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09/05/2005: More on that Fake Sympathy and Fake Relief...
...this from Mark Kleiman: Fake Sympathy and Fake Relief Efforts: A Quote from Sen. Mary Landrieu:""But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government. [Empahsis Kleiman's]
"Mr. President, I'm imploring you once again to get a cabinet-level official stood up as soon as possible to get this entire operation moving forward regionwide with all the resources -- military and otherwise -- necessary to relieve the unmitigated suffering and economic damage that is unfolding."
And this from Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly) on the "staging" of the other relief efforts as documented by the German TV crews [and reported by Thomas over at Newsrack]:"UPDATE: Good God. Laura Rozen passes along the following report from a Dutch reader:
There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.
This goes beyond stage management. This is criminal.
Karen on 09.05.05 @ 05:39 AM CST
