Disaster: Warnings and Pleas Unheeded

Updated 9/20/05— I have spent the past five years of my life cataloging the Bush Administration's many outrageous actions. I have watched them steal an election, dismantle environmental protections, drive the country into an economic ditch, invade a sovereign country, and alienate essentially the entire world. I truly thought there was nothing else they could do that could shock me.

And then Hurricane Katrina struck.

As the full horror of what happened in the city of New Orleans is being revealed and we've begun to learn just what role the Federal Emergency Management Agency played in the nightmare, there have been calls by some (mostly Republicans) to stop "the blame game" and fingerpointing.  Well I say bullshit. We need to call what we all have witnessed in the city of New Orleans what it is:

Criminal negligence on the part of the Bush Administration.

The actions of the administration from start to finish have been nothing short of obscene. It started with the deliberate gutting of the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, continued with the installation of wholly unqualified administrators to that shell of an agency, and climaxed with the utter incompetence of the federal response to the needs of the people of the Gulf Coast. Add in the fact that almost 50% of the National Guard members of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are half way around the world fighting an unnecessary war, and you have a screwup of historic proportions. Actually, a certain military slang term comes to mind. It starts with "cluster", and this is probably history's most appropriate application of that epithet.

We will never truly know how many died because Katrina's winds and storm surge tore through their communities, damaging or obliterating everything in its path, compared with the number who died in the storm's aftermath because of the lack of a doctor, or lack of a rescuer, or lack of life-sustaining food and water.

Republican operative Grover Norguist once stated his desire "to get [the federal government] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” George W. Bush has followed this philosophy, and we can see the concrete results in action down in New Orleans.

Katrina has been one of the greatest tragedies our country has ever seen. Leave it to George W. Bush to make it even worse.

God help our country.

— Kirsten Selberg, Editor
____________________

Articles:

The Lost City
What Went Wrong: Devastating a swath of the South, Katrina plunged New Orleans into agony. The story of a storm and a disastrously slow rescue.
Newsweek, September 12, 2005 - MSNBC.com

How Bush Blew It
Newsweek, September 19, 2005 - MSNBC.com

Katrina Timeline - CNN.com

Organizations:
The American Red Cross - RedCross.org
Mercy Corps - MercyCorps.org
Habitat for Humanity - Habitat.org
Animal Welfare Rescue Groups - PetFinder.org

Downloadable Do You Know Flyer — Version 2.0

Updated 10/18/04 — Now you can pass around some of the items that you'll find here on the Do You Know website, by using our newly-updated downloadable, printable flyer. It's a .pdf file that should print easily from just about anyone's computer. Need Adobe Acrobat Reader? Get it here. Spread the word!

Download DoYouKnow Flyer v2.0 (PDF)

Special Report: Afghanistan: The Forgotten War

Added 7/15/04 — Almost three years after our troops entered Afghanistan to capture Osama Bin Laden, life for most Afghans — especially women — is far from being the rosy picture painted by George W. Bush. Read the report...