state,not Washington, if they were needed. Blanco approved it.

Understand this; the people of New Orleans, especially the black and poor, were left to die. Fema, the Army Corps of Engineers and the White House knew the levees were going to breach on Monday, and didn't tell the folks on the ground. Remember please, that the levees were not hit by the hurricane, but they breeched. That's a slow process, and the fact that they were cracking was known. Rescue missions, doctors, and tons of aid were turned away. This is beyond negligence to premeditated murder, and the land grabs have been unseemly. This has been infuriating from the get-go, but the worst of it is THAT IT ALL COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED. This administration didn't want to prevent it.

[pitohui]

32. canada did more than try, canada was here

canadians were taking people off roofs in st. bernard parish while fema was still out of communication with the parish and claiming not to know that there was a problem there -- EVERY home in st. bernard parish was flooded, every one

i know this is true, because i personally know people who were taken off their roof by the canadians

i don't know how they did it, but it was before the canadian federal gov't got official approval from the usa federal gov't -- some of the individual canadian gov'ts, such as city of vancouver, just went in and sent in the choppers without waiting to get permission from *co

[PDJane]

34. They asked Blanco.......

and she said "yes, please." That's how they got there. The vancouver guys, the URBAN guys, went in on Blanco's say-so. Province to state.

[pitohui]

36. yeah i wondered about that, it was a confusing time

i wasn't sure if they just went in on their own iniative or what

poor blanco has been demonized for the failings of bush, hardly seems fair to my mind

[ThomCat]

5. One of the most important reasons that bastard should be impeached.

Damn it! He was so busy doing jack shit, and letting his pals run this criminal war, that he didn't do a damned thing to protect the people of the United States. He sat and did Nothing, despite warnings, and let an entire city get destroyed.
x(

[guruoo]

6. To Bushco, Katrina was just another opportunity

"The process of transformation is likely to be a long one,
absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor."

[tom_paine]

19. Sadly true, PLUS they suppressed the death toll. Couldn't let it get over that of 9/11

Small comfort to the 3,400 poor and mostly black whom they disappeared.

[NOLALady]

29. They are still dying

Suicide, Cancer, Broken Hearts

[Swamp Rat]

7. NO SHIT!

:grr:

[malaise]

14. They must never be forgiven for this

This was a high crime.

[Cooley Hurd]

16. Fuck, Swamp Rat!

...and this all happened in the United States of America!:cry:

This pic (as well as all of yours) floored me at the time:


:cry::cry::cry::cry:

[bobbolink]

17. Of all your work, this is the most powerful!

"Ethnic Cleansing" American Style should be in huge posters all over!

And, worst of all, it quickly became forgotten and invisible.

This mess was caused in large part because this country doesn't provide enough for poor people to TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES. They make us helpless, dependent and weak, then let us die.

Yet, where is the outrage?!

[Swamp Rat]

18. Thanks, but I did not do that one.

I started to do one almost just like it with just the words "Ethnic Cleansing" and "New Orleans," but I could not bring myself to put words on top of those pictures. :cry: Maybe I should do my version of it, if I can find the original photo.

Since this had no people in it, I was able to muster the courage to do it... plus, my mother was still missing at the time, so I needed to occupy my mind by doing something.

[rucognizant]

33. 100% right Bobbolink!

I'm an artist.............we'll be the first to go! Because we HAVE to think to do our work!
There was a hostile takeover in 1989/90, left us 50 + somethings out in the cold. We didn't HAVE to have a college degree to get a job, until then( we had the equivelant of a college education in high school; ( well not all but a majority....) That need for a degree was a way to weed US out, we though too much!
check out this website
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/noon.html

I have an excellent memory ( I remember Pearl Harbor day distinctly.I was 1 1/2) My parents were liberals, and did talk politics with their friends. So I can add those fragments of memory to the current situation
& come up with more than most! The day WWII ended was "DELIRIOUS" SUCH JOY! Kids today are in danger of not gettting that relif! ( I was 6 )
Myths heard on TEE VEE today
!. "Kids under 6 or 7 don't remember much"..........wrong!
2. "People are living longer today"........................wrong. All the old people in my town lived into their 70,s 80,s 90,s. ( They didn't have the stress!)
I owed the power company several 100. $s, because I had to replace my windshield, my glasses, a radiator hose on my car. That used up 1 months income.
ALL THEY COULD TELL ME WAS CAN'T YOU ASK YOUR TOWN FOR MONEY YOUR CHURCH! He'lls,s bells.! I'm trying to keep up with Bill Gates & Steve Jobs, profit driven, better faster, technology..on $5.00 per hour, to stay competative in my field! ........

[Mad_Dem_X]

26. Dear God

I can't believe this is the United States of America. What the fuck happened to our great country????

[robinlynne]

8. After Swamp Rat, I can only sit here and remember the horror.

murder.

[ninkasi]

9. I have never been to New Orleans

It has long been a wish of mine, but I was never able to get the money to go. I live not all that far away, just north of Houston. When Katrina hit, my husband and I sat glued to the TV, watching, in horror, as our fellow citizens were abandoned to die.

That is the only way to describe what we saw. If Shepard Smith, and Anderson Cooper, and their news crews could find their way into the city, why couldn't the U.S. government?
I followed the news online, as I watched the tragedy unfolding on television.

I knew that offers of aid were being turned away. I saw that the people who stepped forward to help were refused entry into one of the jewels of American cities. I spent days crying for the people who were being mistreated, and could do nothing but donate money to assist the survivors.

People died, betrayed by the Bush administration, and even if every other act of his had been honorable, for Katrina alone, he should go down as the worst president in American history. Many, possibly most, of the victims of Katrina were poor, and black.

I am white. However, I had the good fortune to work, starting in 1974, for a company which adhered to EEOC requirements. I had the good fortune to become friends with many black co-workers. After getting to know my co-workers, color didn't matter. Groups of us with common interests gathered together, and the mix was almost always mixed.

A woman I sat next to for several years was from New Orleans, and black. She was only a little younger than me...we were both, by then, in our late forties and early fifties, and the thing we used to get a smile from was how completely alike our bringing up had been, even though when we were coming up, we couldn't have gone to school together.

We shared many confidences. Four years after I started work, my then husband and I separated. I had friends, both black and white, who helped me keep my sanity during that troubled time. Do you want to know what we all decided?

We decided that we all had more in common with each other as woman, than we did with whatever race we were. We had a bond, a shared experience as women, and as friends, that was sacred to us. For that reason, the horrors of Katrina hit me hard. I had retired a few years before, but watching the ones stranded on roof tops, the ones subjected to the hell of the Super-dome, I couldn't help but worry, and wonder, about my friend's families.

Our lives had become so intertwined, so much a life lived not about what race we were, but about common problems, joys, and friendships, that seeing the stark, naked, atrocity of the Bush administration, the Republic party, toward people they see as dispensable, hit me hard.

If I need a blood transfusion, what difference does it make what race the blood donor is? If a major city, a city of magic, and a blend of cultures, unlike any other city is hit with a crisis, what difference does it make whether it's citizens are white, black, or brown? America certainly took advantage of Mardi Gras, and Bourbon St., and the French Quarter, when they wanted to travel to an exotic place in the U.S.

For the betrayal of New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast affected by Katrina, the Bush administration will forever be remembered as the administration which deserted it's own citizens, and left them to not only fend for themselves, but actively denied the aid they so desperately needed. Sorry for the rant, but I'm still furious.

[snappyturtle]

15. Thanks for sharing this experience! n/t

[lies and propaganda]

10. keep up the good work Kpete!

Katrina is far from over...

[me b zola]

11. They also turned away help from here in the US

I saw what they did. :grr:

[peacebuzzard]

12. This fact alone makes the "deciders" administration criminal.

this fact alone. eom.

[malaise]

13. Bushco didn't only refuse foreigners, but FEMA (read Bush) tried to stop

Al Gore from rescuing people with medical needs.
<snip>
FEMA tried desperately to stop this mercy mission. ("Over the next three hours...I was called by an array of Majors and Lieutenant Commanders telling me to stop. Major Webb from GPMRC , Grant Meade from ESF. Major Lindquist from TRANSCOM all telling me they would not cooperate and they did not know how we had gotten permission to land.")

http://usliberals.about.com/b/a/202095.htm

I'll never forget that Gore rescue mission and neither will those who were helped.

http://thepassenger.typepad.com/the_passenger/2005/09/al_gore_quietly.html

Edit -reword

[Doremus]

31. Nor will I.

I too had been glued to the TV and computer screen wishing HOPING someone would help those poor people. When I saw Al Gore had managed to bring in an airlift of supplies and doctors I cried, both in extreme gratitude and in sorrow with the realization that our entire government rolled together isn't, and will never be, 1/1000th the leader he is.

[AnnieBW]

20. I remember people bitching

that the United States is always the first to offer help to other countries during natural disasters, but nobody is coming to OUR aid. Now we know why. Other countries had offered help, but Kindasleeza was too busy shoe shopping in Bloomingdales to care.

[Auntie Bush]

21. "They refused because they were only interested in receiving cash so

they could steal/lose/disappear it or use it to pay for something for the Military Industrial Complex or line their own, their friends and their contributers pockets. They didn't give a F*** about NO or it's people.

[skids]

22. I bet they would have accepted offers...

...for free Gucci pumps and broadway tickets. :grr:

[rabies1]

23. What I find personally offensive is that I donated and it was stolen

I live too far away to travel. Money is also a big issue. But I wanted to do something so bad for those people, so I donated some money to help. I was livid that the money was never sent to them and is just gone. Is there no limit to their cruelty toward these victims?

I eventually gave again, this time to Habitat for Humanity because I heard they were the only group who actually did something.

[mnhtnbb]

24. I remember the news stories of the offers from various countries--including Cuba--declined by Bushco

This represents one of the low points in American history.

[southern_belle]

25. k & r

[pearl]

27. Negligent Genocide-Bastards

Katrina affected me more than the death of JFK and 9/11.

[NOLALady]

28. OMG!

Silly me. I thought I had no more Katrina tears to shed. :cry:

[lovuian]

35. this governmnent isn't for Americans

its run by antiamericans

[PDJane]

37. This administration is barely human......

they're busily lining their pockets and figuring out how to take over the whole damn world.

The government of the US has a lot to answer for.