Bush Administration tried to Blackmail Louisiana Governor into handing New

[merkins]

Between Wednesday morning and Friday night, ships loaded with food, water, and medical supplies arrived. FEMA refused to allow them to be off-loaded. Michael Brown then ordered the communications lines cut that tied emergency workers together.
Shortly before midnight, the Bush Administration essentially delivered an ultimatum to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco: before they released the emergency supplies, they wanted her to sign the city of New Orleans over to the Federal government.

...

Gov Blanco refused to accept Bush’s proposal because she knew it was tantamount to approving martial law, and on Saturday moved to separate the efforts of the state of Louisiana from those of the Federal government. Among other things, she hired James Lee Witt, the experienced and competent ex-Director of FEMA who had an unblemished record of success—and whom Bush had fired in favor of Joe Allbaugh, Bush’s ex Chief-of-Staff, who had little or no experience in managing disaster relief but was a proven loyal Bushie—to lead the state’s disaster relief efforts.
With Blanco protecting her independence and the shitstorm of criticism reaching fever pitch on Saturday, the White House was finally forced to release the supplies that had been held up for as much as three days and order in more than a token force of NG troops. At that point, the Blame Game started.

...

So at least part of the delay wasn’t due to Brown’s incompetence at all, real as that may have been. It was a direct result of Bush’s strategem: he held back critical supplies in a deliberate attempt to blackmail Louisiana authorities into letting him declare martial law. There is only one—one—reason he thought he could get away with this unconscionable act of cruelty: the victims were poor and black, not middle class and white.

...

Bush saw a chance to turn his class war into a military action. He wanted to declare war on the poor for real by cementing an image in the mind of the rest of America that New Orleans was full of criminals they needed protection from. In other words, he was going to use the same technique he had used to promote fear of terrorists to promote fear of the poor in order to justify military action against them and gain an enormous amount of power domestically.
Declaring martial law would give the Federal government total control of the city: the Army would be brought in to police it and—perhaps most important to this corporate president—the Federal government would have charge of all the rebuilding contracts, giving it $$$billions$$$ to hand out to its corporate sponsors.

http://matewan.squarespace.com/journal/2005/9/6/war-on-the-poor-in-new-orleans-2-the-attempt-to-declare-martial-law.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html

[knowbody0]

1. already given it to halliburton

[Boo Boo]

11. I did a quick search on Google the other day, when this first came up,

and all I could find was that Halliburton would be doing repairs to U.S. Navy installations.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. They were playing politics with thousands of lives

It is really difficult to express my anger right now. These people have no moral compass. Henry Kissinger looks like a saint next to these aarvarks.

[DELUSIONAL]

3. My head is going to explode -- and I feel sick --

The worst of the worst are in control.

We are on our own.

[longship]

4. If traceable and true this is clearly impeachable offense.

Is this moonshine, or is this real? Would Gov Blanco testify, or even go public with this?

This is a very serious offense. Chimpy could go to jail for many years if this were true and he were convicted. This is close to treasonous.

[pansypoo53219]

7. sounds like murder to me

or at the least many many many counts of depraved indifferance.

[longship]

9. My thoughts exactly.

At least manslaughter at a very high level. Thousands died. But Chimpy doesn't seem to be the least bit worried about those kind of things.

[patomime]

5. Never have I seen .....

such an accurate post on DU. Congratulations for your wonderful post! I hope you mail it to every editorial section in the nation. You must be a clairvoyant!:toast:

[Carolab]

6. Governor Blanco is a HEROINE!

"He failed this time, thanks to the courage of Gov Blanco—who will no doubt pay a price for her bravery. But now we know how he’s thinking: he wants us dead or locked up. The next time he tries a trick like this, we may not have a Kathleen Blanco to protect us.

What then?"

**********

What then, indeed?

Seems to me that Bushco will have Speedy Gonzales type up a little law or two to correct this loophole, yes? And/or get the obedient lapdogs in Congress to go along?

[texpatriot2004]

13. Gov. Blanco is a heroine. n/t

[texpatriot2004]

8. That's Criminal behavior on the part of Bush and Brown. n/t

[texpatriot2004]

10. Sinister man, really evil. n/t

[Boo Boo]

12. Not ready to buy into the class war angle, that seems like a pretty

weak argument. I think it's standard operating procedure for the Bushies to want total control. They get to award their no-bid contracts and take care of their friends. It's a long time Bush family stock in trade: doling out public funds to their pals. The Governor is a Dem, not part of The Club, and can only get in the way of the profiteering.

It also allows them to control the flow of information. As we've seen with Iraq, the Bush Admin likes to arrange things so that people have to accept their version of events.

I also think they were using NO as a test case for whatever cock-eyed ideas DHS has been coming up with over lemon bars down at headquarters. They were doing grid by grid security operations before moving in with relief; they had apparently moved screeners (as in airport) in to check for God knows what. I think when they saw that Hurricane coming, they saw an opportunity to debug their procedures.

DHS seems to be mostly law-enforcement types. They see their roll as establishing control, and finding bad guys. FEMA, now part of DHS, seems to now be responsible for sub-contracting relief work out to private companies. So DHS wants to run the whole show and try out their pet theories, treating NO as a trial run for a major terrorist attack, and privatized FEMA doles out the public funds according to Bush Rules:

Support The Family and ye shall prosper.

[lindashaw]

14. Building contracts are only a fringe benefit. The ultimate goal is

much, much more than that.

Bush wants to destroy posse comitatus. Posse comitatus is the law that prevents the US military from being used inside this country against American citizens.

Once the precedent of declaring military law has been established in New Orleans, posse comitatus can be circumvented -- or perhaps repealed entirely -- and the govermentment can use any pretext for taking control.

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. Bush wanted to turn New Orleans into Fallujah

and then terrorize the country with visions of hordes of looters that were coming to take your stuff. Soon America would have turned into a military dictatorship all in the name of safety and security.