How many died directly from the hurricane, and how many from the wait?

[ForrestGump]

I'm assuming that it's impossible to tell, with any degree of accuracy, especially without any concerted forensic investigation on an unprecedented scale. I've been through several hurricanes, including a strong Category 3 (that may have crossed into Category 4, not that far from Katrina's force when it hit the city), and --even with the horrific storm surge -- I guarantee that most of the deaths in New Orlens, at least, were post-hurricane. I bet that dehydration, a tragically ironic lack of water in a flooded city, killed far more than either winds or immediate flooding.

If that's so, and I find it hard to believe it could be anything but true, the burden of all those deaths rests squarely on the narrow shoulders of George W. Bush and his cronies. Not that Georgie is even capable of feeling such burden. And not that he or they care that even the worst of the death toll directly resulting from the hurricane -- in New Orleans that's likely the result of flooding rather than wind damage or flying debris -- resulted from a levée breach and subsequent flood that can and should be seen as a result of the Bush II régime's policy of econimic attrition.

I guess we can be grateful that Katrina didn't hit New Orleans as the Category 5 monster that it was earlier in its track. In the long run, though, with the inexcusable delay in getting to people in that city, perhaps the death toll wouldn't have been much worse if it had.

Maybe Bush isn't truly a "mass murderer" in this instance -- I'm not familiar enough with the legal nomenclature to say and we can't yet prove any malice aforethought -- but he sure as hell is a mass-manslayer, or whatever the term should be. If this doesn't unseat those neocon scum then there's probably no hope for America...that's something that's been true of every event since they seized power, but this is a rare occasion when the mainstream US media has let the mask slip and shown some truth, so the mesmerized masses have no longer an excuse for their ignorance or apathy.

[Cleita]

1. If people were alive after the hurricane hit but died

because they didn't get the aid they needed, not just 24 hours later, but almost a week later, he is certainly culpable and could be called a mass murderer at the most and guilty of gross criminal negligence at the very least. Cutting the red tape and issuing orders to speed up the response should have been his job, but he was on vacation playing golf, at fund raisers eating cake and playing a guitar, while people were living through horror and hell.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. check out the threads on autopsies -- we won;t know what the

people died of - because they aren't going to do them. T

[Silverhair]

3. 40,000 autopsies would take a LOT of time.

And the bodies are decomposing. There just isn't time to autopsy every corpse. No tinfoil hat needed.