'My Pet Goat' -- The Sequel

This time, during a catastrophe, the president did not merely dither for seven minutes, but for three days, and his top advisors followed suit. While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall failure of leadership in this weeks hurricane's disaster, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.

By Greg Mitchell

(September 03, 2005) -- While a rising chorus in the press has taken the White House, FEMA and the Pentagon to task for performing miserably in their response to the human disaster on the Gulf Coast, few have focused on the most telling aspect of the entire failure. It’s not just incompetence. It’s a shameful lack of concern: The 9/11 “My Pet Goat” dithering on an administration-wide scale.

Simply stated, the president and his top advisers chose vacation over action.

While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall deadly failure of leadership, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.

President Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said: “In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.” But Bush, and his top aides, quite frankly, did just that.

I was reminded of this today, seeing pictures of Vice President Dick Cheney finally showing up at the White House after riding out the storm-of-the-century in Wyoming. Perhaps he brought back with him a couple dozen trout to throw on the grill for the White House staffers.

His absence, and the president’s performance during it, can only add to the rumors that Bush is clueless without the Big Guy at his side.

This follows Bush himself remaining on vacation for more than two days after the storm hit, despite acknowledging this was the worst disaster in the nation’s history. He did take a trip during those days, not back to Washington but out to San Diego to deliver a political speech comparing his Iraq war to World War II. It got little play because nearly everyone else in the country, beyond his inner circle, was focused on New Orleans instead.

What that trip did produce was a picture of Bush laughing with a country singer and strumming a guitar. But at least the president did start heading home late Wednesday. As he did, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was still enjoying her vacation in New York.

In fact, that night she enjoyed a few good yucks while attending the goofy Broadway play “Spamalot.” Ironically, the Bush team's performance this week did indeed seem like something out of a Monty Python skit. Each, in his or her own way, took a bunch of "silly walks."

Condi also played tennis with Monica Seles and on Thursday went on a shoe-shopping spree on Fifth Avenue until a fellow customer yelled at her for not doing her job and bloggers exposed all of this. Then she hurriedly headed back to Washington. Whoops, we discovered she was overdue in getting a grip on offers to help that were pouring in from overseas governments and organizations.

Paging Andrew Card: Turns out he was Bush's Maine man.

And what of FEMA chief Michael Brown? He was so out-of-it that he didn’t even know about 10,000 evacuees living and dying at the Convention Center, even after they had received wide TV coverage for a solid day.

The next day, the president greeted him with, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." A medal is surely on the way.

At a press conference on Thursday, the fourth day of the disaster, with newspapers and TV reporting tens of thousands stranded at hospitals, homes and a highway overpass, Homeland Security chief Michael Cherotff was asked by a reporter if he thought only hundreds or maybe many more needed rescued. He replied:

“I'd be guessing. I mean, a thousand seems like a very large number, but we have already rescued several thousand. Hopefully, most people have gotten themselves onto roofs and have been picked up. But, as I said, rather than give you a guesstimate, I can tell you that as long as there is someone on a roof waving a flag, we're going to be sending a helicopter out there to get them.”

At the same press briefing, Cherotff was asked if he thought there were enough soldiers on the ground to control the situation. His answer: “I'm satisfied that we have not only more than enough forces there and on the way. And frankly, what we're doing is we are putting probably more than we need in order to send an unambiguous message that we will not tolerate lawlessness or violence or interference with the evacuation.”

While the 9/11 “My Pet Goat” episode was certainly illuminating, it’s not certain what might have worked out better that day had the president dropped the book and taken action. But his failure to grab the reins in the hurricane catastrophe for three days this week probably doomed hundreds, or more, to death.

This is not mere incompetence, but dereliction of duty. The press should call it by its proper name.

Who Could Have known?

Once again, Maureen Dowd sums up what's gotten under my skin:

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war?
Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

Who indeed?

Falluja Floods the Superdome

By FRANK RICH

AS the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.

As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.

After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens"), he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."

This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda. Everything connects.

Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.

The president's declaration that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of "Stuff happens" for a coup de grâce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush's visit on "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a postinterview conversation in which he said, "There won't have to be tax increases."

But on a second go-round, even the right isn't so easily fooled by this drill (with the reliable exception of Peggy Noonan, who found much reassurance in Mr. Bush's initial autopilot statement about the hurricane, with its laundry list of tarps and blankets). This time the fecklessness and deceit were all too familiar. They couldn't be obliterated by a bullhorn or by the inspiring initial post-9/11 national unity that bolstered the president until he betrayed it. This time the heartlessness beneath the surface of his actions was more pronounced.

You could almost see Mr. Bush's political base starting to crumble at its very epicenter, Fox News, by Thursday night. Even there it was impossible to ignore that the administration was no more successful at securing New Orleans than it had been at pacifying Falluja.

A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone." Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn't have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown.

In that sense, the inequality of the suffering has not only exposed the sham of the relentless photo-ops with black schoolchildren whom the president trots out at campaign time to sell his "compassionate conservatism"; it has also positioned Katrina before a rapt late-summer audience as a replay of the sinking of the Titanic. New Orleans's first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself.

THE captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water" - even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day. This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer.

On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped "people don't play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won't be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he'll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won't Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry.

But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.

Most of all, we're going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time.

The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.

Global Warming

Ching Mai Airport, Singapore -- My one-month trip to Asia began with the floods that devastated Bombay, and is ending as New Orleans and the Southeast begin to dig out from their tragedy. But flying over Sumatra this morning, and looking upon swaths of gray where there should have been vibrant green, I was reminded that only a few weeks ago the globe's worst climate crisis was the smoke and pollution from burning fires in Sumatra, which shut down two regions in Malaysia and created a national emergency. The Malaysian government asked mosques to pray for rain and, looking to the

longer term, asked Indonesia to take action against the practice of setting fires to clear land, a practice that, when the weather is drier than expected, produces these enormous smoke storms.

There's an old gospel song that refers back to the promise God makes in the Book of Noah: The next time he afflicts the earth it will be not by flood, but fire. What we don't seem to be able to learn is that, if we continue destabilizing the climate, we will be visited with both flood and fire. The global-warming cynics have tried to distract us with the argument that since we don't know exactly how global-warming pollutants will change the climate, we don't need to act quickly to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate pollutants. They also claim that we would be better off figuring out how to adapt our societies to global warming instead of taking precautionary measures to prevent it.

This is colossally irrational, and the media should be ashamed of itself for taking this line of argument seriously. The successive tragedies of Bombay/Mumbai, Malaysia, and now New Orleans show how thin the climate-variation band is that complex societies can handle. How could the 17 million people of Bombay prepare for 36 inches of rainfall in 24 hours? Well, they could do some things -- not build highways that choke natural river beds, ban plastic bags that clog storm drains (this one they are doing), and protect their mangroves. Good environmental stewardship creates human environments with more of the suppleness of natural systems. Calcutta exists as a port only because it is protected from tsunamis and typhoons by the mangroves of the Sunderbans tidal swamp forest, as the British discovered when they tried to create a blue water port to replace Calcutta at Port Blair.

Yes, Indonesia should crack down on those who burn forests -- another example of environmental stewardship by "adapting" to climatic instability. But if we keep drying the forest out, sooner or later it will burn. And then what should air-traffic controllers in Malaysia do to "prepare" for smoke storms? How should mothers in Kuala Lumpur "smoke-proof" their children's lungs? Government scientists predicted that this summer would be a bad hurricane season -- because more heat than normal is stored in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. What do governors in the hurricane belt do to prepare for storms like Katrina?

The unreality of the "just adapt" theory may be best illustrated by House Speaker Dennis Hastert's suggestion that perhaps the best thing to do with New Orleans is abandon it. Really? That might just be enough to turn Louisiana into a solidly blue state, and it's not a policy option that would be greeted with much enthusiasm in Florida, so I confidently predict that the President will not go along with the Speaker.

As the oil and gas industries constantly remind us, we have to produce the hydrocarbon fuels that are creating global warming in the places where nature stored them -- places like the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico. So now the very industry whose marketing genius produced this crisis is seeing higher prices and spot shortages because of the crisis itself -- even the oil industry needs a predictable climate it turns out. (The increasing shortage of the drilling season in the Arctic, thanks to the melting of the permafrost, may well prevent drilling the Arctic Wildlife Refuge even if the government issues leases, in another ironic example of the oil industry doing itself, as well as the rest of us, in.)

The scale of global warming is simply escaping us -- and the cynics want to encourage us to keep on missing the point. Here's a dramatic, graphic example: NASA's Aqua satellite has captured images that show the heat stored in the surface waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the western Atlantic. That's an almost inconceivable amount of thermal energy, just waiting to be turned into the kinetic energy of a storm. Remember, until it is radiated back into space, that increase in the energy of the climate system is permanent -- it doesn't go away just because Katrina, one of its manifestations, peters out.

Far from being reassuring, the cynic's emphasis on the imprecision of the global climate models is the scariest thing about global warming. It's one thing to prepare a city for a known change in its weather patterns -- more rain or less, warmer summers or cooler ones. But when the climate models tell us that the only thing we can be certain about is that weather in a greenhouse world will be less predictable, less stable, and more subject to extreme events, it makes a complete mockery of the other half of the cynic's argument -- that we can adapt. How does a city simultaneously adapt to some winters being colder and others being warmer? Wouldn't it be more sensible to invest in solar cells and wind turbines? Ross Gelbspan has a good op-ed on this in the Boston Globe. The Orlando Sentinel gets it as well.

Drought and flood, back to back, in India. Hurricanes in Louisiana, drought in the Southwest. India isn't alone. This time will we get it?

Otherwise, we will need to recast that old gospel song-- "Fire and water, both next time, Lord."

Letter To George Bush

From Michael Moore
9-3-5


Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com


P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

What Next?

RS convenes a panel of experts to discuss what went wrong in Iraq

By AMANDA GRISCOM

At the end of 2002, as the Bush administration prepared to invade Iraq, Rolling Stone convened a panel of experts to assess the march to war. Things have since gone far worse than most imagined. There is no evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction -- the rationale used to justify the invasion. The fighting continues to escalate long after Bush declared "mission accomplished," and the White House tried to ignore the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. As the U.S. prepares to hand over control to an interim Iraqi government, we reconvened key members of our panel, along with some new experts, to examine the current situation in Iraq. What went wrong -- and what should we do now?

Before we look forward, let's look back. What have been our biggest strategic blunders since we invaded Iraq?

Gen. Anthony Zinni: We've had a year of disasters. The strategy going into Iraq was patently ridiculous -- this idea that we'd generate Jeffersonian democracy and plant the seed of freedom in the Middle East. The rationale was even worse: We grossly overstated the threat and cooked the books on the intelligence. Then we put on the ground a half-baked pickup team that has alienated the people and can't connect to viable leadership.

Gen. Wesley Clark: We went in with far too few troops and seat-of-the-pants planning. We've been there for more than a year, and the borders still aren't being controlled -- jihadis and extremists are coming in from Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Fuel convoys are getting routinely attacked; oil facilities and police stations are regularly targeted.

Rand Beers: The precondition to freedom is security. You can't succeed in beating the insurgents unless you can convince the people that they can be protected.

Thomas P.M. Barnett: It was a major mistake for the Bush administration to say to potential allies, "If you're too big a pussy to show up for the war, we're not going to let you in on the peace or rehab process -- and don't expect any contracts." We had such a macho view of war that we completely miscalculated the dangers of peacekeeping.

Fouad Ajami: Now we're a Johnny-come-lately for a U.N. resolution to internationalize the political process. You might call it deathbed multilateralism.

What about the blunders behind the scenes at the White House?

Sen. Joseph Biden: I've been a senator through seven administrations, and this is by far the most divided one I've ever served with. The internal discord is rampant. It's not just Colin Powell, who has differed with Vice President Cheney at every turn. It isn't just Richard Clarke and the others on the intelligence team who have angrily defected. It's General Eric Shinseki, who was fired for telling the truth. It's Lawrence Lindsay, Bush's economic adviser, who was fired for saying the war was going to cost $200 billion. The price tag is even higher now, and still they submit a budget for 2005 without a single penny for Iraq. What in the hell is going on?

Bob Kerrey: Karl Rove's hair is on fire -- he's worrying about what the polls are saying about America's attitude toward Iraq. Voters want out. The greatest risk is that we'll make decisions for political reasons -- that Rove will say we've got to call it quits or we're not going to win in November.

What would happen if we did pull out in a hurry?

Zinni: To pull out now would be a tremendous defeat. It would accelerate the path to civil war and make us and the region extremely vulnerable. The boys aren't coming home anytime soon.

Youssef Ibrahim: We've got to cut our losses -- the sooner the better. Our presence is only aggravating the chances for civil war. The best-case scenario at this point is for the U.S. to declare victory and get the hell out. Iraqi resistance is rising by the day, and the United Nations, NATO and the Europeans are refusing to come in. There is no fig leaf to put on this.

Biden: It would be strategic suicide if America withdrew anytime soon. I meet regularly with a group of seven four-star generals about Iraq; each one says we don't have enough force protection to even withdraw in an orderly fashion. It could be a bloodbath on the way out, and hasten civil war.

Would civil war spill over the borders to create a regional conflict?

Biden: Very likely. If civil war breaks out in Iraq, the Sunni Triangle will become a snake pit and violence will spiral throughout the region. Within five years you'll see the emergence of another strongman in Iraq. Afghanistan will fall and become a new hotbed of terror. Radical Islamists will seize control in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and the same thing could occur in Iran, which will become the major power in the region.

Beers: It could spill over the borders -- no question about it -- but would it drag the other states in? More likely, the border states would do everything to contain the conflict to Iraq. Let's be cautious about dreaming up extreme scenarios. The situation in Iraq is still salvageable.

So let's assume we're in it for the long haul. How do we even begin to regain control?

Zinni: Security is the most important issue short-term. I'm talking probably at least a year and twice the number of boots. People won't help build a new Iraq unless they can walk to a police station -- much less a voting booth -- without fear of getting killed.

Barnett: The Bush team needs to eat crow and make the tough deals necessary to internationalize this. They need to call a summit meeting of the major powers, including Russia, China and India, and say, "We have a problem in Iraq. Our loss would be as big a loss for you -- economically and otherwise -- as for us. What will it take to get 10,000 Chinese troops, 10,000 Indian troops, 10,000 Russian troops? What do you want in return?" We know what the deals are. India would probably demand, for example, that we don't declare Pakistan a major ally. Russia wants full membership in NATO. China might ask us to stop planning a missile defense in northeast Asia.

Zinni: The international soldiers have to be there. You have to see the bar scene from Star Wars, where there's a lot of different uniforms, not just all American desert cammies.

Biden: We need to rapidly train an Iraqi army and police force. They need to feel they are fighting for themselves. If I'm president of the United States, my orders to our generals and ambassador are, "If I see you once on Iraqi television, you're fired. I want Iraqi faces on Iraqi television." It should take two to three years to get 35,000 Iraqi troops out there.

Should we even be talking about a June 30th hand-over? Are we prepared?

Clark: That date was picked as a political gambit before there was a real plan for what to do. We're not prepared, but we're not going to be able to renege on that commitment.

Ibrahim: June 30th is the biggest joke around. There will still be 135,000 American soldiers in Iraq. We will pick a new governing council -- a whole bunch of new lackeys. A superambassador -- John Negroponte -- will command an embassy of 3,000 Americans. Every controversial thing that the new government does will look like Negroponte's fault.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The interim government will be sovereign in the sense that Iraqis will be equal partners in every decision made by America and the international community -- in running the budget, trying Saddam, determining the future of the oil industry. Decisions cannot be executed without their agreement.

Ajami: We have to transfer power. This should have happened long ago. We could have gotten an Iraqi to run the country the way we got Hamid Karzai to run Afghanistan. America would still have had considerable influence behind the scenes, but we should never have had an American out front -- it's why the polls show that eighty-two percent of Iraqis want us to leave immediately.

We keep hearing that the violence will escalate around June 30th and the year-end elections -- that it will only get worse before it gets better.

Chas Freeman: It's not rocket science to figure out that the easiest way for the interim Iraqi authority to establish credibility among its people will be to turn on the U.S. By refusing to give authority, we will create a situation in which they will feel obliged to seize it from us.

Zinni: If you're going to have an election, the first thing you have to do is determine the form of government you're going to have: parliament, a federated system, a confederated system? You need political parties. I don't see that happening. Iraqis don't understand what kind of government they're going to have. They are going to be told how to vote in Friday prayers by some mullah.

Kerrey: Any time you have disorder, any radical who stands on a stump and gives a speech wins the day. So I can get up and say to a religious Shiite in Baghdad, "We didn't have prostitution in the old days, so vote for me, and anyone who is a prostitute will be beaten. If you don't like this disorder, we'll bring order back with a strict interpretation of Islamic law." He'll get a standing ovation.

We went into Iraq thinking it was a secular state, but the political rhetoric among Shiite and Sunni leaders has intensified. Is religion taking the place of politics?

Ajami: I supported the war in part because Iraq had in it the roots of secular culture, which I believed positioned it well to adopt a representative government. What I never imagined was how quickly the Sunni Arabs -- who relied on the secret police to control the country under Saddam -- would fall back on the mosques as their weapon of control. More surprising was that the Shiites -- the oppressed underclass who represent sixty percent of the population -- have also begun to use Islam as a political tool. It connects them, the dispossessed, to the united Muslim world at large.

Greenstock: Iraqis are a proud people, in no small part because hundreds of years ago they ruled the known world from Baghdad. That's embedded in their national psyche.

Is the concern that as the religious tenor among Iraqis intensifies, they will begin to identify their struggle as part of the larger conflict of Islam vs. the West?

Zinni: This is a key point. Everybody I know in this part of the world says you cannot let this become a religious war. You can't let this become Islam vs. the West. I fear that's what it's become. We're viewed as modern crusaders. We have our own mad mullahs in America -- the Jerry Falwells, the Pat Robertsons -- who criticize Islam. They are heard much louder over there than they are here.

Ibrahim: It's worse than that. Bush himself is seen to be a mad mullah. The president has repeatedly asserted that God is on our side in Iraq, that he's consulting with a "higher" father. The zealotry even infects the military. General William Boykin recently said, "My God is much bigger than their Allah" -- this was all over the Arab media. He was never fired or reprimanded for making that statement. Prisoners have given accounts of being forced to thank Jesus and denounce Islam. The perception in the Gulf, where I live, is that this administration is vehemently anti-Muslim. Like it or not, we are in a war with 2.1 billion Muslims.

Beers: Even though the clash between Islam and Christianity during the Crusades took place 1,000 years ago, those terms clearly still have resonance in the Islamic community and Al Qaeda. To invoke religion is to give our opponents ammunition in the larger war on terrorism.

We often hear that the war on terror has supercharged radical Islam and energized the recruitment of terrorists. What evidence do we have to support this?

Freeman: Increasing sophistication in the ambush tactics and improvised explosive devices used to kill American troops indicate growing cooperation between secular Iraqi factions and religious extremists like Al Qaeda. Sunni insurgents in Iraq are being helped by Hamas from the Palestinian occupied territories, and the Shiites are being assisted by Hezbollah from Lebanon. All these forces are cooperating, even though many have historically been mortal enemies. Clearly, the U.S. is a big enough enemy for everyone in the region to put aside their differences.

Beers: We're seeing the development of tactics in Iraq, such as suicide bombing. Insurgents have been driving cars with explosives into hotels and office buildings. The recruitment may be even more prolific outside Iraq. Intelligence shows Al Qaeda recruiting in places as far-flung as Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Kenya, Somalia and Nigeria, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Ibrahim: In Saudi Arabia, where Al Qaeda is waging a daily war, at least fifty people have died in the last month alone. They bombed five housing complexes and an American school. In the heart of the industrial sector, four Americans from oil companies were shot and one was dragged by a car for four hours.

Should we view radical Islam as the enemy?

Zinni: Any time we look at an "enemy," we look at it at three levels. At the tactical level, the enemy is the terrorist organizations and the financing they get. The operational level is the enemy's center of gravity -- it's the rationale, which is radical Islam. At the strategic level, it's the continuous flow of young people so desperate and angry that they're willing to believe it. At the tactical level, we could be winning - we could be hurting Al Qaeda and capturing its leadership. But as an ideology, it's strengthening. It is probably stronger now than before September 11th, in terms of recruiting manpower willing to kill themselves.

Surely the Abu Ghraib prison scandal didn't help. Should Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or other Bush officials resign?

Beers: The Navy has a custom -- if a ship runs aground, the captain is relieved regardless of who is responsible. That's how Abu Ghraib should be handled.

Biden: I was in the Oval Office the other day, and the president asked me what I would do about resignations. I said, "Look, Mr. President, would I keep Rumsfeld? Absolutely not." And I turned to Vice President Cheney, who was there, and I said, "Mr. Vice President, I wouldn't keep you if it weren't constitutionally required." I turned back to the president and said, "Mr. President, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are bright guys, really patriotic, but they've been dead wrong on every major piece of advice they've given you. That's why I'd get rid of them, Mr. President -- not just Abu Ghraib." They said nothing. Just sat like big old bullfrogs on a log and looked at me.

Speaking of Cheney, how does this instability affect contractors such as Halliburton?

Zinni: Halliburton is spending staggering sums of money building fortified workplaces. It's killing the American taxpayer, who's footing the bill. There are two bodyguards for every worker. For $100,000 a year, you've got a truck driver from West Virginia. If I'm an Iraqi, I say, "For that cost, you could hire ten of us as drivers. And if I'm getting a paycheck, I'll have a vested interest in that truck getting through." Even the way we do contracting makes no sense.

What about our oil concerns? We often hear that a prime reason we went into Iraq was to get access to its oil as our ties to Saudi Arabia falter.

Greenstock: Oil is not the big bogey we should be worried about. Oil will go on flowing come what may, so long as there is reasonable order in the oil-producing countries. Whatever the character of the regime, it always wants to sell its oil. Look at Iran, Saudi Arabia, even Qaddafi in Libya.

Freeman: Yet the oil system is extremely vulnerable to shock. There's a rule in the Middle East that you don't need these fancy seismic studies to locate oil reserves -- if you find the Shiites, there's usually oil. There are more than 1 million Shiites in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, which is where the oil is. They've suffered persecution by the religious majority in Saudi Arabia, and they're vulnerable to spillover from the anti-American struggle in Iraq. The global nightmare is that there would be terrorist action among Saudi Shiites directed at the oil pipelines, ports and refineries. For Americans, that would mean four or more dollars per gallon of gas.

Ibrahim: The sixty-year relationship we've had with Saudi Arabia is on the verge of collapse. How many times have we asked them to please, please open the spigots so we can bring prices down? There's a new 900-pound gorilla coming called China. In ten years, it's going to be the largest consumer of oil in the world, which means that the people who produce oil are no longer kissing America's ass -- they're beginning to kiss China's ass.

Has the war at least produced a new respect for American military power?

Ibrahim: Hardly. We are no longer loved because of Iraq, and we are also no longer feared because of Iraq. The neoconservative dream of regime change throughout the region -- in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Libya and Somalia -- is dead. Do you really think any of those countries are afraid of us after watching us bleed in the streets of Iraq?

Biden: The perception of us is that if we don't succeed, we're a paper tiger. We can project power, but we don't have staying power. The Bush administration has seriously damaged the legitimate and necessary role of power in our foreign-policy arsenal. What happens if we have another Milosevic? Will there be support for a U.S. president in taking down a genocidal maniac? No.

What does the future of war look like? Will we face World War III?

Zinni: My son is a Marine captain, and he's going to face a changed battlefield -- messier than Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq. It's no longer honorable fighting, where you defeat the forces of a nation-state on the battlefield. He's going to face all sorts of violent components -- insurgents, terrorists, warlords -- as well as environmental challenges and humanitarian problems.

Barnett: We're going to end up replicating the struggle again and again. Like spraying the cockroaches in one apartment and scattering them to the next -- we're driving terrorists to the next country over. Sort of like rooting out old Japanese warriors on some isolated Pacific island twenty years after World War II, we're going to be killing off the last of these guys years from now in deepest, darkest Africa.

In the near term, is a change of administrations the best way out of the quagmire?

Ibrahim: I voted for Bush, but I'd sooner die than vote for him again. The neocons are vampires through which we have to drive a wooden stake. Neoconservatism must end as an ideology if you want America to recover its position as leader of the world.

Kerrey: We need a coalition of the pragmatic in the White House, not of the religious or ideological. John Kerry will be much more capable of making the tough deals necessary to bring in the allies and make it work. In an odd way, that's good news for Bush. I predict that in the end, the two of them will celebrate a great bipartisan foreign-policy victory in Iraq, begun by President Bush and finished by President Kerry.

Biden: About six months ago, the president said to me, "Well, at least I make strong decisions, I lead." I said, "Mr. President, look behind you. Leaders have followers. No one's following. Nobody."

The Rolling Stone Panel: Gen. Anthony Zinni Commander in chief of Centcom, 1997-2000; special envoy to the Middle East, 2002-2003; author of Battle Ready

Gen. Wesley Clark Supreme allied commander, Europe, 1997-2000; led NATO military campaign in Kosovo Rand Beers Counterterrorism adviser to President Bush, 2002-2003; national security adviser to Sen. John Kerry Sen. Joseph Biden Ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Thomas P.M. Barnett Strategic adviser to the Defense Department, 2001-2003; faculty member of U.S. Naval War College; author of The Pentagon's New Map Fouad Ajami, Director of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Sir Jeremy Greenstock British diplomat in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, 1969-2004; U.N. representative, 1998-2003; special representative for Iraq, 2003-2004

Youssef Ibrahim Managing director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group; former Middle Eastern correspondent for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal

Bob Kerrey Senator from Nebraska, 1988-2000; president of New School University

Chas Freeman U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-1992; assistant secretary of defense, 1993-1994

We told you so

An American failed by Bush

A note to our conservative friends:

WE TOLD YOU SO

Ever wonder why New Yorkers detest George Bush?

Because we experienced his incompetence up close and person. We knew this guy was full of shit, absolutely full of fucking shit, after they started to play games with the funding and gave Wyoming terrorism money. We knew he was an assclown then.

We thought DC 9/11 was a comedy, because the Bush we saw hid in AF One like the scared bitch that he is.

But did you listen?

Fuck no. Until last week, Ann Coulter was calling New Yorkers cowards for not endorsing Bush's folly in Iraq.

We have been screaming for two years that Bush and his team sucked. That they had no clue. They sent soldiers to be wounded in Iraq without armored anything. And you idiots cheered him on from the safety of your keyboards. We told you he was fucking up Iraq. But no, we supported Saddam, we were racist, we blamed America.

You say this isn't about politics? Fuck you, this IS politics, real time, real life politics, where the insanity of all your ideas are exposed to the world for the fraud that they are. Tax cuts kill. Ask the relatives of the dead of the Gulf Coast.

Well, motherfuckers, the alligators are feasting on dead nigger and there isn't an Iraqi in sight. And Bush is trying to gladhand his way through a mess which has stunned FOX reporters. I mean, Shepard Smith is calling Fox's talking heads liars ON THE AIR.

CNN rips Bush in print and online after nearly five years of sleep.

Instead of hearing what we had to say about Bush, you called John Kerry a coward, mocked Max Cleland, blamed everything but herpes on Bill Clinton. You enabled Bush into this mess and now you're shocked?

Now, Fox can be outraged, now, Wash Times and Union Leader call Bush weak? Well, his coward ass disappeared in 2001. But you rather blame Michael Moore for that.

He can't even explain the Iraq war to a grieving mother.

So what did you do?

Write the most vile things about her and her dead son. Attacked her patriotism and her honesty.

Well, motherfuckers, and that means you, fat ass Goldberg and your master, Rich Lowry, PNAC Bitch Beinart, the racist wannabe white Malkin and the little fucktards at LGF, Bareback Andy and "Diversity" Instacracker, all you backstabbing, fag hating uncle tom ministers, you can see Dear Leader in action. America's largest port is gone, maybe forever, gas is $5+ a gallon and FEMA is coming. Whores come faster with old men than FEMA is getting to NOLA.

How did your wartime President react? Like Chiang Kai-Shek when the Yellow River flooded in 1944, with corrupt indifference.

Bush, the man your fever dreams built into the next Winston Churchill when he is really the live action Chauncey Gardiner, has failed to everyone, in plain sight, without question. Rick Perry is trying to save his ass, but it ain't working. NOLA looks like ANGOLA and that ain't flying.

Say 9/11 changed everything now, motherfuckers. Ooops, 9/11, 9/11. 9/11. Doesn't work anymore? Gee, maybe the sea of alligator MRE's once known as the citizens of New Orleans has something to do with that. Now you can shut the fuck up about 9/11. Bush just proved what would happen with another 9/11. Dead Americans as far as the nose can smell.

Drunken Chris Hitchens muttered some nonsense about blacks having it so good here. The poor man needs to stay in his bottle or go to Betty Ford before someone beats his treasonous ass stupid. Islamofascism means what, now motherfucker? Shove Islamofascism up your well travelled ass. The most dangerous thing to average Americans is not some mullah in Iraq, not even Osama Bin Laden, but George Bush. If he doesn't get you killed in Iraq, he'll fuck up saving your city so it turns into Escape from New Orleans. Armed junkies roaming the streets, looking for a fix, robbing and looting like Serb paramilitaries and about as sober.

George Bush's ineptitude has killed far more Americans than Osama could have dreamed of.

Some of you still try to see the clothes on the Dauphin, but he's as naked as Peter North around Jenna Jameson. Bush fucked up so bad, FOX turned on him like a rabid dog.

You can't hide behind racism forever. Bush fucked up, Bush is a weak, callous leader and the world knows this like it knows few other things. And all the stolen TV's in the world cannot hide that.

posted by Steve @ 12:01:00 AM

Rhetoric, Reality Don't Match in Relief

"It's impossible to defend something like this happening in America," Newt Gingrich said of the hurricane response.

Bush's Responses to Problems Concern Even the GOPBy RON FOURNIER, AP

News Analysis

WASHINGTON (Sept. 2) - The Iraqi insurgency is in its last throes. The economy is booming. Anybody who leaks a CIA agent's identity will be fired. Add another piece of White House rhetoric that doesn't match the public's view of reality: Help is on the way, Gulf Coast.

As New Orleans descended into anarchy, President Bush and his emergency-response team congratulated each other for jobs well done and spoke of water, food and troops pouring into the ravaged city. Television pictures told a different story.

"What it reminded me of the other day is 'Baghdad Bob' saying there are no Americans at the airport," said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant in Washington. He was referring to Saddam Hussein's reality-challenged minister of information who denied the existence of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital.

To some critics, Bush seemed to deny the existence of problems with hurricane relief this week. He waited until Friday to acknowledged that "the results are not acceptable," and even then Bush parsed his words

Republicans worry that he looks out of touch defending the chaotic emergency response.

"It's impossible to defend something like this happening in America," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"No one can be happy with the kind of response which we've seen in New Orleans ... ," said Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

Bush got himself in trouble by trying to put the best face on a horrible situation. The strategy is so common in Washington that operatives have a name for it, "spin," and the Bush White House has perfected the shady art.

This is what the president had to say about the relief effort earlier in the week:


"What it reminded me of the other day is 'Baghdad Bob' saying there are no Americans at the airport."
-Rich Galen


"There's a lot of food on its way, a lot of water on the way, and there's a lot of boats and choppers headed that way."

"Thousands have been rescued. There's thousands more to be rescued. And there's a lot of people focusing their efforts on that."

"As we speak, people are moving into New Orleans area to maintain law and order."

Technically, the president may have been right. Help was on the way, if not fast enough to handle one of the largest emergency response efforts in U.S. history. But the words were jarring to Americans who saw images of looters, abandoned corpses and angry, desperate storm victims.

It was worse when he was wrong. In one interview, Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." In fact, many experts predicted a major storm would bust New Orleans' flood-control barriers.

One reason the public relations effort backfired on Bush is that Americans have seen it before.

On Iraq alone, the rhetoric has repeatedly fallen far short of reality. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. The mission wasn't accomplished in May 2003. Most allies avoided the hard work of his "coalition of the willing." And dozens of U.S. soldiers have died since Vice President Dick Cheney declared that insurgents were in their "last throes."

Bush often touts the health of the U.S. economy, which is fair game because many indicators point in that direction. But the public doesn't share his rosy view. The global economy had most Americans worried about job and pension security even before rising gas added to their anxieties.

Bush's spokesman said anybody involved in leaking the identity of a CIA agent would be fired, but no action has been taken against officials accused of doing so.

The president himself promised to fully pay for his school reform plan and strip pork-barrel spending from a major highway bill. The school money fell short. The pork thrived.

The list goes on. But this didn't start with Bush. Former President Clinton certainly had his rhetoric vs. reality problems. Indeed, most politicians do. At some point, however, the spin can take a toll.

Bush crafted a reputation as a blunt-speaking, can-do leader from his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Five months later, about three-fourths of Americans viewed him as honest.

But his trust rating dropped gradually to a slim majority by the 2004 election year and remained at the mid-50s through the early part of 2005. In August, an AP-Ipsos poll showed 48 percent of respondents considered Bush honest, the lowest level of his presidency.

Americans like straight-shooters, especially in an era that has seen vast failures by government and social institutions. People are witnessing another institutional failure in the Gulf Coast, and Bush seemed willing to step up and acknowledge it Friday.

"The results are unacceptable," he said before leaving for a tour of the region. Few would disagree.

EDITOR'S NOTE - Ron Fournier has covered national politics for The Associated Press since 1993.

Impeach George Bush

White collar conservative flashin down the street, pointing that plastic finger at me, they all assume my kind will drop and die, but I'm gonna wave my freak flag high.

Jimi Hendrix

Camille Paglia: Hurricane Katrina has demolished this administration's mask of confidence

Any rational observer could have predicted the delayed effects of flooding on this fragile city

Published: 03 September 2005

This week the US gradually awoke to the full cataclysm of Monday's mammoth hurricane, which flooded New Orleans and ravaged the Mississippi coast. It was, as several officials noted, our tsunami.

Weather is daily theatre here, hawked by peppy broadcasters on local TV stations or dissected by grizzled meteorologists on a round-the-clock national cable TV channel. Our annual "hurricane season", as it is casually called, runs from June through November. We are quite used to suspense building over a week or two as a tropical storm registers over the Atlantic, then gathers to careen as a hurricane through the Caribbean or bounce up the Atlantic coast.

Dire predictions have often fizzled out, as hurricanes missed populated areas or weakened dramatically on hitting land. Despite a series of severely destructive hurricanes in the Florida panhandle, satirical jibes at overzealous weathercasters have multiplied in recent years. It was a prescription for disaster.

According to most reports, 80 per cent of New Orleans residents may indeed have obeyed the mayor's appeal to evacuate - which doubtless saved countless lives. But the national media took several days to adjust to the grim and now grotesque reality on the ground. At first, the smooth, exquisitely coiffed news anchors and their posturing on-site correspondents professed cheerful relief that Hurricane Katrina had passed by and spared picturesque New Orleans.

Yet any rational observer could have predicted the delayed effects of flooding - which in this case broke through two of the levees that have protected the fragile, always soggy city from the encroachment of Lake Pontchartrain. It was a disgraceful repeat of the American media's slow response to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean last December, when the star anchors were on Christmas vacation and had to straggle back, visibly peeved, to their studios. Matt Drudge, in contrast, alarmed by the reported size of the submarine earthquake, instantly forecast the enormity of the event and headlined it on his online site, the Drudge Report.

But to ask for powers of scientific or sociological analysis from the preening parrots currently infesting American media is a pointless exercise. The time is long gone when American broadcasting could draw on the talents of foreign correspondents who honed their skills during the Second World War. Edward R Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Howard K Smith, and Walter Cronkite had a gravitas and stoic deliberativeness that seem a million miles away from the flirty smirkiness of the airheaded moppets and gym-sculpted pretty boys who now harangue us from the TV screen.

Hurricane Katrina is simply the latest chapter in the epic of American nature. It is a subject that Europeans rarely show understanding of in their often dismissive comments on US culture. In my latest book, Break, Blow, Burn, I reprinted a little-known poem by Norman Russell, "The Tornado" , which describes a family home being swallowed up by a roaring black twister: Russell deftly captures the terrifying grandeur of the American sublime. Despite the enduring and perceptibly increasing influence of Christian fundamentalism here, the political will is constantly being tested and refined against the pagan chaos of brute nature.

American history is crammed with tales of fortitude in the face of hostile geography and punishing weather, from the struggle of the Mayflower Puritans to survive their first New England winter to the desperate march of pioneers in the 1849 California gold rush through the baking desert of Death Valley. Books and TV features regularly document our list of worst disasters - such as the great blizzard of 1888 that sank 200 boats under five feet of snow or the hurricane-caused 1900 flood in Galveston, Texas that killed 6,000 people.

There is a can-do spirit here that believes it can overcome all odds. It can be detected, for example, in the fixed optimism of the Bush administration that Western-style constitutional democracy can be planted virtually overnight in the Mideast. What is highly surprising now is the disintegration of the administration's mask of competence and confidence, as New Orleans sinks day by day into squalor and savagery, a shocking panorama of unrelieved human suffering.

Is Brad man enough?

The Hollywood triangle of Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie has swamped magazine covers in the US for months. I've been rooting for the tempestuous Jolie just as, in high school, I applauded that brunette vixen, Elizabeth Taylor, for snatching Eddie Fisher away from the saccharine Debbie Reynolds. Of course, Fisher proved too bland a morsel, and Liz moved on to abort the theatre career of Richard Burton.

The quirky, dryly humorous Aniston, with her urban air of suppressed neurosis, is no match for a tigress like Jolie, who has the pneumatic figure and aggressive athleticism of the superheroine she was born to play, Lara Croft. What do Jolie's strange vitality and mysticism owe to her Iroquois ancestry?

As we wait to see how long the stubbornly boyish Pitt will hold Jolie's wandering attention, may I recommend Gia, a 1998 TV docudrama where Jolie chews up the scenery as the bisexual supermodel Gia Carangi, a heroin addict who died of Aids. It's a spectacular performance - rude, crude, full-blooded, and bewitching.

A bratty antidote to political correctness

Earlier this year, there was a spate of media stories about Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 "greatest rock & roll songs of all time" . Number one position in the poll of musicians, songwriters, producers, and critics was won by Bob Dylan's 1965 hit, "Like a Rolling Stone".

Dylan is a genius who had a profound influence on my 1960s generation in the US, but his current stratospheric elevation smacks of the faddish. " Like a Rolling Stone" is an exhilaratingly propulsive song with a wicked rap of bratty put-downs. I have found it personally inspiring in my war on political correctness in academe. But artistically, the song suffers from its compulsive sneering - an adolescent tic.

A truly great song has expansiveness, vision, and emotional range. On those grounds, the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" or " Gimme Shelter" would rank far beyond "Like a Rolling Stone". In my course, "Art of Song Lyrics", which I am teaching this semester at the University of the Arts, we will be studying a much greater song by Dylan, "Desolation Row", so long and complex that it always takes several class days to do justice to.

There are any number of major Led Zeppelin songs that have a lyric romanticism and orchestral majesty that overshadow "Like a Rolling Stone ". One of my all-time favourites, the blues-inflected "When the Levee Breaks", is specially applicable to this dark moment in New Orleans: "If it keeps on rainin', levee's going to break ... When the levee breaks, then you got to move."

Deborah Orr is away

This week the US gradually awoke to the full cataclysm of Monday's mammoth hurricane, which flooded New Orleans and ravaged the Mississippi coast. It was, as several officials noted, our tsunami.

Weather is daily theatre here, hawked by peppy broadcasters on local TV stations or dissected by grizzled meteorologists on a round-the-clock national cable TV channel. Our annual "hurricane season", as it is casually called, runs from June through November. We are quite used to suspense building over a week or two as a tropical storm registers over the Atlantic, then gathers to careen as a hurricane through the Caribbean or bounce up the Atlantic coast.

Dire predictions have often fizzled out, as hurricanes missed populated areas or weakened dramatically on hitting land. Despite a series of severely destructive hurricanes in the Florida panhandle, satirical jibes at overzealous weathercasters have multiplied in recent years. It was a prescription for disaster.

According to most reports, 80 per cent of New Orleans residents may indeed have obeyed the mayor's appeal to evacuate - which doubtless saved countless lives. But the national media took several days to adjust to the grim and now grotesque reality on the ground. At first, the smooth, exquisitely coiffed news anchors and their posturing on-site correspondents professed cheerful relief that Hurricane Katrina had passed by and spared picturesque New Orleans.

Yet any rational observer could have predicted the delayed effects of flooding - which in this case broke through two of the levees that have protected the fragile, always soggy city from the encroachment of Lake Pontchartrain. It was a disgraceful repeat of the American media's slow response to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean last December, when the star anchors were on Christmas vacation and had to straggle back, visibly peeved, to their studios. Matt Drudge, in contrast, alarmed by the reported size of the submarine earthquake, instantly forecast the enormity of the event and headlined it on his online site, the Drudge Report.

But to ask for powers of scientific or sociological analysis from the preening parrots currently infesting American media is a pointless exercise. The time is long gone when American broadcasting could draw on the talents of foreign correspondents who honed their skills during the Second World War. Edward R Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Howard K Smith, and Walter Cronkite had a gravitas and stoic deliberativeness that seem a million miles away from the flirty smirkiness of the airheaded moppets and gym-sculpted pretty boys who now harangue us from the TV screen.

Hurricane Katrina is simply the latest chapter in the epic of American nature. It is a subject that Europeans rarely show understanding of in their often dismissive comments on US culture. In my latest book, Break, Blow, Burn, I reprinted a little-known poem by Norman Russell, "The Tornado" , which describes a family home being swallowed up by a roaring black twister: Russell deftly captures the terrifying grandeur of the American sublime. Despite the enduring and perceptibly increasing influence of Christian fundamentalism here, the political will is constantly being tested and refined against the pagan chaos of brute nature.

American history is crammed with tales of fortitude in the face of hostile geography and punishing weather, from the struggle of the Mayflower Puritans to survive their first New England winter to the desperate march of pioneers in the 1849 California gold rush through the baking desert of Death Valley. Books and TV features regularly document our list of worst disasters - such as the great blizzard of 1888 that sank 200 boats under five feet of snow or the hurricane-caused 1900 flood in Galveston, Texas that killed 6,000 people.

There is a can-do spirit here that believes it can overcome all odds. It can be detected, for example, in the fixed optimism of the Bush administration that Western-style constitutional democracy can be planted virtually overnight in the Mideast. What is highly surprising now is the disintegration of the administration's mask of competence and confidence, as New Orleans sinks day by day into squalor and savagery, a shocking panorama of unrelieved human suffering.

Is Brad man enough?

The Hollywood triangle of Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie has swamped magazine covers in the US for months. I've been rooting for the tempestuous Jolie just as, in high school, I applauded that brunette vixen, Elizabeth Taylor, for snatching Eddie Fisher away from the saccharine Debbie Reynolds. Of course, Fisher proved too bland a morsel, and Liz moved on to abort the theatre career of Richard Burton.

The quirky, dryly humorous Aniston, with her urban air of suppressed neurosis, is no match for a tigress like Jolie, who has the pneumatic figure and aggressive athleticism of the superheroine she was born to play, Lara Croft. What do Jolie's strange vitality and mysticism owe to her Iroquois ancestry?

As we wait to see how long the stubbornly boyish Pitt will hold Jolie's wandering attention, may I recommend Gia, a 1998 TV docudrama where Jolie chews up the scenery as the bisexual supermodel Gia Carangi, a heroin addict who died of Aids. It's a spectacular performance - rude, crude, full-blooded, and bewitching.

A bratty antidote to political correctness

Earlier this year, there was a spate of media stories about Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 "greatest rock & roll songs of all time" . Number one position in the poll of musicians, songwriters, producers, and critics was won by Bob Dylan's 1965 hit, "Like a Rolling Stone".

Dylan is a genius who had a profound influence on my 1960s generation in the US, but his current stratospheric elevation smacks of the faddish. " Like a Rolling Stone" is an exhilaratingly propulsive song with a wicked rap of bratty put-downs. I have found it personally inspiring in my war on political correctness in academe. But artistically, the song suffers from its compulsive sneering - an adolescent tic.

A truly great song has expansiveness, vision, and emotional range. On those grounds, the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" or " Gimme Shelter" would rank far beyond "Like a Rolling Stone". In my course, "Art of Song Lyrics", which I am teaching this semester at the University of the Arts, we will be studying a much greater song by Dylan, "Desolation Row", so long and complex that it always takes several class days to do justice to.

There are any number of major Led Zeppelin songs that have a lyric romanticism and orchestral majesty that overshadow "Like a Rolling Stone ". One of my all-time favourites, the blues-inflected "When the Levee Breaks", is specially applicable to this dark moment in New Orleans: "If it keeps on rainin', levee's going to break ... When the levee breaks, then you got to move."

Cowboy Bush Failed In Katrina Evacuation - Chavez

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a vocal critic of the U.S. government, on Wednesday called U.S. President George W. Bush a "cowboy" who had failed to manage the Hurricane Katrina disaster and evacuate victims.

"That government had no evacuation plan, it is incredible, the first power in the world that is so involved in Iraq ... and left its own population adrift," Chavez said in a cabinet meeting broadcast live on television.

His remarks came as U.S. authorities evacuated thousands of people from New Orleans and after Bush said it would take years to recover from flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The death toll on Wednesday reached at least 200 in what Bush called the nation's worst natural disaster.

"That man, the king of vacations ... the king of vacations in his ranch said nothing but, you have to flee, and didn't say how ... that cowboy, the cowboy mentality," said Chavez, chuckling in a reference to Bush without naming him directly.

Chavez, an outspoken populist who calls Cuba's Fidel Castro an ally, often lambastes what he calls Washington's failed imperialist policies. He says the Bush administration is trying to assassinate him and calls the U.S. president "Mr. Danger."

The two governments frequently clash though the United States is the top oil client of Venezuela, the world's No. 5 crude exporter. Washington portrays Chavez as a menace who uses his nation's oil wealth to fund anti-democratic groups.

The Venezuelan president, applauded by supporters for his self-proclaimed socialist revolution to fight poverty, has offered to send cheap fuel, humanitarian aid and relief workers to the disaster area.

Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA has offered $1 million (555,000 pounds) from its U.S.-based refinery unit Citgo for relief efforts.

Congressman questions VP's ability to perform duties

NEW YORK -- The dean of New York's congressional delegation suggested in a television interview that Vice President Dick Cheney may not be healthy enough to perform his duties.

Rep. Charles Rangel was being interviewed on NY1, the New York City-based all-news channel, when he was asked Friday night whether he thought President Bush was taking too much vacation time this summer.

"Oh no, it makes the country a lot more safe," the Manhattan Democrat said. "The further Bush is away from Washington, the better it is. And sometimes I don't even think Cheney is awake enough to know what's going on. Rumsfeld is the guy in Washington to watch. He's running the country,"

"Cheney's not awake enough?" reporter Davidson Goldin asked.

"Well, he's a sick man you know," Rangel said. "He's got heart disease, but the disease is not restricted to that part of his body. He grunts a lot, so you never really know what he's thinking."

Asked whether he was suggesting that Cheney was not healthy enough to do his job, Rangel said, "Why do you think people are spending so much time praying for President Bush's health?"

"If he ever leaves and Cheney's in charge, there's not very much to pull together for the rest of our nation," he concluded. "This is a sad state of affair."

The White House declined comment Saturday.

CNN says Bush visit to hurricane is nothing but a political photo op

by John in DC - 9/02/2005 11:52:00 AM

Just now on CNN, after having watched Bush being briefed by the head of FEMA and talking with the GOP governors of Mississippi and Alabama

Daryn Kagen:

I gotta say that was rather an odd thing to be watching. The president finally making it to the gulf coast after five days, and then spending a big chunk of time, when he could be out seeing the devastation, getting a briefing that frankly he could have gotten back at the White House, if not then, then on board Air Force One. A lot of that seemed like a political opportunity for the cameras and for the Republican governors of Mississippi and Alabama.

Bill Schneider:

I'm not sure that's what most Americans and certainly most people in the area wanted to hear, as if the president were being filled in, told what was going on, there was a lot of thanking a lot of congratulations. Look these are frantic desperate people who have lost everything, who are in a very desperate situation, what they want is someone to come there and say the government is in control, we have control of this situation, there's a leader in charge here and we're gonna make it work....

What people want there is leadership, they don't want someone being briefed, they want leadership.

Gee, give the guy a break, people, he only got back from vacation 36 hours ago.

'Casual to the point of careless' - Bush under fire for slow reaction

By Andrew Gumbel

Published: 02 September 2005

President Bush faced not only the fallout of Hurricane Katrina but also an intense political storm yesterday as relief experts, government officials and newspaper editorials criticised everything from his administration's disaster preparedness policies to the manner in which he made his public entry into the growing crisis on the Gulf coast.

The New York Times said of a speech he made on Tuesday: "Nothing about the President's demeanour yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

No less trenchant - and more heartfelt - was the Biloxi Sun Herald in Mississippi which surveyed the disaster around its editorial offices and asked: "Why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in south Mississippi been pressed into service?"

As when the Asian tsunami hit last year, Mr Bush found himself on holiday at his Texas ranch when disaster struck. As with the tsunami, he was soon in the firing line for reacting slowly - he spent Monday on a fundraising tour of the American West - and failing to provide adequate leadership. As survivors complained of a lack of water, food and medical supplies yesterday, fingers from across the political spectrum were pointed at the White House.

Experts on the Mississippi Delta pointed out that a plan to shore up the levees around New Orleans was abandoned last year for lack of government funding. They noted that flood-control spending for south-eastern Louisiana had been chopped every year that Mr Bush has been in office, that hurricane protection funds have also fallen, and that the local army corps of engineers has also had its budget cut. The emergency management chief for Jefferson parish told the Times-Picayune newspaper:"It appears that the money has been moved in the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay.".

The torrent of criticism contrasted sharply to the reaction to the 11 September attacks, when political sniping was put on hold and dissenters were told their complaints were both unwelcome and unpatriotic. The change in tone partly suggests a growing disenchantment with Mr Bush.

The usually restrained New York Times said: "Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?"

President Bush faced not only the fallout of Hurricane Katrina but also an intense political storm yesterday as relief experts, government officials and newspaper editorials criticised everything from his administration's disaster preparedness policies to the manner in which he made his public entry into the growing crisis on the Gulf coast.

The New York Times said of a speech he made on Tuesday: "Nothing about the President's demeanour yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

No less trenchant - and more heartfelt - was the Biloxi Sun Herald in Mississippi which surveyed the disaster around its editorial offices and asked: "Why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in south Mississippi been pressed into service?"

As when the Asian tsunami hit last year, Mr Bush found himself on holiday at his Texas ranch when disaster struck. As with the tsunami, he was soon in the firing line for reacting slowly - he spent Monday on a fundraising tour of the American West - and failing to provide adequate leadership. As survivors complained of a lack of water, food and medical supplies yesterday, fingers from across the political spectrum were pointed at the White House.

Experts on the Mississippi Delta pointed out that a plan to shore up the levees around New Orleans was abandoned last year for lack of government funding. They noted that flood-control spending for south-eastern Louisiana had been chopped every year that Mr Bush has been in office, that hurricane protection funds have also fallen, and that the local army corps of engineers has also had its budget cut. The emergency management chief for Jefferson parish told the Times-Picayune newspaper:"It appears that the money has been moved in the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay.".

The torrent of criticism contrasted sharply to the reaction to the 11 September attacks, when political sniping was put on hold and dissenters were told their complaints were both unwelcome and unpatriotic. The change in tone partly suggests a growing disenchantment with Mr Bush.

The usually restrained New York Times said: "Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?"

CNN's Cafferty says relief arrival is being timed for Bush's arrival

by John in DC - 9/02/2005 03:49:00 PM

CNN's Jack Cafferty, moments ago:

Jack Cafferty: Do you suppose, Wolf, that the arrival of the relief convoys and the political photo ops on the gulf coast happening at the very same time were a coincidence today?

Wolf Blitzer: Uh, well, we'll, I'm sure our viewers have some thoughts on that as well. These pictures, by the way, Jack, that we're getting in...

Wolf Blitzer: Jack a final thought before I let you go.

Jack Cafferty: It's embarrassing [followed by dead silence]

New Orleans Residents: God's Mercy Evident in Katrina's Wake

By Jody Brown and Allie Martin

September 2, 2005

(AgapePress) - Two Christian leaders in New Orleans are testifying to God's mercy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One suggests that the death toll could have been much higher had it not been for God's mercy -- and the other that God may have used the hurricane to purge wickedness from the city.

Chuck Kelley is president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, with facilities located near the southern banks of Lake Pontchartrain and in Chalmette, east of the city. Baptist Press reports that Kelley now finds himself homeless and with only a few personal belongings following Hurricane Katrina's devastating blow to the New Orleans area. But the seminary leader says he is able to discern God's hand in the situation.

"Imagine what would have happened if [New Orleans] had taken a direct hit," he tells BP. "The levee did not break until after the storm was clear and the winds had died down and the rescue workers were able to get out." Had the levee given way during the hurricane, he says, "untold thousands of people" would have been killed.

"It's a terrible tragedy," Kelley says of the devastation in and around New Orleans, "and we still don't know the scope of it -- but the evidences of God's mercy are there. We rejoice in the fact that He has got the whole world in His hands, including the city of New Orleans and [the seminary]."

Kelley's faith, despite his personal situation, remains steadfast. He explains to Baptist Press that he is confident of God's provision. "When we get to the end of this story," he says, "the last paragraph is going to be a testimony to the greatness and glory of our God, who is able to do all things well, and able to provide every need."

Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God's mercy in the aftermath of Katrina -- but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as "Southern Decadence" -- an annual six-day "gay pride" event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.

New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."

The New Orleans pastor is adamant. Christians, he says, need to confront sin. "It's time for us to stand up against wickedness so that God won't have to deal with that wickedness," he says.

Believers, he says, are God's "authorized representatives on the face of the Earth" and should say they "don't want unrighteous men in office," for example. In addition, he says Christians should not hesitate to voice their opinions about such things as abortion, prayer, and homosexual marriage. "We don't want a Supreme Court that is going to say it's all right to kill little boys and girls, ... it's all right to take prayer out of schools, and it's all right to legalize sodomy, opening the door for same-sex marriage and all of that.?

Shanks heeded warnings to evacuate New Orleans, and is currently staying with friends in the Jackson, Mississippi, area.

© 2005 AgapePress all rights reserved.

Bush speaks in NO

by Joe in DC - 9/02/2005 06:14:00 PM

Bush just made remarks at the NO airport. Hey, he said, "There's a flow of progress." Most would say the flow has been a trickle.

Then, he made a big announcement, "We've secured the convention center." Christ, like he conquered Baghdad.

He wanted everyone to know there's a lot of people working hard. Now, he didn't indicate he is one of them. We all know how that his job is "hard work"...he told us that many times last fall.

He let us know, "I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Then, a brilliant analyis, "It requires more than one day's attention."

"There will be a national response," the President said. To which, Americans should ask why there hasn't been one already. But, he was on vacation when this started. And, he actually made a joke about how he used to come to New Orleans and have too much fun, yuk, yuk, yuk.

The man is an idiot.

The Horror Worsens: Friday Pleas for Help from 'Times-Pic' Blog

George W. Bush is Disgusting!

By E&P Staff

Published: September 02, 2005 10:30 AM ET

NEW YORKIf anything, the situation grows more desperate in New Orleans, as these very up-close and personal, and terrifying, pleas for help at a Times-Picayune readers' forum reveal today -- including many patients and staff trapped in hospitals. We will update during the day.

***

Sidney Smith, Matthew Von Stetina, his wife Bridget and 2 small children along with Adele Bertucci and her mother are trapped on the roof at 97 Fontainebleau Dr. water and food supplies have run out. A nearby rooftop is on fire. Boats and helicopters have passed them by! Dead
bodies of neighbors are floating around. PLEASE HELP!!!!

***

Rescue... Please Help! A friend's Mom is trapped in her house at 2220 Fern street, off of Claiborne. Her name is Grace Troxcalir. She is running out of heart medicine. Please anyone that can help - Please rescue her.
Thank you - Eliza Schneller.


***
100 residents are still left in The Point (Algiers) and they are now under seige from the mob that was released from the convention center. They have had to kill 4 people in an attempt to protect their property and life.

Please get state police in!

***

Doctors, patients and staff are stranded at Baptist Hospital (extended campus of Memorial Hospital). My brother, Dr. Bryant King, is stranded there and has been sending occassional text messages to let us know the situation.

Yesterday, he explained that management at the hospital decided to selectively withhold food and water from patients. Doctors are being forced to decide who gets to live and who will starve to death. The hospital is surrounded by 8 ft of flood water; there is no more electricity, food or water. Windows are broken out and people are starving.

There has been very little press about this hosptial, but conditions are deplorable and they need to be evacuated. My brother asked that we please get them out of there. Please let the press know that Baptist Hospital (2700 Napolean Blv) is BEGGING FOR HELP!!!

***
75 people slowly dying at Broad and Tulane. My adopted daughter's sister, Brandi Gautreaux, 26 may be among them. She left there Sunday headed for Superdome and we have not heard from her. Can you get some rescuers to go to that location. The people are text messaging and are still alive but the e-mail said they are slowly dying. I think they are in attic or upper floor or apt. house or hotel. I cannot reach state patrol or coast guard to get them help. Please try.

***

There are 1200 patients, doctors, nurses and hospital personnel trapped in Charity Hospital. Surrounded by 5 feet of water that has become dangerous to even swim through, these people have had no electricity since 5:00 a.m, Monday. Why is their plight no worse than others? This hospital is trying to keep their patients alive without any technology available other than manual means and perseverance.

They've lost patients just because there is no electricity. They're having to stack the dead bodies outside on balconies because the disease and stench could cause more health problems that these people don't need at this time.

Their food and water is almost gone. Green beans and a cup of water is the common menu for the day. The toilets don't work - more health problems.

Coast Guard attempted to move about 30 critical care patients out yesterday -- transport by boat to Tulane Medical Center across the street and then up flights of stairs to a helipad for evacuation. Looters shot at the vehicles attempting this transport and the guard had to stop evacuations for fear of life.

***

I just received a phone call from my sister about Methodist Hospital, she has just informed me that FEMA is not helping them at all. They are out of water, food, and diesel fuel for the generator. If we don't get media attention I am afraid that something horrible will happen to my parents and everyone at the hospital.

There are 700 people in the 3rd floor lobby, about 50 or staff, and around 50-60 patients (a few have been evacuated but the rest died). They did have helicopters evacuating patients, but now they are refusing (by the way the helicopters were being paid for by the hospital parent company UHC).

This is no joke, if we don't get help to my parents, the hospital and everyone in the hospital may die. I don't want to be dramatic but the reality is they are on their own.

***

My cousin and his family have not yet been rescued. There are six people including a young child and three Tulane University students. The address is 3254 Gentilly Blvd.

Reports are that a rescue boat came on Tuesday and took the family across the street because they were in worst condition. However, no one came back for them. I understand that they are in the attic with no food or water...waiting to be rescued. Thank you.

---

E&P Staff (letters@editorandpublisher.com)

A building is on fire in downtown New Orleans September 2, 2005. New Orleans fell deeper into chaos on Friday with gangs roaming the streets and corpses rotting in the sun a full four days after Hurricane Katrina lashed the city and