Greg Palast: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans

Greg.
You wrote:
"Under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage -- and the deaths -- a federal responsibility."

Can you please provide a reference? What law? etc Thanks.

If anyone else knows the law, please post it.

•••

"Yeah, right, as if Palast actually knows anything about the subject." That's what a friend told me but I am optimist and even a bit naive so maybe Palsast will actually be able to document his statement. As I say, I'm an optimist.

http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/

gives them the confidence to get away with anything.

greg, they might have been considering insurance costs but they watched 5 days of suffering after that without acting for a variety of political reasons, including the talk radio PR bonanza of racism that would result if they got the black on white violence they were hoping for but never got.

did anyone ever trace the false rumors of violence back to the rove people?

Let's broaden the view here. How many in Congress knew of this federal responsibility and therefore are just as guilty for this cover-up as the White House?

No wonder Trent Lott got immediate action.

Signature: Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. - Thomas Jefferson

The article says that the White House knew by midnight on Monday, so is "2 p.m." a typo?

Van Heerden revealed: "FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2 p.m., they flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

2 a.m. on Tuesday morning makes more sense if the White House knew by midnight Monday. That would mean FEMA knew at 11 p.m., the White House knew by midnight, and at 2 am FEMA took aerial video.

Yes, we need a clean sweep of Congress and the White House. I think we should start now, with EVERY state starting recall petitions for all Congress people. As for the White House, we need criminal trials, convictions and life sentences. We simply cannot keep electing officials within the current two party system. A third party is needed like never before.

Carol Wolman, MD

Let's hope that this story, of Bush withholding information that the levees were breaking in NO, doesn't get buried. It's a shocker, maybe big enough to break through.

I disagree with the last poster, I think we've done much more than we're given credit for. If it were not for the conscientious souls in the post office and Communicable Disease Center two weeks after 9-11, the Senate would have been decimated by anthrax, and a state of emergency declared. Or if flight 92 had hit its target- probably the Capitol, dictatorship would have started back then. I have no doubt that 9-11 was intended as a coup, which succeeded only partially.

Our resistance since then has been fierce and mostly peaceful, and it can continue to be that way. We're holding them at bay. Impeachment is still an option.

In 2008, we need to elect a Congress not beholden to corporations and the Bush junta. A Congress that will take on the "unitary executive", no matter which warmonger is in the White House.

Yes, this will take lots of organization, but it doesn't require taking to the streets or doing anything illegal. It does require working with the local Greens, or perhaps PDA's, or perhaps an independent campaign like Cindy Sheehan, and bringing together a coalition of likeminded candidates for Congress, who pledge to restore the balance of power mandated by the Constitution. New brooms for a clean sweep of Congress.

This strategy might put enough fear of losing their seats into the present Congress to get them to impeach! With their approval rating at 18%, they must be getting the message.

Impeachment is legal, peaceful and democratic. So is electoral politics. Let's not panic- don't agonize, organize.

In the name of the Peacemaker, Degandawidah,
Carol Wolman
Green preCandidate for Congress, CA District 1

What makes me so upset is while these 1500 died he strumbed a guitar and ate cake. He stayed on vacation for 4 days while people died and babies went without water and diapers. These are American people. Just what does george need to do before he is driven out of office. Cheney can even shoot someone in the face. I am so sick of it all.

Someone, anyone, correct me if I am wrong here: It is NOT POSSIBLE to hold these people accountable for their crimes and misdeeds via any of the traditional channels of law enforcement, jurisprudence, or even news-making. We can say whatever we want, they wait a few days, then they carry on.

We have been playing along in good faith, and even in bad faith some of the time. Still, nothing doing. We've had fairly massive online organization (thank you, MoveOn). We have our progressive news portals (thank you AlterNet, BuzzFlash, etc.). We've tried to get into talk radio and even onto TV a little bit (thank you Jon Stewart, Bill Maher...) and we've been allowed to have our many snide moments of much-deserved moral superiority. And now what?

Administration felonies never to be prosecuted, illegal war, civilian death approaching or surpassing a million, depending on who you read, Gonzalez not only still in his seat but being given expanded power with regard to the DEATH PENALTY of all things... and obviously this only touches the surface, the list is already too long, even if there WERE a 24-hour liberal... no scratch that, progressive... no not that, how about SLIGHTLY OBJECTIVE news channel, they'd never have enough time in a day to keep up with it.

Face it, we are moving backwards. Five clicks back for every one click forward. The best we've ever been able to do is slow the bleeding momentarily.

I wish I were a political visionary. I wish I were a born leader. I don't see any of this changing without people taking to the streets, and I am not even sure I know what that's going to mean. I don't think it means peaceful demonstrations with permits, sequestered into roped-off areas, with carefully chosen media coverage. Even the massive anti-Iraq war demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands in multiple cities, barely made a ripple in American media.

What then? What does it take? Massive orgaanization, for one thing. Which must have a lot to do with why domestic surveillance is on the increase. Am I afraid to even write this stuff? Yes. Do I imagine that this sort of publicly posted comment may crop up in the years to come with regard to loans, job applications, passport applications, voter registration? Maybe. This kind of thinking was considered paranoid fringe just ten years ago or so. MSM certainly would want to call it that now. So is it?

And if you allow that it could be true, what does that mean with regard to these lawbreakers described in the article, which seems to silently ask the question: How will these people be stopped?

I'm open to suggestions. Yes, you, in the back...