The Governor blurted out that those guardsman who had returned from Iraq 'have been killing people over there,' so they're not going to be messed with in New Orleans. Uh, quite. Welcome to the United States of America and have a nice day.

September 3, 2005 (Saturday)
London (England)

THE news from New Orleans is very grim. Perhaps ten thousand dead, and now cholera and typhus will start to rampage.

If I were a doctor anywhere nearby, regardless of the risk, I would have gone in by boat and helped, taken supplies of insulin myself and all the other things needed. Perhaps some doctors have, but we do not hear of it.

Why did the US Navy not organise a fleet of little ships to cruise in through the waterways bringing aid? Why didn't the Carnival cruise line send a couple of its floating casinos to provide shelter? Well, we know who owns Carnival, and those folks ain't about to help the Blacks any, are they.

A total lack of organisation, and now things have worsened so far that even the bravest Black Hawk crew find it more prudent not to set down their helicopters in that angry city, but to toss out supplies onto wasteland hundreds of yards from the hungry crowds, often hovering themselves a safe distance above the ground.

Like Mr Sanctimonious Blair on July 7, the day of the London bombings, George Bush was on vacation and did not at first elect to return. He and his puppeteers have left the United States with its pants down.

The only joy has been to watching his verbal stumblings as he tries to deliver ex tempore but convincing words of religious comfort to the sufferers, again from a safe distance; promises to rebuild the Mississippi Senator's fine home soon; and then escapes back to Washington DC, expending in Air Force One more gasoline for the two-way trip than the entire fleet of supply trucks and buses gradually trickling across Louisiana into the rotting, dying port city.

Two years ago, when vast forest fires broke out in California, I observed that the National Guardsmen who would traditionally have been on hand to check the conflagrations were now away in the Middle East. So the fires at home raged on.

Now it is the same disaster. The White House took a risk, and has again had its bluff called. George Bush sent 3,000 Louisiana National Guardsmen to his madcap escapade in Iraq, and 7,000 from Mississippi, to kill innocents over there; not a word yet about the effect on US soldier morale in Iraq, but those guardsmen must be wondering what has happened to their next of kin back home in New Orleans.

The only official to distinguish himself verbally so far is the Mayor of New Orleans; though even he seems to have failed to inspire the population to leave in time, or to have provided the transport necessary for his sick and impecunious fellow-Blacks.

The vacuous head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, has exposed himself on television speaking with a wisdom that sounds like the Biblical "crackling of thorns beneath an empty pot," while the woman governor of Louisiana, a pudgy faced White, who seems particularly uneducated, incoherent, and helpless, -- how do they get these jobs? -- blurted out that those guardsman who had returned from Iraq "have been killing people over there," so they're not going to be messed with in New Orleans.

Uh, quite. Welcome to the United States of America and have a nice day.