August 30
Following up what I wrote yesterday about Katrina, I have some interesting reading for you. You might be getting Katrina'd-out by repetitive news retrospectives, but there is back story you probably haven't heard. BBC reporter Greg Palast dug up the story of the evacuation plan that was outsourced to a contractor with no evacuation planning experience but plenty experience as a Republican donor, and by the way appears not to have gotten written. He also discovered federal helicopters got footage of the initial breaking of the levees but nobody passed the word to state and local officials. I almost wrote how shocking it is that this could happen in the 21st century, but given how the 21st century has sucked so far it's almost expected.

Mike Malloy isn't usually my speed, but he had a powerful program on Tuesday while subbing for Randi Rhodes. He read an incredible account by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, paramedics attending a conference in New Orleans when Katrina stranded them. They were part of the group of a few hundred who tried to evacuate over the one bridge out of the city and were turned back at gunpoint. I quoted part over on the right (it might be on the Katrina quotes archive by the time you're reading this). Turning them back was one of the lesser things the authorities did to them. Instead of being helped, they were threatened, harassed, and robbed. Shelters made from scrounged materials were destroyed with nothing to replace them, and what food and water they'd been able to find were confiscated at gunpoint. Malloy started reading it about 13 minutes into the podcast. I found the article on Counterpunch. Malloy also played the audio of Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press that I mentioned yesterday, contrasting that with the acting president's failure to act as president, such as reacting to desperate people looting food and bottled water by declaring zero tolerance for looting and calling on people to show individual responsibility. What did the idiot think they were doing by getting supplies wherever they could when he had failed like no other president in history. Hyperbole? Give me an example of a president failing more miserably.

August 29
It's one year since Hurricane Katrina. It says something that I don't even have to mention where it struck. I could have even said just "one year since the hurricane." It may not be the biggest natural disaster in US history. Perhaps the San Francisco earthquake will be bigger. I suppose Chicago might make a claim for the fire. However, this will be the first disaster caused by years spent refusing to heed warnings about what would happen if the levees weren't fixed before a big hurricane hit, and exacerbated by gross negligence once disaster struck. I think one thing it says that no one needs reminding what this is about is that the false presidency died that day. Even another war might not revive it. Maybe an alien invasion would help but it's likely beyond even Karl Rove to rig that. No, the Republicans will have to settle for the usual rigging of elections, though they might lose by so much this year that even cheating won't help, not unless they're willing to start reversing double digit loses.

That doesn't mean the spin and lies haven't resumed. You know the sort of thing I mean, I hope. The buses that weren't in working order anyway being shown on TV caught in the flood. The inaccuracy of reports about gangs and crime in the Superdome being used to throw doubt on everything. The scapegoating of Michael Brown to protect Bush and Chertoff. The briefing Bush received where he was warned only that the breaches would be "topped", not "breached", like that makes a difference.

When you hear this crap, remind yourself of how Bush said no one anticipated the breaches even though there were years of warnings anticipating just that. Remember the story of Sen. Trent Lott, R-MS, telling a sheriff in his home state to arrest FEMA officials if they diverted emergency supplies. If you find yourself believing this was primarily a failure of the state and local governments, remind yourself that for this to be true, all the state and local governments in three states must have failed. Is that really more believable than the acting president's administration screwing up?

If still you're finding yourself doubting Bush bungled as badly as you recall, remember this Meet the Press interview with Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, where he made for the most wrenching moment on this staid, inside Washington program by breaking down as he described the death of a colleagues mother: "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night." Transcript | Video

August 19
Continuing my conversation with RebukeTheWorld, here's my response to her response Wednesday:

You may have missed the thrust of my question about Iraq's prior civil wars, because you wrote extensively about Saddam's time while my question is about before that. I raise the question, and ask again what civil wars there were before Saddam, because you still come from the assumption Iraq is an inherently violent society which hasn't known another way to solve its problems. This is both wrong and dangerous. Wrong for reasons I'll elaborate on in a moment, and dangerous because Americans tend to look at foreign conflicts and consistently dismiss them on the grounds they've been fighting for centuries, and thereby misunderstand the causes of conflict and the possible resolutions, leading to such foreign policy mistakes as invading Iraq. We do that with Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict, we did it with the Balkans, and that was a reason we stayed out of World War II until we were attacked.

Saddam was a murderous dictator, but his rule was one period in a very long history. He will go down as Iraq's Ivan the Terrible, Iraq's Pinochet, Iraq's Ceaucescu, yet l doubt you would suggest Russia, Chile, or Romania are inherently violent societies. May I suggest Saddam's period is merely recent, not typical. That's why I was asking not about how violent Iraq has been since 1978, but how violent it was before. I take issue with the first part of your sentence, "The insurgents are the culture of Iraq and there are millions that support their views but not all want to participate in a war." If that were so, shouldn't Iraq have been plagued with such violence going back at least through the 20th century? But what are the pre-Saddam examples?

To give an illustration of what I mean, I presume you and our readers know something about the Bosnian civil war, at least to the extent of knowing it happened and killed a lot of people relative to the country's small size. The country has been at peace for ten years. Suppose you knew nothing of the US or Bosnia except for the last ten years, and you were asked the question which country is more violent. You would notice that for the time you were familiar with, Bosnia had no wars, while the US had the Kosovo War, the Afghan War, Iraq War II, and was making threats to more countries. Which would you conclude was the more violent country? And wouldn't an American the defend his country's reputation by asking to look at more than just ten years? Thus do I suggest that before saying insurgents are the culture of Iraq, you look at pre-Saddam Iraq.

I call this notion that some cultures are inherently violent "dangerous" because it becomes tempting to blame the victims of mass killing, and to absolve ourselves of any fault or obligation. The sad fact is there would not be civil war or large scale sectarian killing, I'll leave the terminology question for later, without our invasion. Whatever conclusion that leads to about what we should do from here, that fact is both unavoidable and pregnant with meaning.

If I can steer back onto Hillary Clinton for a moment since she was the starting point, she the subject of my post on the 15th for being the subject of a Swift Boat level attack ad.

August 16
Continuing my conversation with RebukeTheWorld, here's her response to my response on the 13th:

Hello Eric, I too agreed with much in what you said but with a few thoughts to suggest for rebuttal. One thing is for certain, Secretary Rumsfeld underestimated the culture of Iraq. I'm sure his optimism laid in the hopes that freedom would execute "A great Iraqi people support system" to fight against any insurgent agenda but that will not become evident by a people who've been ruled by fear.

Hillary Clinton's views on staying in the war are just as ignorant as Rumsfeld's six month prediction to win this war. It's by her lack of historical understanding that she draws an opinion on our stay in Iraq. I agree with you that Afghanistan was put on the back burner with our engagement in the Iraq War. Good points! The critical views I mentioned in my article about Rumsfeld's tactics is what I wanted to challenge, since it's the common ground for much of the criticism.

You wrote- So a question I have for you is when was a prior Iraqi civil war?

I think that depends on one's definition. Today, some experts are saying there still isn't an civil war in Iraq. Some are saying that there is. I'm saying that there has been inner civil war in Iraq for a very long time. Do we define inner civil war by united sides against one another? Do we define inner civil war by one powerful united force against those fighting, one by one? Inner civil war is the "the people against the people" with brutal force but can come in different forms. We still don't have a full on civil war in Iraq by its grandest definition because the combined effort of the people aren't fighting back as of yet. What is also true is the Iraqi culture and religious bias accepts that killing their own people is fair game. This existed through out Saddam's reign and before. We can't negate the Kurds and their continual uprisings against the Iraq government either. Whether it's the Kurds who were slaughtered by them in the 1980's for their support in the Iran war or the Sunnis, even today their voices seek its own justice with cultural problematic distinctions.

In March of 1991, the Iraqi people marched in a united form as a protest against Saddam and he retaliated by killing thousands of those unarmed citizens. There were only a few collected campaigns against Saddam but there were 100,000's of solo campaigns that saw death by Saddam's orders. Over 200,000 innocent Iraqis were imprisoned and tortured, including children as a consequence for their fighting back. If civil war is defined only by its grandest terms than those who fought one by one and were brutally killed one by one, were only uprisings in solo land only. The truth is, the culture is what is it and the people did fight back but not unified. They fought with voices and died as individuals throughout Saddam's rule.

Iraq's religious biases support brutality against their own and it's by this too, that I knew day one that the Iraq war would mean the longest war in the United States' history. The insurgents are the culture of Iraq and there are millions that support their views but not all want to participate in a war. And, then there are the silent voices slaughtered by Hussein, whose living relatives today fear to speak. BBC correspondent John Sweeney said, "I have been to Baghdad a number of times. Being in Iraq is like creeping around inside someone else's migraine. The fear is so omnipresent you could almost eat it. No one talks."

You wrote- A coup or popular uprising wouldn't have left the vacuum. It might not have been sweetness and light right afterward, but there would have been some order.

My thoughts is you can suppress the people with fear and create an illusion of peace and order but if the culture remains unchanged; it only takes a day of freedom to see the explosion from those who once did nothing. The vacuum of Saddam's control created less uprisings in the last twenty years but the uprisings still occurred, one by one. The hidden war against its own people with innocent women, men and children in prisons can't even be accurately accounted for. Its estimated to be in the millions but no one knows for sure.

You wrote- They managed before Saddam to not kill each other. There has been separatism on the part of the Kurds which has sometimes been violent.

I agree that this appears to be true but the graves reveal the one by ones that were killed under Saddam's rule.

You wrote- The Iraqis have a history that shows they're more violent than anyone else.

I disagree. Millions died in the Iraq/Iran war. 100,000's with the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shiites, The Shia, etc...and inner civil war within the Iraqi people makes Iraq significant. It doesn't set Iraq apart from Iran, Africa and a few other nations where war has existed far more than not but globally, they've significantly violent.

The Iraq civil war between the Shia and Sunni will be what I suspect ,a future genocide of the Sunni People. The Shia government and its people over 60% population, the Sunnis don't stand a chance. Rumsfeld's tactics for this war isn't the reason for the uprisings and the lack of stability in Iraq. The uprisings have always been but in different forms and the explosion to com,e is when we pull out. And, we cant afford to stay for a 100 years to subside the inevitable. Like I said, Iraq has to make its own history. The birth pangs of Iraq isn't a new country but a new government. I should have made that clearer in my article. I don't believe that democracy will win for some time there but I pray it will. The Bush administration or any other presidential administration has no ability to control the powers that will sway in Iraq and that is why I negate policy in spite of the errors made.