My Opinion - FEMA Falsifying Body Counts (PISSED OFF!!)

[Stinky Bushes]

I have no article to substantiate this claim, but I personally believe, due to FEMA's declaration that THEY will be in charge of collecting and counting the dead, that they set out to purposefully suppress the body count to quelch public anger over the Federal Government's repsonse. Also fishy that FEMA barred photographers from filming dead bodies.

This whole thing stinks, and I'm pissed. Now the Administration can bolster its reputation again, saying that not as many people died due to the "great" and "rapid" rescue efforts. Accusations that thousands died due to their inaction will fall on deaf ears.

When will this evil end? When will Bush be held accountable for his gross negligence? Where is the accountability?

I personally think we cannot let up. I encourage everyone to keep calling Congress toll-free at 1-877-762-8762 and hassling the hell out of 'em. Demand the immediate impeachment of Bush and his entire administration. Keep the pressure on! Be sure to nail the Repub Congresspeople too - they are the majority and if they hear all of America calling for impeachment they will realize it'll be THEIR butts if they don't take action soon.

[GetTheRightVote]

1. I believe the same as you, it is a cover up to try to save the admin

they are so low, lower then the scum in a fish tank !!

:kick:

[William769]

2. Oy vey.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. But I thought

CNN won that challenge and now the press was allowed in. Won't the coverup at least be a bit harder to effect?

[CrispyQ]

4. Of course they are going to do this!!!

I have absolutely no doubt. Even though they've ordered tens of thousands of body bags, I will be surprised if the final 'official' body count is much more than the number lost in 9/11.

And the sheeple will buy it & continue to believe that they are in more danger of being blown up by a terrist bomb in Duluth, MN than a national disaster like a huge, sub-zero blizzard.

The evil will not end until a greater majority of the people are cold & hungry. Of course, everything good & beautiful about our country will be long gone at that point.

I worry I have become a pessimist on this issue.

[clitzpah queen]

5. Absolutely!

The sequence was: army in, shut down media, no photographs then BOOM --announcements left and right "Way lower than 10,000"

I also noticed CNN shooting in the astrodome and the army guy going right up to the camera and telling him to shut it off...

[never_get_over_it]

6. Does anyone remember that some time late last week

or last weekend that Aaron Broussard made a comment that he knows what the body counts are but he wouldn't share them becuase it would stun the nation? And I don't think he meant low numbers - I heard the ordered 25 thousand body bags

[converted_democrat]

7. You are not the only person that feels that way........

I live in Florida. People have accused FEMA of lying about the body counts as far back as Andrew. Go look it up on the net. People down here went crazy after Charley, because there were several accounts of the cover up, from several different sources. I personally know two people that are completely convinced that it happened. One of the people that told me was one of my best friends daughter who was part of the NG that was in on the clean-up effort, and the other person that told me was a good friend that lived on Charlotte Harbor when it happened. She swears up and down that she counted between 60- 70 bodies floating in Charlotte Harbor, yet the official death toll was only like 25 people. She was so upset by it all that she moved to Orlando and never even went back for her stuff.

on edit-- I heard it from all kinds of people, but these are the only ones I know with first hand knowledge. Everyone was talking about it down here.

[Stinky Bushes]

11. was charley the one last year (2004)?

Just wondering since last year was an election year and I could see Bush saying, "Keep the body count low so that I can say I helped save the people and I can get reelected."

[converted_democrat]

12. yep.....n/t

[Jeanette in FL]

17. This is correct

I too live in Florida and know that they covered up the death toll. This storm was to hit in the Tampa area which was evacuated and where the hurricane came in quickly was not evacuated. We saw mobile home parks totaled. People that I knew that went down there to help were being kept out of the area even though they had supplies, medical experience, etc.

There were reports at the time that FEMA had refrigerator trucks piled with bodies.

The same thing with Hurricane Andrew. Same story, except I think the amount of death hidden was even greater.

[converted_democrat]

21. I'm sure you already know this, but......

you know who lived in those trailer parks, right?? One of the highest concentrations of illegals and migrant workers in the state. It is easy to say people don't exist when they have no documentation to begin with.

[Jeanette in FL]

25. Your talking about Hurricane Andrew, correct

Yes, I do know that. I heard that the death count was in the thousands there. With Hurricane Charley, the number I heard was at least 400 dead. Yet the official number was something like 22-25, I believe.

[converted_democrat]

28. I was talking about Charley....

The parks that I am referring to were strung between Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte. All completely destroyed.

Could very well be the case with Andrew too, but I have no personal knowledge of what happened there.

[Jeanette in FL]

29. No I didn't know that, I do know alot of elderly

lived in some of the mobile home parks. But that makes complete sense that it was the same senerio as Hurricane Andrews. Undocumented and illegals can be thrown out like garbage and who is going to complain. FEMA had very good control of the situation in both places because there was only local media covering these storms and kept them from getting into the area.

[converted_democrat]

26. Posted to the wrong spot. n/t

[Egalitariat]

8. Like the Iraq war, a wholesale whitewashing is not possible

There'll be lists everywhere, and family members and friends will raise a stink if there are enough names missing to constitute a FEMA whitewashing.

There'll be plenty of opportunities to criticize FEMA; a whitewashing of the casualty count will not, IMHO, be one of them.

[Henny Penny]

19. I've got to admire your optimism... in face of everything

that we know about fema!!

I love the way they are not counting, or making any attempt to recover, the dead and yet they can reassure us that the loss of life was much lower than we thought! AMAZING!!!

[WiseButAngrySara]

30. Wrong post spot...sorry...n/t

[converted_democrat]

22. Not true at all. Look at the situation with Hurricane Charley.....

One of the hardest places hit were a couple of trailer parks that were notorious for housing illegals and migrant workers. Those people had no documentation to begin with. How many people do you know that would raise a stink, knowing if they did, they would be deported?

edit- for my awful spelling

[OneBlueSky]

9. tragically, the place they will be finding lots of bodies will be . . .

in attics . . . with no tv or radio, people did not know the levee had failed until the water started coming into their homes and forcing them higher and higher until many found themselves stranded in their attics . . . I pray that I'm wrong, but I fear that hundreds if not thousands may have perished in their own homes . . . whether we'll ever know the truth is an open question . . .

[ldf]

31. that is my opinion too.

the areas where to the water rose slowly allowed people to get out.

there were areas where it flooded in depths of 8 to 10 feet within minutes, not allowing time for people to do anything else except climb higher within their home. that will be where most bodies are found.

i don't know if the "sweeps" have made it to those neighborhoods yet.

was that the ninth ward?

[MadisonProgressive]

10. 1-877-SOB-U-SOB is easier to remember!

[Stinky Bushes]

13. Funny!

[yasmina27]

39. I know it sounds funny...

...but honestly, that is the # for the Senate Office Building. Thom Hartmann talks about it all the time. At first I thought I had to be a joke :)

[longship]

14. MIght be difficult to falsify

These are people with relatives and friends who will be looking for an accounting. If they are falsifying the count, that means that they will have to say people who are dead, are not dead--difficult to pull off.

State (if not federal) law requires a death certificate be filed. These are a matter of public record, with good reason for insurance and probate purposes. The state of LA will have to record these deaths just like any others--a daunting task which will have to be done regardless. An accounting will happen regardless of any attempt to falsify it.

It is just not practical, if it's even possible, to hide the number of deaths in LA.

One might argue that some people will not have friends/family to provide an accounting. But that isn't a good argument because those trying to obscure the count are not going to know who these people are.

So, I cannot agree with this conjecture.
:tinfoilhat:

on edit: It might be better use of our activism to find an issue with more credibility.

[kittenpants]

16. what about people who might have been homeless?

I'm not necessarily agreeing that the count is being suppressed, but I think some of the people most vulnerable to the hurricane (not a lot of records to leave behind because of a lack of property) might be those easiest to overlook in a final count. They might just disappear... not to mention all the bodies that will never be recovered.

[longship]

20. Re: Homeless.

Regrettably, they may fall by the wayside on this. But the homeless are *not* a large percentage of the population.

Another way to get a count is to compare census records against the count of evacuees. There are checks and audit methods to get an idea of the death toll separate from the official count.

on edit: Bear in mind that there are accurate estimates of the number of homeless. It is possible to estimate the numbers who died in the disaster. Again, there's an independent audit check.

[bobbieinok]

35. families have been separated...see DUer frustrated lefty in SanAntonio

and wife in Baton Rouge

people are in NEngland, AZ, the Dakotas,etc.........how hard will bushco work to get info?

and some DUers say bodies may be in Gulf, eaten by alligators

[JuniperLea]

15. If fewer people died than believed...

then they should be praising Nagin instead of crucifying him!

[Walt Starr]

18. Here's lookin' atcha!

Who watches the watchers?

[BlueIris]

23. I'm watching, too. nt.

[lonestarnot]

24. hmmmmm.

[BlueIris]

33. ?

Thoughts?

[anitar1]

27. Am I the only person who saw a solemn procession

of big semi's ,escourted by police, on their way to the hastily set up morgue in St. Gabriels, LA ? As the film rolled, the CNN person said they were delivering bodies in the refrigerated trucks to the morgue. Did each truck contain 5 or 10 bodies? I don't think so. I did not dream this film--I SAW it. Can't tell you which day ect as I watched so much coverage of this disaster.

[Henny Penny]

34. How many bodies can a refrigerated truck contain???

I heard a bbc reporter saying the other day that he saw 5 of these trucks and there were another 23 coming to wherever he was. And I'm sure that was just part of the operation.

[WiseButAngrySara]

32. I agree that FEMA is already trying to cover up the actual body count, and

that the timing of the statements that 'the actual death count is likely to be much lower than initially expected' is highly suspicious. But when you look at an administration that refuses to honor its soldiers returning home in draped flags, so as to keep the death counts out of the public eye, how can you expect them to honor the dead citizens of NOLA? Look how they treated the living! THIS was the great tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, IMHO,...the inhumane treatment of human beings, which was a catastrophe not of nature so much as a catastrophe of humanity. And this is why one of the neocons recent new vocabulary words is DIGNITY...precisely because they are completely devoid of it.

It is possible though that the death counts will be much lower than initially reported, because they intentionally set them much HIGHER than they knew to be possible. Also, 10,000 citizens refused to evacuate, and there is no way they could have guessed that these numbers would be so high. (So there is 10,000 subtracted from the initial death count estimate.) Also, note that it was the turngoat mayor of NOLA who initially made the dramatic estimates of death. I hold him more responsible than I do Blanco...she has become the new scapegoat by those who dictate to us not to cast blame (they should take their own advise and stuff it.)

[markus]

36. It's already begun

See this thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1771652&mesg_id=1771652

or the story on wetbankguide.blogspot.com

[DoYouEverWonder]

37. There is a big difference between deaths that are a result

of the Hurricane itself, which was an act of god and the deaths that are a result of the flood, which was an act of George Bush.

Subtract the hurricane victims from the total and then you have the victims of George.

Maybe that's why they are keeping track separately?

[markus]

40. FEMA: There was no holocaust

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1771652&mesg_id=1772620

[Stinky Bushes]

38. Oh, and do check out this link

where less than one week ago a volunteer arm of Homeland Security said the death toll could be as high as 40,000:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4736180

Now HOW can you go from an estimate of 40,000 to only a few hundred? It's like a mechanic saying, "We estimated your oil tank to hold two hundred quarts of oil, but we were wrong. Really it's around five."

Well anyhow, one can only hope for a number that low, but I just don't think it squares with reality. And I believe low numbers only serve to propagandize this debacle and take the heat off Bush for his utter failure for having allowed thousands to die.