FAA says, ""There has been no such report.", of snipers in NOLA

[OKthatsIT]

Wary of the Stories of New Orleans Rampaging
By Lee Russ, Section Diaries
Posted on Fri Sep 02, 2005 at 09:03:49 AM EST

Television coverage of New Orleans is heavy with tales of absolute lawlessness, including a widely reported sniper shot at a rescue helicopter.
I don't doubt that looting has occurred, nor that some of it is for "luxury" goods not just necessities. But I do have a lot of skepticism about the type and degree of lawlessness being portrayed.

Now it turns out that Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, has cast doubt on the report of the firing on the helicopter. She said she had no such report.

"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.

from http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205]

It's probably good to keep in mind that the last two major disasters of this scale, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 (some 6,000 dead) and the late 1800s Johnstown, PA flood (2,200 fatalities), both involved false reports of "minority" savagery, Blacks and Eastern Europeans supposedly rampaging and cutting off the fingers of the dead to get their rings. All or most of these stories, many reported in the respectable press of the time, are now believed to have been completely untrue or wildly exaggerated.

MORE...
http://watchingthewatchers.org/story/2005/9/2/9350/92642

[Old and In the Way]

1. FEMA wasn't ready to begin their disti operations.

I think they used this as an excuse to buy additional time. Blame the victims.

[wli]

2. It was a SWAT team firing at disaster victims on the ground.

Story here.

[KeepItReal]

3. Thank you! The truth at last. End the excuses.

Recommended

[JanusAscending]

7. That's just one persons version of the truth.

I watched CNN all day Thurs. and Fri.. and I heard Dr. Sange Ghutah, (I'm sorry, I don't remember the spelling of his last name) but he does a lot of the medical reporting for CNN. He was on the roof of the County Hosp. helping to evacuate the most critical patients, and shots were fired from a roof across the street, at the Drs. trying to do their jobs!! He said "it was a sniper"!! So.......who's right?

[vickitulsa]

10. Dr. Gupta did not hear the shots.

Not when I saw him reporting, and not when I was only listening to the audio of him reporting (when I was in the other room). What I heard him reporting was that the DOCTORS had told him they had heard shots not long before the rescue helicopter tried to set down on the helipad and then they would not land.

Today I heard either the same or another doctor at Charity Hospital saying very tiredly (like he had answered the question a thousand times) that there had been SOME problems with looters and the staff had also heard some shooting outside. But his tone of voice said he was NOT very concerned about these so-called "violent problems," and he seemed downright frustrated at the discontinued rescue efforts due to some shooting in the area. He didn't come right out and say it, I felt because he can't know for sure; but it seemed to me he thought the shooting was NOT at the rescue helicopter but general firing of weapons in the chaos on the ground surrounding the hospital where so many are wandering about like Moses and the lost children of Israel looking for the Promised Land!

Only they don't even have a Moses, unless they've picked one for themselves....

I *definitely* was not mistaken about the physician at Charity this morning just after five a.m. indicating that the violence was nowhere near sufficient to prevent rescue crews from evacuating sick, even DYING, patients and exhausted, desperate hospital staff.

I have wondered from the start and voiced my doubts here at DU the last couple of days if these reports of shooting or violence aimed at rescuers and relief workers have not been exaggerated -- and some of them completely made up. In the cases where there actually HAVE been shots fired when rescuers or relief crews came near the desperate survivors, no one even hazarded a GUESS as to WHO it was doing the shooting. The implication was that it was the seemingly omnipresent "looters" and "thugs." No camera I've seen has captured any of these so-called violent rampagers doing anything except looting. I heard the shots in the night when Chris someone, a young reporter whose last name I thought was given as Wallace but that may not be right, was reporting from a police station in New Orleans. The cop he was talking to ducked, and so did he as a result. Later more shots were heard, but the reporter said it was impossible to tell WHERE the shots were aimed.

Right now on CNN a woman on the phone is ranting irately about this very subject and more. Appears the sheeplings are not just buying that violence story without questioning it. And in hindsight, this may become a VERY significant part of the total tale of mishandling, deception, staged photo ops, and outright trickery by the Bush administration. Anything to try to make him and his appointees look better in the face of what I just heard called "blistering" criticism. The waves are growing higher on that criticism as the tide of it continues to come ashore.

In the end, there may not be enough water even in New Orleans to float George Bush's boat!

~VV

________________________________________________

[wakeme2008]

4. nom ;)

[not systems]

5. But if you said so many here accused you of...

spreading lies.

People quoting things they heard from friends and friends
of friends.

They were the ones adding to the hysteria and fear and
they were wrong.

[not systems]

6. kick. n/t

[stickdog]

8. If the lawlessness were so horridly rampant, why do we keep

seeing pictures of thousands of tired and thirsty people desperately begging for help?

Where are the pictures of all of the supposed menaces that were supposedly so dangerous that only the national media core could get in and out of NO before yesterday?

[bpilgrim]

9. RUMOR MONGERING - RUNNING RAMPANT on the web and M$M

someone is hyping this 'LAWLESSNESS' report to prepare the road for the next step in NO i fear.

peace

[Liberal In Texas]

11. I must say I looked at the places pilots would be posting and talking

about this if it happened, and have turned up nothing.

The rumor did spook an air ambulance company enough they suspended operations in NO. Don't know if they've resumed.

[Igel]

12. The statement isn't as meaningful as you think.

It presupposes that chopper pilots are able to hear and see any bullet heading their way. They're not. That none of them reported being fired on doesn't mean none were fired on. (The opposite would be meaningful.)

The on-the-ground reports need verification.

Too much rumor-mongering, and reactionary knee-jerk "that can't possibly be happening." It's possible; but mostly unproven.

[stickdog]

13. Nobody is saying, "It can't be true."

But plenty have been assuming that it MUST be true without a scrap of hard evidence to go on.

Why?

[NorthernSpy]

16. why? because when we're talking about black folks, proof ain't needed

Lots of masks have slipped round here of late. Lots and lots of masks...

I for one will remember who spread these slanders.

[Pallas180]

14. Recommended. Han't been much evolvement since 1900 -bigotry.

(: n Inotherwords Fema Brown wouldn't let any aid or first responders in "too dangerous" was totally false and an act of
genocide.

Do I think he could have done that on orders from Cheney or Bush?

Yes.

[Bluebear]

15. Thank GOODNESS that Hannity & the like could use the rumors, though!

Pigs.