Abandoning New Orleans
I don't think I really have the vocabulary for this situation.We just heard a couple of gunshots go off. There's a building smoldering a block away. People are picking through whatever is left in the stores right now. They are walking the streets because they have nowhere else to go.
Right now, I'm a few blocks away from the New Orleans Convention Center area. We drove through there earlier, and it was unbelievable. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people spent the night sleeping on the street, on the sidewalk, on the median.
The convention center is a place that people were told to go to because it would be safe. In fact, it is a scene of anarchy.
There is absolutely nobody in control. There is no National Guard, no police, no information to be had.
The convention center is next to the Mississippi River. Many people who are sleeping there feel that a boat is going to come and get them. Or they think a bus is going to come. But no buses have come. No boats have come. They think water is going come. No water has come. And they have no food.
(CNN)
The B*sh junta keeps claiming that they're supplying aid, but the news from the ground doesn't seem to confirm that. The United States does have a National Guard, and and Army, and one would think that restoring order and providing aid to a demolished city might possibly be part of their job description; the stories of National Guard troops not being allowed into the city because it's in civil disorder seems to indicate that there aren't nearly enough soldiers to do more than be picked off by the mobs. Why aren't 50,000 troops on their way to New Orleans now? Why aren't boats making resupply runs down the Mississippi from Baton Rouge? What is going on here (aside from shoe-shopping and guitar playing by the obviously unconcerned B*sh junta) ?