Hurricane

[Gyps]

From da Onion

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40525 But seriously... The body count, co ... mbers.html lots of other links in the blog comments.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 36-6692414 ... is a reference to "Thunder Run: Three Days with the Tusker Brigade in the Battle of Baghdad." You may be surprised to find on a book cover that there was a battle of Baghdad when we took the city in April, 2003.

There was, and it was bloody, and it was covered up with the distraction of Private Jessica Lynch, whom the media inserted into their "coverage" (really cover-up) of the Quicksand War in Iraq at just the right time to make sure America didn't get any unpleasant ideas that US GIs were dying left and right from the Baghdad Airport to the center of Baghdad that weekend.....

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php letter from michael moore who is down in NOLA and Mississippi... "The truth is that there are dead bodies everywhere and no one is picking them up. My crew reports that in most areas there is no FEMA presence, and very little Red Cross..."

http://www.hereinreality.com/funeralgate.htm Funeralgate

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u ... _dead_dc_4 ...Louisiana's governor condemned the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday for moving too slowly to recover the dead from New Orleans and said she has signed a contract directly on behalf of the state with the recovery company originally hired by FEMA.
...


And Ry? Not even their military operations there are up to par, not relating to the body recovery anyway. Some moron on a blog comment got on my nerves, kept asking (kind of in defense of the effort) "well how would YOU get rid of 10,000 bodies?" this is how i replied...

the way you handle thousands of bodies is to set up JUST as they were already set up to do in the beginning. they arranged space in a refrigerated warehouse in a small town north of NOLA and got refrigerated trucks and body bags and forensics people and coroners to do the IDing. the way you handle this many bodies is one at a time as they come in. as they did in NYC on 9-11. the way you handle bodies is by notifying the families as they come if you can identify them that way or with snapshots on a private website and a cross-reference database of the missing if you have to, as has been mentioned here. sad, morbid, but necessary and something we may have to face again in the future. and if you never can identify them, if they had no one, then you become their family and bury them and pray for them. the way you handle bodies is like the military is so used to doing in the many many wars we have fought. in all the horror of WWII and Vietnam and Korea and the Gulf Wars (all of them) we haven't lost forever many bodies. Bodies that had to be removed from a dangerous battle zone and shipped thousands of miles across oceans and deserts now have we? That we managed. But we can't even handle it in Louisiana? And if youre not sure HOW to handle bodies you find people who do know how. you call people in. you figure it fucking out. and the way you handle the bodies is with all the respect and dignity you can manage given the horrible situation. and you bury them with dignity no matter what too. in temporary cemetaries in the surrounding areas if you have to. the way you don't handle bodies is to leave them rotting in homes for over a week almost two or hanging on a fence or sitting against a brick wall. what the hell kind of question is this that you feel you needed to repeat it this way? are you trying to make some sort of point? i'm sorry but you asking it this way was uncool. did this answer at least a little bit of your question?

[Corey Michael]

This is certainly going out on a limb and I honestly have not read all of this material, but I will post it anyways just in case there is something more to this than an outrageous conspiracy theory. This is for anyone who is suspicious about the FOX program about the Hurricane impacting Gulf Oil production on September 5th, and about one week earlier the storm actually hits and gas prices skyrocket above $3. I am highly skeptical about this information. I am simply interested to see what other people think and if anyone has heard of this stuff before. It is a new one on me.

http://forum.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse ... 7237625750

[Gyps]

Looting Charge Rankles Church Deaconess By KEVIN MCGILL and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers

KENNER, La. - Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among hardened criminals. Her bail is a stiff $50,000.

Her offense? Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.

Family and eyewitnesses have a different story. They say Maten is an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat but was wrongly handcuffed by tired, frustrated officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store.

Not even the deli owner wants her charged.

"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them. Instead of chasing after people who were running, they grabbed the old lady was who walking," said Elois Short, Maten's daughter, who works in traffic enforcement for neighboring New Orleans police.

Short has enlisted the help of the AARP, the senior citizens lobby, the Federal Emergency Management Agency legal assistance office, made up of volunteer lawyers, and a private attorney to get her mother freed. But the task has been complicated.

Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hour away. And the judge who set $50,000 bail by phone — 100 times the maximum $500 fine under state law for minor thefts — has not returned a week's worth of calls, her lawyer said.

"She has slipped through the cracks and the wheels of justice have stopped turning for Mrs. Maten," attorney Daniel Beckett Becnel III said.

The family has not been able to visit her during her two weeks of confinement and was allowed to talk to her by phone for only a few minutes. The state prison declined to let The Associated Press interview Maten by phone, demanding a written request.

Becnel, family members and witnesses said police snared Maten, a diabetic, in the parking lot of a hotel where she had fled the floodwaters that swamped her New Orleans home. She had paid for her room with a credit card and dutifully followed authorities' instructions to pack extra food, they said.

She was retrieving a piece of sausage from the cooler in her car and planned to grill it so she and her frail 80-year-old husband, Alfred, could eat, according to her defenders. The parking lot was almost a block from the looted store, they said.

"That woman was never, never in that store," said Naisha Williams, 23, a New Orleans bank security guard who said she witnessed the episode and is distantly related to Maten. "If they want to take it to court, I'm willing to get on the stand and tell them the police is wrong. She is totally innocent."

Police Capt. Steve Carraway said Wednesday that Maten was arrested in the checkout area of a small store next to police headquarters.

The arrest report is short and assigns the value of goods Maten is alleged to have taken at $63.50. The items are not identified.

"When officers arrived, the arrestee was observed leaving the scene with items from the store. The store window doors were observed smashed out, where entry to the store was made," police reported.

Williams, one of the witnesses, said Maten was physically unable to get inside the store — even if she had wanted to.

"She is not capable of even looting it the way the store was at the time. You had to jump over a counter, and she is a diabetic and weak-muscled and wouldn't be able to get herself over it. And she couldn't afford to step on broken glass," Williams said.

Williams said she tried to explain that to police but was brushed off.

"They didn't want to hear it. They put handcuffs on her. They just said we were emotional. It was basically, `Just shut up,'" she said.

Maten's husband was left abandoned at the hotel, until family members picked him up. He is too upset to be interviewed, the family said.

Christine Bishop, the owner of the Check In Check Out deli, said that she was angry that looters had damaged her store, but that she would not want anyone charged with a crime if the person had simply tried to get food to survive. "Especially not a 70-year-old woman," Bishop said.

Short, Maten's daughter, did not witness the incident. She said her mother has led a law-abiding life. She is a deaconess at the Resurrection Mission Baptist Church and won an award for her decades of service at a hospital, Short said.

"Why would someone loot when they had a car with a refrigerator and had paid with a credit card at the hotel? The circumstances defy the theory of looting," said Becnel, Maten's lawyer.

Robin Peak, a legal analyst from AARP who assisted Maten's family, declined to discuss the case. She wrote colleagues an e-mail earlier this week about the elderly woman's plight. It was titled, "50K: The Price of Freedom in New Orleans."

___

Associated Press writer John Solomon contributed to this story from Washington