wayne madsen reviews "an alliance against babylon" by john k. cooley

September 26, 2005 -- Must read, An Alliance Against Babylon, by John K. Cooley, (University of Michigan Press). Longtime ABC News Middle East correspondent John Cooley, who is unmatched in his understanding of the historical, political, and religious currents of the Middle East and the Muslim world, has written an important expose of what really lies behind the Bush administration's disastrous invasion of Iraq. Cooley's previous two books, Payback: America's Long War in the Middle East and Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism broke though the din of disinformation that permeates America's publishing world. In fact, during the 1990s, the CIA, under its two proto-neocon directors, James Woolsey and John Deutch, unsuccessfully tried to prevent publication of Unholy Wars because of its exposure of the CIA's role in nurturing Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the Mujaheddin war against the Soviet Union.

Cooley has had a unique view of the Middle East during his long and distinguished career. That comes from the personal relationships he had with the Middle East's most notable leaders: Ben Gurion, Anwar Sadat, King Hussein, Hafez Al Assad, Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani,

Cooley presents the current American and British occupation of Iraq in a historical context -- and a very old one at that. He explains Israel's long affinity for the land once known as Babylon. Jews had lived for 70 years in Babylon during the Biblical era "Babylonian Captivity." A number of Jews decided not to return to Palestine following the captivity, choosing to live in Mesopotamia as a minority community, which flourished during the Abbasid Caliphate. Jews in Mesopotamia were even permitted to establish an autonomous government under a government called the exilarch. The exilarch was said to be headed by a hereditary direct descendant of the Israeli King David, who reigned 1000 years before Christ.

Before World War I, Cooley writes that Mesopotamia attracted the interest of European Zionists, including the General Jewish Colonization Association that interceded with the Turks to permit the mass migration of Jews from Europe to Ottoman-ruled Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, and Eastern Anatolia. Cooley describes the British ambassador in Istanbul reporting to London that the Zionist group wanted to establish "an autonomous Jewish state in Mesopotamia." Cooley's in depth research into the roots of modern Zionism helps explain why their ideological descendants in the George W. Bush and Tony Blair governments were keen to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and create a "new Iraq" (the proposed flag for which, since scrapped, strongly resembled the flag of Israel).



An Alliance Against Babylon by John K. Cooley: Exposes the true intentions of those who engineered the war against Iraq

Cooley also points out the chief post-World War II instigators of the bad blood that developed between Iraq's Hashemite monarchy and the newly-independent Jewish state in Palestine were Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri as Said and Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Iraq's thriving Jewish community were uprooted to Israel as a result of Mossad's first two major external operations, code named Ezra and Nehemiah. Another secret plan, Operation Babylon, extracted additional Jews from Iraq to pre-independence Palestine. The Hashemite kingdom only permitted Iraq's Jews to leave after they turned over all their cash and assets. When Iraq's Jews arrived in Israel, they were penniless wards of the fledgling state.

Cooley also recounts the experiences of an Iraqi-born Jew and ex Mossad agent in Iraq named Naiem Giladi. Upset at the treatment Jewish immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries received from European settlers, Giladi later described that terrorism and violence directed against Jews in Iraq in 1950 and 1951 was fomented by Mossad agents in order to speed up the emigration of Jews to Israel. Giladi reported that Iraqi Jewish synagogues and other property in Baghdad and other cities were bombed by Mossad agents but blamed on the Iraqi government. Ben Gurion covered up the entire operation.

Cooley points out that the disinformation used against Iraq by the Ben Gurion government in the 1950s would later creep into the neoconservative doctrine that Iraq represented a major military threat to Israel (and later, to the United States and Britain). In 1973, Israeli Air Force General Ezer Weizman (a later President of Israel) said that his wish was that "Israel had bases on the Euphrates." The whole Iraqi WMD contrivance and the use of the neo-con operative Ahmad Chalabi and his truckload of false intelligence used to justify an attack on Iraq was a continuation of the years of false propaganda about Iraq.

As early as 1993, the neo-con apparatus in Washington, DC was fueling the notion that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Proto-neo-cons in the Clinton administration, like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, did nothing to counter the disinformation about Iraq. By the time the arch neo-cons took power in 2001, the stage was set for a fateful confrontation with Iraq and a resulting bloody quagmire for the United States in the heart of the Middle East. The Knesset's Defense and Intelligence Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz held hearings on the faulty intelligence about Iraq. Although the final report is secret, Cooley recounts that one committee member told him that the report contained damning proof of the systematic exchange of false intelligence about Iraq between the Israeli and U.S. intelligence communities.

Israel continued to be active in Iraq's internal affairs throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The Mossad, in cooperation with the Shah of Iran's intelligence service SAVAK, helped establish a Kurdish intelligence service called PARASTIN. The support network for the Kurds continued up until 1975 when during a March 6 meeting between Saddam Hussein and the Shah met at an OPEC conference in Algiers. Cooley recounts what one senior Kurdish leader told him about Saddam and the Shah, "they dumped the Kurds into shit."

Cooley reminds us of how a young Saddam Hussein received support from the CIA in his attempt in October 1959 to assassinate Iraqi President Adel Karim Kassem. After Saddam was given exile in Cairo by President Nasser, Saddam was a frequent visitor to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo where he was protected by the CIA's top Middle East covert operator, James Critchfield. The CIA wanted Kassem out because he was a populist who wanted to use Iraq's oil revenues to build public housing for the poor. Kassem's main allies were the Iraqi Communists. Nasser, who despised the Communists because they were rivals of Nasser's own brand of pan-Arab nationalism, eagerly supported the 1963 Baathist Socialist coup against Kassem. During the coup, a secret CIA transmitter in Kuwait broadcast the names of Iraqi Communists. After the success of the coup, the Communists were rounded up, tortured, and executed. The CIA-engineered Baathist coup helped propel Saddam into power -- he became President in 1979 and was considered the best person to lead Iraq for U.S., British, and French oil companies: a leader nurtured by the CIA who was now in charge and in a position to reward his old friends with lucrative contracts.

This and other first hand knowledge gems of American Middle East hypocrisy, which are found in An Alliance Against Babylon should put this book at the forefront of every academic and personal reading bookshelf. No one, not even careerists in the CIA and State Department, has the unique insights of the Middle East that John Cooley has gathered after a career of covering every major event that has transpired throughout this critical region. The fact that the U.S. corporate media has instituted a virtual blockade on reviews of this book and other coverage of its contents means it contains information the Bush administration and its allies in the Middle East do not want you to read.

congresswoman cynthia mckinney was the only member of congress to address dc anti-war demonstrators--wayne madsen

congresswoman cynthia mckinney addresses demonstrators @ dc anti war protest 

"September 24, 2005 -- Anti-war protest in Washington, DC today. Very few Democratic members of Congress to appear. Reason: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to Democratic insiders on Capitol Hill, put out the word that any member of Congress who appeared at the protest, where some speakers were to represent pro-Palestinian views, would face the political wrath of AIPAC. According to Democratic sources on the Hill, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was the chief conveyor of the AIPAC warning to his colleagues. At the time of this report, three members of Congress were to address the anti-war protestors: Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), John Conyers (D-MI), and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). The word is that AIPAC will direct its massive campaign support to Woolsey's neo-con and pro-Iraq war primary challenger, California State Assemblyman Joe Nation, who has strong connections to the Rand Corporation, one of the Pentagon's chief war-making think tanks. Woolsey represents California's Marin and Sonoma counties.

September 26, 2005 Update -- In the end, the antiwar rally apparently only drew only one member of Congress as speaker: Georgia Democratic Representative Cynthia ." --wayne madsen

veterans and families against the iraq war 

cindy sheehan and jesse jackson dc anti-war protests 

dc anti-war protestor 

iraq vets against the war --dc protest 

dc protest "president bush , you killed my son" 

death saluting bush 

dc anti-war protests 

bush fema victims --dc protestor 

dc iraq war protestors 

anti iraq-war protest washington dc  

"war protest in dc draws 300,000" --wayne madsen

September 25, 2005 -- War protest in DC draws crowd of 300,000. In typical fashion, the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police played the Bush-Rove "fuzzy math" game -- cutting the number in half and subtracting 50,000 to come up with a total of 100,000. And in typical fashion, the corporate-contolled media referred to the numbers as being in "the tens of thousands."

"hey , condie , dick , don -- any of you hear somethin' about a hurricane recently ?"

"no dear , haven't heard a thing. jeeze , my feet are killing me . walking in these new shoes really makes my feet hurt ."


"nah , not me george , didn't hear a thing--but man oh man -- my halliburton stock is goin' through the freekin' roof ! i've made a killing these past few weeks! more than enough to pay for the new pacemaker and that aneurysm surgery--maybe even enough left over to finally get that toupee i had my eye on. "


" didn't hear a thing . i was at the ballgame --but don't worry chief , if there was an emergency or somethin' they probably woulda flashed a notice up on the big screen and me an the defense boys woulda seen it--hey georgie, why are we walking ? where's the limo? --another oil change ?" 

feds outsource hurricane katrina victims body disposal to shady independent contractors

*FEMA's d-mort volunteers--private mortuaries who freely give their services and help in the recovery of bodies in disasters are puzzled as to why the feds are hiring private contractors to handle body recovery of hurricane katrina victims, when these volunteers do the job for free.

and as if that weren't enough the company FEMA chose to handle body recovery is connected to SCI the same company that was involved in the huge scandal not to long ago in georgia and florida , of stuffing bunches of bodies in single graves and other shoddy ,shady dubious and crooked practices to save cost and ensure profits --the company is owned by a texas crony of ---you guessed it george w. bush's family---in other words : expect a low "official" death count in new orleans at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars as bodies are secretly disposed of --never counted --never identified...also with the military refusing to allow photographers to take pictures of the bodies being recovered and many of the victims being poor ,perhaps undocumented and unmissed --we may never know the full extent of the loss of life that took place in new orleans from katrina and federal and state governments' criminal neglect.

THIS IS SO WRONG... SO BLATANTLY DIRTY AND UNDERHANDED ...where are the spineless democrats? oh bill clinton is already there doing pro-mos and fund raisers with the head criminal's daddy--








FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals

by Miriam Raftery The Raw Story


September Wednesday 14th 2005 (01h22) :

-http://rawstory.com/news/2005/FEMA_...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned.

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco subsequently inked a contract with the firm after talks between FEMA and the firm broke down.

In other words, FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.

The Menorah Gardens cemetery chain, owned by SCI, desecrated vaults, removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the gruesome remains in woods frequented by wild hogs, investigators discovered in 2001. In one case, a backhoe was used to crack open a vault, remove corpses and make room for more dead bodies.

SCI paid $100 million to settle a lawsuit filed by outraged family members of the deceased.

A secretary at the lawfirm that sued SCI over the Florida cemetery scandals gasped when informed that FEMA had outsourced handling of Katrina victims’ bodies to an SCI subsidiary.

"Oh, good lord!" she said.

Peter Hartmann, general manager of the Menorah Gardens Cemetery chain, was later found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning outside his parents’ home in an apparent suicide.

RAW STORY calls to FEMA were not returned.

Waltrip, chairman of SCI, is a longtime friend of Bush’s father, former President George Herbert Walker Bush. The firm’s political action committee donated $45,000 to George W. Bush’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign.

The company also contributed more than $100,000 for construction of the George H.W. Bush presidential library.

"It is appalling that the Bush administration -- which has already badly bungled its response to hurricane Katrina -- would hire a company with a record of gross mismanagement of mortuary services," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington D.C.-based watchdog group. "I can only imagine that this decision was made because of President Bush’s long-time friendship with the head of SCI, Robert Waltrip."

SCI also owned fifteen funeral homes named as defendants in a lawsuit filed on behalf of family members alleging "macabre mishandling, abuse and desecration of bodies" by Tri-State Crematory in Georgia. The lawsuit accused SCI-owned funeral homes of sending bodies to the unlicensed, unregulated crematorium, where never-incinerated corpses were found piled outdoors and stuffed in sheds in 2000.

Some vaults designed to hold one body each had 67 sets of human remains stuffed inside, investigators discovered. SCI was among the companies ordered to pay settlement fees to family members, a legal source has confirmed to RAW STORY.

Kenyon bills itself as the world’s leading disaster management company. It provided morgue support services following the 9/11 plane crash in Pennsylvania and the Asian tsunami.

As North America’s largest funeral and cemetery company, SCI operates 1,500 mortuaries and cemeteries nationwide.

The company’s website claims the firm is dedicated to "compassionately supporting families at difficult times, celebrating the significance of lives that have been lived, and preserving memories that transcend generations, with dignity and honor."

SCI was also involved in an earlier scandal in Texas. Eliza May, former Texas Funeral Service Commission Director, filed a lawsuit accusing George W. Bush, then Governor, of obstructing an investigation into SCI license violations. May was fired following a dispute with Waltrip.

Waltrip and an SCI lobbyist met with Governor Bush’s chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh (Allbaugh was later appointed head of FEMA after Bush became President, but left to become a lobbyist representing Halliburton, among other corporate clients).

According to Newsweek, Bush stopped by and said to Waltrip, "Hey, Bobby, are those people still messing with you?"

May, a Democrat, sought to force Bush to testify in the case, but in August 1999, a Texas judge tossed out a subpoena issued by May’s lawyers for Bush to give a deposition. Bush, who was not a defendant, called May’s claims "frivolous" and denied knowing the circumstances of her ouster.

In 1999, when Bush was gearing up to run for the presidency, Texas Governor Rick Perry approved a settlement for May. SCI paid $55,000; the state of Texas shelled out the balance without admitting wrongdoing in May’s termination.

Jennifer Crider, spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), expressed concern over FEMA’s choice of an SCI subsidiary and questioned whether the selection was made through a no-bid process.

"The tragedy in the Gulf States must not be compounded by disrespecting those who have died," Crider told RAW STORY. "It’s critical that government contracts be subjected to scrutiny to ensure that there has been no fraud or abuse of taxpayer money or interest."

Democrats have called for formation of an anti-fraud commission to investigate no-bid contracts awarded in relation to Hurricane Katrina, she added.

Why FEMA chose to outsource mortuary services to a paid contractor is also mystery to Dan Buckner, co-owner of the Gowen-Smith Chapel in the Gulf area. Buckner had planned to serve with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Responses Team, which reportedly told Buckner’s partner, Gary Hicks of Paducah, KY, to expect up to 40,000 deaths from Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Upon learning of Kenyon’s contract, Buckner expressed puzzlement. He told the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, "Volunteers would have gone at no charge."

Clarification: After FEMA began working with Kenyon, they were subsequently contracted by Louisiana Governor Blanco. It was Louisiana that signed a formal contract.

history might not repeat itself-- but it certainly does recycle

*i recently read one account on-line of the devastating 1927 hurricane that said as the storm approached , the last "whites only" evacuation riverboat steamed away to safety only half full with passengers-- to add insult to injury , the band on board played the song "bye bye blackbird" to taunt the blacks left stranded at the docks.






Updated: 2005-09-06 18:34:39
It Is About Race

By William Jelani Cobb, courtesy of AOL Black Voices


"Now it thundered and it lightnin'd, Lord and the wind, wind began to blow Lord there was thousands and thousands of poor people at that time didn't have no place to go."

-- Big Bill Broonzy, Mississippi Blues Musician

Echoes of History



Like Hurricane Katrina, after a Mississippi storm in 1927, nearly a million people fled. Over a thousand perished. The refugees were overwhelmingly black and poor.

The waters came down with a biblical fury and it was -- as it is always -- the poor who were left to confront the catastrophe on her own terms. There had been years of warnings before the floodwaters exploded past the levees. They poured into the low-lying areas, sweeping away housing that had been substandard even before the rains began. Nearly a million people fled. Over a thousand perished. The refugees, overwhelmingly black, overwhelmingly poor were placed in sites that were their own brand of disaster and, unable to leave once they entered, they began comparing the structures to prisons. And the terrible truth beneath this all was that this occurred precisely as it was supposed to: Water follows the path of least resistance.

These events went down not in Louisiana in the past week, but in Mississippi in 1927. Swollen by heavy rains, the river began bursting through levees, built despite protests, that they would only amplify the water's destructive capacity -- between Illinois and the Gulf. The Republican official in charge, Herbert Hoover in this case -- took a virtually hands-off approach and the Red Cross refugee sites became models of Southern race relations with blacks being forced to do laundry for the National Guardsmen and literally leased out to help rebuild the flooded plantations of the Delta. The levees were repaired, though; as soon as the waters receded enough for black men to be gathered at gunpoint and forced onto labor gangs. (One black man refused to join the gang and was killed by a policeman.)



There been echoes of bad history in the aftermath of Katrina. The past has come back upon us like bad food in the gut. Prior to Monday, anyone who argued that the country would essentially carry on business as usual while a major American city sank into the Gulf of Mexico would have been dismissed as part of the lunatic fringe. But this is one of those cases where it takes a broken clock to check the time.

Rapper Kanye West upset the air of charity and concilliation on a nationally televised telethon when he jumped script and ad libbed, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." And even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came out in strong defense of her boss over the weekend, outruling all charges of racism, certain inarguable facts remain.

You already got a clue that the storm winds of racism were blowing when the press images of blacks who 'looted' stores were placed alongside those of whites who 'found' bread and soda. In 2005, we have been taught to hedge our bets, to speak of racism as one possibility among other feasible explanations for the problems we witness. There will be attempts to disguise this as a problem of logistics or, at the most, the result of faceless bureaucratic neglect that has been corroding American cities for decades. Worse case scenario: this political nonchalance will all be attributed the indefensible armed gangs within the city.

But these are lies.

None of those explanations can explain why there were not press conferences from 46 other governors pledging support for New Orleans. They will not explain why New York City did not send 500 of its 40,000 cops to assist the submerged city. They cannot explain why George W. Bush -- in a cameo of his performance on 9/11 -- did not respond to the disaster as it occurred and arrived on the 5th day of the flood.

In coming days you will be offered spin and staged photo-ops designed to make your heart go sepia with regard for our 'strong leadership.' This is an illusion. Only the river-bloated bodies are real. Filter through the spin and you will meet a brutal truth: there are people who have died and people who are dying in Louisiana because they are black and they are poor. The truth is that neglect is the racial default setting -- which is why those people were left behind in the city literally and metaphorically. The truth is that there was a silent amen exhaled across the country when Dennis Hastert floated the idea of not bothering to rebuild. Sixty-seven percent black; 30 percent of the population below the poverty line: cities like New Orleans are the reason we have red states in the first place.

Or maybe they will rebuild. And in future years we can look to a charming, romantic 2.0 version of the Big Easy, one where the problem population left in 2005 and never quite made it back inside the city.

Herbert Hoover graduated to the Oval Office from his post as Secretary of Commerce after the 1927 flood. As President displayed that same cavalier approach to catastrophe as the Great Depression strangled ordinary citizens and he continued to govern on behalf of the upper percentiles of the economy. The echoes of bad history are, at this point, deafening. This is not Mississippi in 1927. It is America seventy-eight years later. But I swear to God, its getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

About the Author
William Jelani Cobb is an assistant professor of history at Spelman College and editor of 'The Essential Harold Cruse.' He also posts articles at www.jelanicobb.com. You can reach him at creative.ink@jelanicobb.com.

on your watch , dub ..."assets were deployed, but the order to use them never came"

Mortuary Director Tells Local Paper 40,000 Could Be Lost in Hurricane

By E&P Staff

Published: September 06, 2005 9:30 PM ET

NEW YORK In a profoundly troubling article in the Shelbyville (Tenn.) Times-Gazette today by Clint Confehr, a co-owner of a local mortuary revealed that he had been asked to join in recovering bodies lost in the Gulf Coast hurricane and had been told "to expect up to 40,000 bodies" in total.

Dan Hicks is co-owner of Shelbyville-based Gowen-Smith Chapel and has been deployed to Gulfport, Miss., to help with recovery. His partner, Dan Buckner, told the paper, "DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), a volunteer arm of Homeland Security.

Their funeral home is one of several collection sites for donations to be taken to the Red Cross in Fayetteville on Wednesday for transfer to places in need.

The 40,000 estimate does "not include the number of disinterred remains that have been displaced from ... mausoleums," Buckner grimly told the Times-Gazette Monday.

"Until they search each and every remaining house and remove all the fallen materials ... they will not know how many people are there," Buckner said. "The National Association of Funeral Directors and Embalmers will be making assignments to coordinate with local officials ... [for] preparation of bodies," he said. "They'll probably establish a mortuary there where bodies can be taken so forensics can identify bodies and families can decide what they want to do.

"My personal opinion is they will be recovering bodies for 30 ... to 120 days," Buckner said.



FINALLY the american media--long the lapdogs of the bush administration realize they have to ask some non-softball questions or lose ALL credibility.

taken from a Q&A session with whitehouse spokesperson scott mcclellan

http:// www.editorandpublisher.co...t_id=1001055403

White House Press Briefing: Angry Reporters Hit McClellan Hard on Hurricane, Ask if Heads Will Roll

"Q But, Scott, more concretely, an officer of the Northern Command is quoted as saying that as early as the time Hurricane Katrina went through Florida and worked its way up to the Gulf, there was a massive military response ready to go, but that the President did not order it. It could have been ordered on Sunday, on Monday, on Tuesday -- the call didn't come. Why not?

MR. McCLELLAN: Bill, let's point out a couple of things. There were a lot of assets that were deployed and pre-positioned prior to the hurricane hitting. And you have to look back --

Q These assets were deployed, but the order to use them never came. The Bataan was sitting off behind the hurricane.

MR. McCLELLAN: I know these are all facts that you want to look at and want to determine what went wrong and what went right. I'm not prepared to agree with your assessment just there. There is a much larger picture here that we have to take a look at, and --

Q It's not mine, it's an officer in the Northern Command.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- in terms of the President, the President issued disaster declarations ahead of time so that we could make sure we're fully mobilizing resources and pre-positioning them. But this was a hurricane of unprecedented magnitude.

Q Right, but the military can't go into action without his order."

what ???

"Here's what I believe. I believe that the great city of New Orleans will rise again and be a greater city of New Orleans. (Applause.) I believe the town where I used to come from, Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself -- occasionally too much -- (laughter) -- will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to. That's what I believe."
-- George W. Bush

failed again...

under the bush administration the enviornmental protection agency reversed the previous wetlands protection policy and allowed developers to fill in and build on the mississippi delta wetlands that had served as a natural protection against the flooding we see in new orleans today as a result of hurricane katrina .

the bush administration despite evidence of melting arctic ice caps and increasing ocean temperatures from global warming refuses to pull its head from the sand and sticks to its tired mantra that global warming --and the much more powerful storms--like katrina-- which were predicted to be global warming's result --are all unconnected events .

the bush administration emasculated fema by appointing to head the agency first one bush-crony with no disaster management experience ,followed by another appointee equally inexperienced.

fema was reduced to an appendage of the department of homeland security and its emphasis switched over from preparing for and managing national emergencies and natural disasters , to fighting the war on terror.

it is believed that the bush administration's view is that the federal government should get out of the disaster management business and eventually privatize fema's functions. (more lucrative government contracts for the likes of kellog ,brown and root/halliburton crew of treasury-looters no doubt)

35 percent of the louisiana national guard ,the state's first line of defense against the aftermath of hurricanes and flooding are in iraq --along with the equipment and vehicles they used at home for flood rescue and flood relief work .

it has been reported that earlier this year members of the louisiana national guard requested that their vehicles and equipment be sent home where they would be needed for hurricane season --the pentagon turned the request down.

the $250 million congress had approved over the years for the army corps of engineers to improve and fortify the levees and pumping stations in the new orleans/ mississippi delta area and upgrade them to withstand the effects of a category 5 hurricane was siphoned off by the bush administration for the war in iraq and the war on terror .

$70 million was slashed by bush just this year from new orleans area army corps of engineers--a cut of more than 40% of the previous year's budget along with an 80% slash in funding to prevent flooding for the lake pontchitrain area--these funds also rerouted to the iraq war-- as i understand it , it was this levee near lake pontchitrain that broke and along with another burst levee , caused a major portion of the flooding in new orleans AFTER katrina had passed through the city.

and then while the situation spiraled downwards and chaos errupted --despite the mayor's declaration of martial law --the state and federal government seemed confusedly inactive as more people suffered and died in the considerable lag time between the disaster and the RESPONSE to the disaster.

meanwhile , george w. bush vacationed on his ranch in texas just nextdoor to the catastrophe --apparently hiding from an angry cindy sheehan wanting answers concerning why her son had to die in iraq .

later dubya turned up in a photo-op in san diego where he strummed a guitar --generating inumerable blogger comparisons to emperor nero of antiquity fiddling while rome burned .

existing protocols aside between mayors , governors and presidents for the handling of these emergencies , 'dub' could have, as commander in chief--the 'leader' of the nation , realizing the magnitude of the hurricane approaching the gulf region, wisely stepped in immediately and begun coordinating efforts well before the hurricane arrived --i left the deep south the night before katrina hit new orleans--the tv news and weather channel both warned non-stop around the clock that katrina had gained enough additional power in the gulf waters after passing through florida to threaten the region with huge and catastrophic amounts of destruction and loss of life .

if cnn and the weather channel knew a disaster was imminent the president should have had the common sense to know that the region was facing a catastrophe larger than the individual states could handle on their own .

common sense should have given bush the foresight to realize that the gulf states and especially states like mississippi --one of --if not THE poorest state in the nation would not have the resources to deal effectively with a huge disaster--especially with more than one third of the states' front line defense--their national guard units and equipment foolishly sent to iraq .

during katrina's approach and in her destructive aftermath --just as he did on 9-11-01 --when told to his face that america was under attack --bush
did NOTHING--and people died needlessly as a result.

george bush's own words uttered ridiculously on the campaign trail now later return to indict his inactivity and damn his indecisive performance as commander in chief during this recent katrina crisis--a crisis that struck millions of citizens. "a president has got to 'president' his nation" --george w. bush

mr. bush , once again you did not 'president' .