Damage control: Rove will Swift-boat local officials

Waist deep in the Big Easy, Courtesy of Robert Grossman, The New York Observer

A great battle is beginning to salvage the Bush presidency from the stench arising from the rotting corpses of New Orleans.

The New York Times reported that Karl Rove, and White House communications director, Dan Bartlett plan "to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan."

One thing we do know. While the President of the United States played hookey, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was there in the flood zone with his citizens and he was moving whatever resources he could get under his control or working with him. He was not sitting in an air conditioned office somewhere safe watching it on TV. He was out on the streets and in a helicopter doing his job.

Where was President Bush? This was a national emergency affecting a multi-state region that contains one of the country's principal strategic resources -- petroleum extraction, transportation and processing. New Orleans was drowning and he was posing for photo-ops with a cake and pretending to be playing a guitar. The Secretary of State was on vacation buying thousands of dollars worth of shoes and laughing at a Broadway play. The Vice President was in Wyoming gone fishing. The Secretary of Defense was invisible. So who was minding the store? Why didn't they drop everything and jump into the battle?

Maybe Mayor Nagin didn't get everything right. Bush and his cronies got everything wrong. Now they lie and tell us that this was all so unpredictable and they didn't know that babies in the Astrodome were dying of dehydration. They want to blame it on the guy who was there on the scene. Of course. He's a Democrat. As usual, the Democratic hero gets kicked in the groin by the Republican chickenhawks. Next it will be Clinton's fault.

They are doing what they always do -- shucking and jiving and lying and blaming the people who actually did something. This is not mere normal human reaction, but damage control policy issuing from the highest reaches of the Republican power structure. Are we going to let them get away with it again? We are facing the Apocalypse. Armageddon has arrived. We turn to Biblical imagery because the New Orleans flood was, in fact, an event of Biblical proportions.

Truth is the best antidote for lies. The rupture of the 17th Street Canal levee was a moment of truth -- horrible truth, but undeniable. Now they are trying to plug it with lies. You each have your own circle of friends and others who believe what you say. I can't give you any specifics on what to do. All I can do is to urge you to acquaint yourself with the lies, find out the truths that rupture them, and get the word out to everyone you know.

Copyright (c) Jules Siegel 2005. This work is licensed for non-comercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ Feel free to forward or republish this message at will as long as you include this notice.

Posted by jules_siegel at September 7, 2005 10:48 AM