War Is A Crime .org

Published on Sunday, September 4, 2005 by the Toronto Sun
By Eric Margolis

The most important news from Iraq last week was not the much ballyhooed constitutional pact by Shias and Kurds, nor the tragic stampede deaths of nearly 1,000 pilgrims in Baghdad.

The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime "more or less indefinitely." Jumper's bombshell went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina.

Gen. Jumper let the cat out of the bag. While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection.

The Age
September 4, 2005 - 5:49AM

Venezuela has uncovered plans for a US-led invasion and is preparing to defend the country against invading forces if necessary, President Hugo Chavez said in a report carried by the state-run news agency.

The Bolivarian News Agency reported that Chavez made the comments during an interview with CNN. It was unclear when the interview was to be aired.

"If it occurs to the United States to invade our country - Fidel Castro said it and I agree - a war will start here to last 100 years," Chavez was quoted as saying. "Not only this country would be burned up, but a good part of this continent; they shouldn't make any mistake about it, we are preparing to repel an invasion."

Week of chaos leaves administration reeling
By Todd S. Purdum / New York Times News Service
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo

President Bush waves after delivering his weekly radio address from the Rose Garden of the White House Saturday in Washington. In a rare live radio address, Bush, seeking to stem criticism that a slow federal response has contributed to needless misery, said he is ordering additional active duty forces to the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast region.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo

WASHINGTON -- Perhaps not since Richard M. Nixon faced Vietnam-era tumult abroad and at home has an American president had to meet quite the combination of foreign war, domestic tribulations and political division that President Bush now confronts, from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf Coast to Capitol Hill.

"This is a storm of enormous magnitude," Bush told relief workers at the disaster operations center of the Red Cross here on Sunday morning. He was referring to Hurricane Katrina, of course, but his words could also apply to the enduring insurgency in Iraq and the looming battles over the first double vacancy on the Supreme Court since Nixon nominated William H. Rehnquist to the Supreme Court 34 years ago.

9/5/2005 11:48:00 AM GMT
The claims of bringing stability to Iraq are just absurd
By: Kevin Zeese

Just as President Bush claimed in the build-up to war that the U.S. was threatened by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's connection to Osama bin Laden and 9/11 plotters– we are now being told a new falsehood – U.S. troops are in Iraq to stabilize the country. Even the slightest scratching of the reality surface shows the absurdity of this wartime propaganda.

Last Update: Friday, September 2, 2005. 11:29am (AEST)
Italy continues troop withdrawal from Iraq
Defence Minister Antonio Martino says Italy will continue to reduce the number of its troops deployed to southern Iraq with new departures expected soon.

Mr Martino says "There has already been a first withdrawal of 300 men and it is expected that very soon we will proceed with a new reduction" in forces.

The Defence Minister did not give a precise date nor the size of the next troop withdrawal but adds that "the recomposition of the Italian contingent has already begun".

In June 2003 the Italian Government sent some 3,000 soldiers to Iraq.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

--The two week old baby had not had any milk for almost 5 days when this picture was taken.--

We let citizens down, admits President

Bring Them Home Now Tour Report #1
by Crawford Peace House [Subscribe]
Sun Sep 4th, 2005 at 19:44:55 PDT
This report comes from Lisa Fithian who is part of the tour that left Crawford on Wednesday:

Dear Allies and Organizers,

The Bring Them Home Now Tour is on its fifth day of the journey from Camp Casey, Crawford, TX to Washington DC. Here is a quick summary of the events on each route as of Sept 3...

New Orleans=Iraq=Worst President Ever
by jetfan [Subscribe]
Sun Sep 4th, 2005 at 19:12:13 PDT

The Pat Buchanan isolationists just got a 145 mph wind at their sails by the name of Katrina. A slew of paleoconservatives and Republican moderates who probably voted for Bush, gave him the benefit of doubt, but never were strong supporters of his Iraq gambit will be dusting off their "we need to take care of people here at home" rationale and joining the already majority anti-war movement.

Expect to see the bottom fall out of Iraq support. Expect even new lows for the next Bush approval polls.

Special Prosecutor to Investigate Criminal Negligence
Submitted by Mary Jeswald (not verified) on Sun, 2005-09-04 19:10.

(Editor's note: This letter was posted on an earlier thread.)

Here is the letter that I am sending to my congressional representatives:

Dear Senators Santorum and Specter and Representative Hart:

After watching the Weather Channel repeatedly warn of the approach of Hurricane Katrina, I was shocked after the storm hit to read in the news that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson on Sunday, August 28, 2005 had called Louisiana Governor Blanco to offer to send National Guard troops from New Mexico to assist the State of Louisiana. On Thursday, September 1, 2005, permission from Washington was finally given.

Presidential visit to disaster area was faked media hype
President of Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard, says he still doesn't have the resources needed to save the lives in his Parish.

At the end of this interview on Meet the Press, Broussard tells a heart wrenching story of a co-worker's mother that was trapped in a nursing home. She called four days in a row for help but help never came. Broussard breaks into tears as he explains that the cavalry never came and she died by drowning.

Folks, people are still trapped. People still don't have food and water. President Bush has staged some photo-ops to make it look like the Calvary had arrived and everything was under control.

Sponsor The Veterans For Peace Bus in Covington, LA
[VFP Road Trips Bus, Fresh From Camp Casey, Has Set Up Aid Station In Covington LA To Disaster Relief To Those In Need]

The Pine View Middle School
1115 West 28th Street Covington, LA. [You Can Mail Supplies Via UPS to this Address; care of VFP]

We are using the school to support Veterans For Peace hurricane relief efforts from Covington, LA.

This petition is to the US government to open closed military bases to house the Hurricane victims- please sign and pass on

http://www.petitiononline.com/10000008/petition.html

paypal donation to Chapter 116

From TomDispatch

I officially closed down for the Labor Day Weekend, but the Bush administration's response to Katrina was simply too much for me. So I've written today a summary piece, especially emphasizing the way in which Iraq has proved a grim coming attraction for Katrina's aftermath: "At the Front of Nowhere at All: The Perfect Storm and the Feral City."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=19806

New Orleans is, of course, the "feral city" that thirty years of sci fi movies and post-apocalyptic novels (think: Escape from New York) have brought to our consciousness. It is clearly a defining event of our moment, possibly our lives, and it has swept up all Bush policies -- every way in which they have tried to "starve the beast" -- into a perfect toxic storm.

By Stephen Elliott
Salon.com

Louisiana black leaders, along with Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson, want to take Katrina victims to a shuttered Air Force base instead of shelters. And I'm going with them.

Baton Rouge, LA - I got on a bus with California Rep. Maxine Waters Saturday afternoon, not sure where we were going, just knowing we were headed to New Orleans to pick up Hurricane Katrina victims. Even as television news is showing pictures of people being rescued by military helicopters and chartered buses, local and national black leaders are seething at the mismanaged evacuation, as well as the haphazard way even the rescued people are being handled. So they've come up with their own plan: to load the remaining residents on buses they've chartered and bring them to England Air Force Base, a shuttered military installation in Alexandria, La.

As in Iraq, so in Louisiana:
LINK

By Starhawk

When Katrina hit, I was at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, where I had gone to support Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother who encamped outside of Bush’s ranch to demand a meeting so she could ask him one simple question, “What noble cause did my son die for?

Published on 9/4/2005

Letters To The Editor:
Cindy Sheehan, the mother protesting the Iraq War on the President's doorstep, is a bit disingenuous. She says she wants to know what noble cause her son died for, but the answer to that question becomes ever more painfully clear.

Her son died because our current president could never measure up in his father's eyes. A poor scholar, an absent soldier and a failed businessman, he had to impress Dad in a big way, a really big way.

That's why from the beginning of his first term, long before Sept. 11, 2001, he had his sights set on Iraq. He wanted to win the war that Daddy muffed. The war wasn't about spreading democracy because there are much better ways to do that. It wasn't about thwarting terrorism because it is creating new terrorists daily. It was and still is about ego.

Is that a noble cause? Apparently the Bush twins don't think so and neither do I. Ms. Sheehan, tell it like it is, even though it's way too painful for 1,870 mothers to bear. Otherwise, there is no end in sight.

Terri Roper
Mystic

LINK TO ORIGINAL

LINK TO PHOTO AT PUTFILE.COM

This picture of President Bush's meeting with a victim of Hurricane Katrina supports Cindy Sheehan's recollections of her first (and only) meeting with President Bush.

Cindy described her meeting with him this way:

"After Casey's death, Cindy Sheehan was invited to the White House for a visit with Mr. Bush in June of 2004. Her first memory of Bush's appearance that day was when he walked into the room and said in a loud, bluff voice, "Who we'all honorin' today?"

ZMag.org
September 03, 2005
By Michael Parenti

The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with advanced warning that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market.

They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just as the free market dictates…

On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives had been lost in New Orleans. Many people had "refused" to evacuate, media reporters explained, because they were just plain "stubborn."

TIME, July 10, 2000

The Pulse Of America

The Big Easy On the Brink

If it doesn't act fast, the city could become the next Atlantis

By ADAM COHEN

If a flood of Biblical proportions were to lay waste to New Orleans, Joe Suhayda has a good idea how it would happen. A Category 5 hurricane would come barreling out of the Gulf of Mexico. It would cause Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, to overflow, pouring down millions of gallons of water on the city. Then things would really get ugly. Evacuation routes would be blocked. Buildings would collapse. Chemicals and hazardous waste would dissolve, turning the floodwaters into a lethal soup. In the end, what was left of the city might not be worth saving. "There's concern it would essentially destroy New Orleans," says Suhayda.

By: Art Cribbs
Date: September 3, 2005
Source: The writer himself.

"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
- Jesus Christ, quoted in John 8:32 of the Bible (New Revised Standard
Version).

Do we know the truth? Are we free? Perhaps not.

All-too-frequently President George W. Bush lies, and all-too-often the media
broadcast his every word without question or criticism. For instance, he lied
about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He can parse it any way he likes,
but his casus belli was still a lie. Then he covered his lies with more lies
about how "regime change" would bring liberation and democracy to Iraq. Two

LINK

And Bush Photo Ops Delaying Real Aid Efforts:
LINK

PRESS RELEASE FROM SENATOR LANDRIEU:

Landrieu Implores President to "Relieve Unmitigated Suffering;" End FEMA's "Abject Failures"

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., issued the following statement this afternoon regarding her call yesterday for President Bush to appoint a cabinet-level official to oversee Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery efforts within 24 hours.

Published on Saturday, September 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Ralph Nader

For over two years I have been saying that the Mayor of Baghdad, George W. Bush, should be paying attention to America, including its massively unmet public works needs. But the President, who scheduled five weeks in Crawford, Texas, to assure "a balanced life," is now finding his political status unbalanced and hanging by fewer and fewer threads.

The unfolding megadisasters in New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama have torn the propaganda curtain away from this arrogant President and is showing the American people just what results for their daily livelihoods from an administration obsessed with the fabricated Iraq war and marinated with Big Oil.

300 U.S. airmen return home from Iraq and Afghanistan
9/3/2005 8:00:00 PM GMT
Aljezeera.com

The airmen have already begun redeploying (from Iraq and Afghanistan.)

alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">

Image created by highacidity on Sat Sep 3rd, 2005 at 23:55:56 PDT at the Daily Kos. LINK TO ORIGINAL PHOTO AND DIARY

Truth is stranger than fiction. Thanks to jpgod for the heads-up here.

Link to CSPAN video of briefing here. Sorry, I did not keep track of the time this quote occurs, but it is somewhere around halfway through, when they are taking questions.

If I Screamed It, Would You Hear Me?
From our own Christy Cole:

Not too long ago I wrote an article entitled 'Preaching to the Choir.' in which I discussed the political abandonment of the deep south. When I wrote it, I was blissfully unaware of exactly how right I was. Or how it would bring death so close in plentiful amounts.

As a resident of Louisiana I would like to tell you about what you have lost. I would like you to see it, as I saw it.

New Orleans. Or, as they say if you’re from here, "Nuuuw 'Awwwlins'. So famous, most think her our capital city. Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana, but New Orleans was our crown jewel. World wide she was known for her parties, her history, her engineering feats, her defiance of nature itself. And on top of it all was a culture unlike any place on earth. A place where history is beloved and alive.

Survivors' fury at relief efforts

By Adam Harvey in Louisiana
September 04, 2005

ARMED soldiers were jeered and sworn at as they delivered the first supplies of food and water to desperate survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans yesterday.

Anger boiled over as 7000 National Guards rolled into the devastated city with much needed relief five days after the massive storm hit.
With a Louisiana senator predicting the death toll could hit 10,000, United States President George W. Bush toured the area and admitted the response had been inadequate.

During a land and air tour of hard-hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama - but not downtown New Orleans - President Bush said of the relief effort: "The results are not enough".

Sunday, September 4, 2005
Katrina takes a toll on Bush

From L K Sharma DH News Service, Washington:

Hurricane Katrina destroyed the lives and livelihood of thousands of poor Americans and has made President Bush vulnerable.

The natural disaster that wiped out a coastal city and was compared by a few Americans to “Hiroshima

Sunday, September 4, 2005
US South drowns in bitterness

New Orleans, reuters:

Louisiana Gov Kathleen Blanco said engineers and crews rebuilding the levees symbolised the beginning of the end of the nightmare.

The desperately sought arrival of government help was bringing a measure of hope to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans on Saturday but officials warned the city faced a long, difficult climb out of crisis.

After days of waiting that magnified their despair, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina greeted military convoys arriving in the flooded city to confront rampant lawlessness and bring desperately needed food, water and medical care.