I have been unable to tear myself away from the images of Katrina.  I keep going back to CNN and reading and watching the videos.  It’s started seeping into my dreams and the images and stories go through my head every night in those moments between waking and sleeping.  But now I’m just outraged.  Outraged that our country has abandoned thousands of people, left them to starve and dehydrate and get heat stroke in “shelters”.  Outraged that they have let people die in the street, in the parking lot of these shelters and not even bothered to pick up the bodies.  Outraged that spokespeople are having the nerve to blame the victims of this tragedy for the situation they are in.  I read that 125,000 people in New Orleans did not have transportation.  125,000 people!  How were they supposed to evacuate?  They couldn’t, and now our country, the strongest super-power in the world has abandoned them.  Apparently the rest of the world just can’t believe that the US can’t take care of this.  I think the citizens of this country believe the same thing.  They have abandoned airlifts out of hospitals because of snipers.  While it is horrible and unbelievable that citizens have become snipers, these are national guard troops.  Aren’t National Guard troops trained to deal with landing helicopters amid gunfire?  Aren’t they trained to go into war?  Because make no mistake, this is war.  They need to stop saying, “Help is coming” and start getting those people out of there, one at a time if necessary.  We need to start picking people up helicopter by helicopter, busload by busload.  If we have to get every school bus in the country out there and make them pick up people, then hell, let’s do it.  I don’t understand how we can’t get this done!  Apparently there are a bunch of people trapped on a pier near New Orleans and there is a ferry waiting to take them to safety but no captain.  No captain!  Find someone who can drive a boat and get them!  This is ridiculous and sadly comes down to racism and classism.  Our leaders do not care because it is poor black people that are stranded.  If this were white people screaming for help, they’d all have been gotten to safety by now, snipers and flood waters be damned.  Because that’s the horrible racial divide that exists in this country.  I am disgusted by the fact that is becoming all too clear now:  these people are going to be abandoned.  Many more of them are going to die because they are poor and black and our president does not give a shit.  And this is the sad, awful, horrible truth.

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Comments

Travis

2005-09-02T21:06:03.000Z

As much of a retard as W. is (no offense to retards), you would think that he could have at least learned from his daddy’s mistake.  Bush Sr. was criticized heavily for his slow response to hurricane damage in Florida, and some analysts have stated that this may have been a part of his loss to Clinton.  I guess since W. doesn’t have an election any time real soon, hey, no worries!