| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
03 Mar 2006 09:27:38 PM |
| Object: |
No One Could Have Anticipated... |
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030206J.shtml
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:20:12 -0800
From: Zepp <zepp@finestplanet.com>
Subject: #Pitt: "No One Could Have Anticipated..."
http://apnews.myway.com/image/20060301/KATRINA_VIDEO.sff_WX112_20060301180048.html?date=20060302&docid=D8G33I1O1
<http://apnews.myway.com/image/20060301/KATRINA_VIDEO.sff_WX112_20060301180048.html?date=20060302&docid=D8G33I1O1>
'No One Could Have Anticipated ...'
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 02 March 2006
The video is gut-wrenching.
There they sit, a whole room full of hurricane experts and disaster
managers, shouting down a telephone line at George W. Bush, warning him
a full day ahead of time that Hurricane Katrina is a catastrophe waiting
to happen. There stands Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane
Center, emphatically explaining that Katrina is far larger and more
dangerous than Hurricane Andrew, that the levees in New Orleans are in
grave danger of being overtopped, and that the loss of life could be
extreme.
There sits the much-maligned FEMA Director Michael Brown, joining in
the chorus of warnings to Mr. Bush and giving every appearance of a man
actually doing his job. "This is, to put it mildly, the big one," says
Brown. "Everyone within FEMA is now virtually on call." Brown goes on to
deliver an eerily accurate prediction of the horrors to come within the
Louisiana Superdome. "I don't know what the heck we're going to do for
that, and I also am concerned about that roof," says Brown. "Not to be
kind of gross here, but I'm concerned about (medical and mortuary
disaster team) assets and their ability to respond to a catastrophe
within a catastrophe."
And there, of course, is Mr. Bush, sitting in a dim conference room
while on vacation in Texas, listening to all the pleas for immediate
action on the telephone. With an emphatic hand gesture, Bush promises
any and all help necessary. "I want to assure the folks at the state
level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm,"
says Bush, "but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at
our disposal after the storm." After the delivery of this promise,
however, Bush goes mute. No questions, no comments, no concerns. As if
to foreshadow what the people of New Orleans received from their leader,
Mr. Bush finishes the conference by delivering a whole lot of nothing.
That's the video, 19 hours before the bomb struck New Orleans. It is
gut-wrenching because everyone now knows what came next. The storm
struck, the waters rolled in, and thousands were left to die. Days
passed with no help reaching the city. Images of corpses left to rot in
the streets were broadcast around the globe.
It is gut-wrenching, more than anything else, because of this: four
days later, when questioned about his flaccid response to the
catastrophe in Louisiana, Bush stated, "I don't think anybody
anticipated the breach of the levees." Right. No one anticipated the
breach of the levees except the Director of the National Hurricane
Center, the Director of FEMA, and a half-dozen other experts who
implored Mr. Bush to take this storm seriously a full day before the
hammer dropped.
No one could have anticipated it? That has a familiar ring to it.
No one could have anticipated the failure of the levees.
No one could have anticipated the strength of the insurgency in Iraq.
No one could have anticipated that people would use airplanes as
weapons against buildings.
No one could have anticipated these things ... except all the people
who did. We are forced to get into some very large numbers today to
accurately assess the body count from all the things the Bush
administration would have us believe no one could have anticipated.
No one could have anticipated the vigorous violence the Iraqi people
would greet any invaders with, said the Bush administration, except a
roomful of now-unemployed generals, a whole galaxy of military experts,
several former weapons inspectors, more than a few now-silenced voices
within the administration itself, and millions of average citizens who
took to the streets to stop the impending disaster they easily
anticipated. Add this to the "No One Could Have Anticipated" body count:
nearly 2,300 American soldiers, thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police,
and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
No one could have anticipated that people would use airplanes as
weapons against buildings, said the Bush administration. Really?
In 1993, a $150,000 study was undertaken by the Pentagon to
investigate the possibility of airplanes being used as bombs. A draft
document of this was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice
Department, and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 1994, a
disgruntled Federal Express employee invaded the cockpit of a DC10 with
the intention of crashing it into a company building. Again in 1994, a
pilot deliberately crashed a small airplane into the White House
grounds, narrowly missing the building itself. Also in 1994, an Air
France flight was hijacked by members of a terrorist organization called
the Armed Islamic Group, who intended to crash the plane into the Eiffel
Tower.
The 1993 Pentagon report was followed up in September 1999 by a
report titled "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism." This report
was prepared for the American intelligence community by the Federal
Research Division, an adjunct of the Library of Congress. The report
stated, "Suicide bombers belonging to Al Qaida's martyrdom battalion
could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the
Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."
On August 6, 2001, George W. Bush received his Presidential Daily
Briefing. The briefing described active plots by Osama bin Laden to
attack the United States. The word "hijacking" appeared in that
briefing. When he received this briefing, George W. Bush was in Texas
for a month-long vacation. Again. He did nothing in response. Again.
For the love of God, even the fiction writers saw this coming. Tom
Clancy's book "Debt of Honor," written in 1994, ends with a commercial
aircraft being flown into the Capitol Building during a joint session of
Congress, virtually wiping out the entire government. The famous Stephen
King novella "The Running Man," written in 1982, ends in similar
fashion. "Heeling over slightly," reads the ending of the King novella,
"the Lockheed struck the Games building dead on, three quarters of the
way up. Its tanks were still better than a quarter full. Its speed was
slightly over five hundred miles an hour. The explosion was tremendous,
lighting up the night like the wrath of God, and it rained fire twenty
blocks away."
Add this to the "No One Could Have Anticipated" body count: more
than 3,000 people killed in the Towers, the Pentagon and in a
Pennsylvania field, in addition to thousands of Afghani civilians who
found themselves collaterally damaged in our attack upon that nation.
Remember the Bush-Gore debate from what seems a thousand years ago?
Bush was asked about the responsibilities of an executive in a time of
emergency. He said in response, "I remember the floods that swept our
state. I remember going down to Del Rio, Texas ... that's the time when
you're tested not only - it's the time to test your mettle, a time to
test your heart when you see people whose lives have been turned upside
down. It broke my heart to go to the flood scene in Del Rio where a
fellow and his family got completely uprooted. The only thing I knew was
to get aid as quickly as possible with state and federal help, and to
put my arms around the man and his family and cry with them."
Thousands in Louisiana and the surrounding states. Thousands in New
York, Washington, Pennsylvania and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands in
Iraq. Is Mr. Bush crying with them, and their families, because no one
could have anticipated this?
There is, perhaps, one aspect to all this that no one could have
anticipated. No one could have anticipated that the United States of
America would ever be governed by a man so callow, so unconnected, so
uncaring, so detached, that tens of thousands of people would die during
his time in office because he just didn't give a damn.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030206J.shtml
--
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
Michelle Malkin (Mickey) aa list#1
BAAWA Knight & Bible Thumper Thumper
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: No One Could Have Anticipated... |
04 Mar 2006 03:00:13 AM |
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In article <iJmdndK_mcyDlJTZnZ2dnUVZ_tGdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
"Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030206J.shtml
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:20:12 -0800
From: Zepp <zepp@finestplanet.com>
Subject: #Pitt: "No One Could Have Anticipated..."
http://apnews.myway.com/image/20060301/KATRINA_VIDEO.sff_WX112_20060301180048.
html?date=20060302&docid=D8G33I1O1
<http://apnews.myway.com/image/20060301/KATRINA_VIDEO.sff_WX112_20060301180048
.html?date=20060302&docid=D8G33I1O1>
'No One Could Have Anticipated ...'
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 02 March 2006
The video is gut-wrenching.
And there, of course, is Mr. Bush, sitting in a dim conference room
while on vacation in Texas, listening to all the pleas for immediate
action on the telephone. With an emphatic hand gesture, Bush promises
any and all help necessary. "I want to assure the folks at the state
level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm,"
says Bush, "but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at
our disposal after the storm." After the delivery of this promise,
however, Bush goes mute. No questions, no comments, no concerns. As if
to foreshadow what the people of New Orleans received from their leader,
Mr. Bush finishes the conference by delivering a whole lot of nothing.
Bush was probably irritated that the tele conference interrupted his
vacation.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
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| User: "Mike Painter" |
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| Title: Re: No One Could Have Anticipated... |
03 Mar 2006 10:40:57 PM |
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Michelle Malkin wrote:
No one could have anticipated that people would use airplanes as
weapons against buildings.
Never. Not in a million years.
Not even if it happened by accident in 1947.
Next you'll be saying there was a movie about it.
Like the 1981 film "Escape from New York" wherein "En route to a conference,
the President, on board Air Force One, is forced to eject in a pod when a
female terrorist takes over the controls and crashes the plane into a
building."
Guess which buildings the one they picked was close to?
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| User: "G-Ride" |
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| Title: Re: No One Could Have Anticipated... |
03 Mar 2006 11:20:48 PM |
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"Mike Painter" <mddotpainter@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:tT8Of.65659$PL5.65525@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
Michelle Malkin wrote:
No one could have anticipated that people would use airplanes as
weapons against buildings.
Never. Not in a million years.
Not even if it happened by accident in 1947.
Next you'll be saying there was a movie about it.
Like the 1981 film "Escape from New York" wherein "En route to a
conference,
the President, on board Air Force One, is forced to eject in a pod when a
female terrorist takes over the controls and crashes the plane into a
building."
Guess which buildings the one they picked was close to?
I thought they actually did crash into the WTC in the movie. Perhaps my
recollection isn't very good.
--
Aloha, G-Ride
"Birds fall from the window ledge above mine.
Then they flap their wings at the last second."
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| User: "Mike Painter" |
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| Title: Re: No One Could Have Anticipated... |
04 Mar 2006 03:40:48 AM |
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G-Ride wrote:
"Mike Painter" <mddotpainter@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:tT8Of.65659$PL5.65525@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
Michelle Malkin wrote:
No one could have anticipated that people would use airplanes as
weapons against buildings.
Never. Not in a million years.
Not even if it happened by accident in 1947.
Next you'll be saying there was a movie about it.
Like the 1981 film "Escape from New York" wherein "En route to a
conference, the President, on board Air Force One, is forced to
eject in a pod when a female terrorist takes over the controls and
crashes the plane into a building."
Guess which buildings the one they picked was close to?
I thought they actually did crash into the WTC in the movie. Perhaps
my recollection isn't very good.
You're not alone. I just saw it recently and remember thinking how close to
reality it came but people who saw it when it first came out "remember" it
was one of the towers that it flew into.
.
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| User: "Uncle Buck" |
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| Title: Re: No One Could Have Anticipated... |
04 Mar 2006 02:46:02 PM |
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On Sat, 04 Mar 2006 09:40:48 GMT, "Mike Painter" <mddotpainter@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
G-Ride wrote:
"Mike Painter" <mddotpainter@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:tT8Of.65659$PL5.65525@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
Michelle Malkin wrote:
No one could have anticipated that people would use airplanes as
weapons against buildings.
Never. Not in a million years.
Not even if it happened by accident in 1947.
Next you'll be saying there was a movie about it.
Like the 1981 film "Escape from New York" wherein "En route to a
conference, the President, on board Air Force One, is forced to
eject in a pod when a female terrorist takes over the controls and
crashes the plane into a building."
Guess which buildings the one they picked was close to?
I thought they actually did crash into the WTC in the movie. Perhaps
my recollection isn't very good.
You're not alone. I just saw it recently and remember thinking how close to
reality it came but people who saw it when it first came out "remember" it
was one of the towers that it flew into.
I think where they got confused is that one of the WTC towers was where Russel's
character landed his own plane. I didn't watch the whole movie, but I
remembered that much.
--
L8r,
Uncle Buck
************************************************
The true mark of a civilized society is when its
citizens know how to hate each other peacefully.
************************************************
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