President Bush has ordered 7,000 active duty troops into New Orleans, including 2,500 from the 82nd Airborne Division in North Carolina, 2,700 from the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas, 2,000 from the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces. "I think you can expect to see the first plane land in New Orleans before sundown today," said Major General Joseph Inge, deputy commander of the US Northern Command. "I would estimate that the main part of the force will close within 72 hours."

Inge said the active duty troops will be used to reinforce National Guard troops that have been sent in to secure the city but will not be used for law enforcement operations. "Their purpose is to contribute to the effort to bring about a more stable environment," Inge said in a video conference from the Northern Command's headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. "They will not take on a law enforcement role nor have they been directed in any way to do so."

September 3, 2005

Don't You Know Me, I'm Your Native Son...

Notes from Inside New Orleans

By JORDAN FLAHERTY

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

From New York Newsday:

Toddler killed by SUV
Girl, 3, pushed in stroller by her mother, is run down by driver entering crowded Harlem gas station

BY MARLENE NAANES AND LUIS PEREZ

September 2, 2005

A 3-year-old girl being pushed along in a stroller in East Harlem was killed yesterday after a sport utility vehicle heading into a busy gas station ran her over, police and witnesses said.

A long line of motorists jammed a BP/Amoco station at East 125th Street and Second Avenue as Iris Gonzalez, 28, and her toddler, Jamie Roman, passed on the sidewalk at about 5:30 p.m., police and a relative said.

The US government has yet to respond to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's offer to send planeloads of aid, including 2,000 soldiers, firefighters, volunteers and other disaster specialists to Louisiana. Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter, also pledged $1 million in Hurricane Katrina relief aid through its state-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp., plus fuel to help in hard-hit areas. (AP, Sept. 1) The company’s CEO Félix Rodríguez said this donation had the full support of the company’s parent organization, the Venezuelan state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), as well as President Chávez. (Venezuelanalysis, Sept. 1)

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina may not be entirely the result of an act of nature. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. The Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated the levees and pumping stations. In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters—after a terrorist attack on New York City (and a San Francisco earthquake). But in 2004, the Bush administration cut the Corps of Engineers' budget request for beefing up the levees that protect the city by more than 80%. By the beginning of this year, additional cuts forced the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate debated adding funds for fixing levees, but it was too late. Last year, the US Army Corps of Engineers proposed a study on how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration nixed the idea.

As looting and gunfire erupt in New Orleans, the authorities are shifting their attention from a humanitarian mission to what is starting to look like counter-insurgency. "They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said of 300 National Guard troops who landed in New Orleans fresh from duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."

In his Aug. 30 speech overwhelmingly focusing on his World War II analogy, Bush did let slip this one telling line at North Island Naval Air Station:

"If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions; they could recruit more terrorists by claiming an historic victory over the United States and our coalition." (White House transcript.)

Cindy Sheehan and her entourage have left Crawford, TX, as Bush ended his vacation a few days early in response to the disaster in New Orleans. She is taking her act on the road with a "Bring Them Home Now Tour" which will culminate in an anti-war march in Washington DC Sept. 24. (AP, Aug. 31)