National Incident Management System

[power_word_wedgie]

Well, what I am saying is that since there is mountains of evidence that could be used to accuse a number of people, then the argument becomes that the sabotage by one person is just as likely as the sabotage from the rest. Furthermore, there is evidence that "the saboteurs" actually took actions that would be against the likelihood of them being saboteurs and the perceived goals.

For example, if Bush wanted all of those people dead, then why would he have highly suggested to Blanco to order a mandatory evacuation instead of the voluntary evacuation that Blanco issued on August 27th? If Bush's goal was the control of the National Guard units, then why did he not enact the Insurrection Act which was at his disposal which would have given him just that?

As you have pointed out (and I'll modify slightly), shooting someone dead deliberately is different than shooting someone accidentally. (I'm only modifying it since the actions taken by some in the local and state government did also result in the loss of life) I all has to do with motive. The problem is that I have heard a bunch of theories to motivation. If someone has facts where Bush (or Blanco or Nagin for that matter) say that they actively were intending to kill people, then I'm all ears. However, the only thing that we have seen are actions that can be perceived as sinister motivations, and they were conducted by all levels of government. And, by human nature, one's belief in their sinister action is most likely motivated by the political party they prefer and there's nothing wrong with it. I just question the accuracy, that's all.

[PhoneLobster]

For example, if Bush wanted all of those people dead...etc...

Now if those two items are the sum total of your evidence of Bush's good intentions then it is exceptionally sad that you believe he is an innocent cuddly teddy bear.

I mean "He didn't enact an obscure, questionable, and unpopular means of greedily taking over the national guard for no reason, THEREFORE, he had the best intentions of them all, aw, ain't he cute."

And as for his suggestion, are you not getting the part about his words being different to his actions? You know, the "lied" part of the he lied they died fiasco.

Anyway if you care so much about his motivations lets look at his character... a drunk drugo national guard escapee who's close friends and family even describe him as basically a petulant child like frat boy, who among a wide variety of recent escapades in cruelty has expressed his right as "Decider" to ignore any and all laws, imprison kill and torture people because he feels like it, sent half the western world to an illegal and immoral war on the basis of complete and utter lies, and personally approved the outing of a secret agent and all the reckless endangerment that entails to get personal revenge on a whistleblower.

And thats not even half of his record as a psycho bastard, lets not get into stuff like his freaky personal divine destiny religious belief stuff and his many other crimes.

Yeah sure, I trust that that guy has only the most noble intentions in any situation.

[Username17]

The Washington Post reported that shortly before midnight on Friday, September 2, the Bush administration sent Gov. Blanco a request for federal takeover of the local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor, and that the request was rejected. President Bush has the legal authority to federalize National Guard units under the Insurrection Act, but did not do so. Regular troops are constrained by law from engaging in domestic law enforcement. By contrast, Guard troops, who are under the command of state governors, have no such constraints [80]. Gov Haley Barbour of Mississippi also rejected the federal request. The Insurrection Act has not been invoked over the objections of a governor since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

This is the core of the Bush administration's cattempt to pass the buck. It's not completely false, it just doesn't mean anything.

You see, US Military personel were being used for police duty. In Gulfport, MS, there was a military curfew, that was imposed by... the military. Regular troops were being used for domestic law enforcement, so the Bush's claim that they aren't allowed to use troops for police work and therefore weren't allowed to asist in non-police activities.

You see, Gulfport has a Construction Battalion stationed inside the actual city. I've been there during the post-Katrina cleanup. Theey have a number of construction and rescue functions that they can perform, but only if they are given the orders by the executive. Days, even weeks after the hurricane, they were not mobilized.

There has been a ot of 20/20 hindsight and a lot of spreading the blame around. We now know for a fact that the mayor and governor of NO and LA respectively could have done better than they did. But we also know for a fact that George was given the appropriate orders and then declined to sign them.

All that crap about Blanco failing to ask for troops is just that... crap. She asked for the feds to give her "everything they've got" - troops then didn't arrive, and the Bush administration's contention is that she didn't say "Simon Says". Fvck that. Seriously. If the governor asks for "everything" during the biggest natural disaster of the century, you fcking well send everything, you don't withold key personel because it wasn't spelled out.

That's even in the disaster response plan. The governor isn't even responsible for asking for specific resources, that actually is FEMA's job.

-Username17

[power_word_wedgie]

Ok Frank, I understand what you are saying.

On another subject, you noted that the deaths that were not caused by the hurricane directly could not be counted toward the official death toll. However, >THIS< article makes it sound like it can. In fact, it makes it sound like the state of Louisianna can come up with the requirements. Am I misreading something here? It looks like the state can determine the cause of death with relation to Katrina death toll.

[Username17]

Am I misreading something here?

Yep. The actual declarations of cause of death is made by the coroner for each corpse. He can call it anything he wants. He could write "Meteor", "Stupidity", or "Penis Explosion" on the cause of detah line and noone would be the wiser. Louisianna can have its own death toll, and it has to because the feds refused to make one.

In the aftermath of the Ache tsunami, for example, the government of Indonesia released a death estimate that day. It moved around a lot of course, but they had an estimate online immediately.

The US government is also supposed to do that. They declined to do so. Louisianna has its own death toll at all because there is no Federal number for the disaster. Every state is keeping their own statistics, and in any case is dealing with a "body count" rather than a "death estimate".

That's an important distinction, because the Feds actually demanded that body recovery efforts not happen until they were damned good and ready.

So, why is it that Indonesia can get a death estimate online in hours and the United States can't get a comprehensive death estimate at all? Here are two options:

1. The United States is much less organized and has less access to statisticians than does Indonesia.

or

2. The Bush Administration is so afraid of bad press that they have actively suppressed information to the degree that basic governmental functions like detah estimates are unavailable.

I suggest that the likely answer is the second one.

[power_word_wedgie]

Ok, using he same link that you provided:

Dean Nugent, of the Louisiana State Coroner's Department, who accompanied the soldier, added that it wasn't safe to be in Bywater. "They'll kill you out here," he said, referring to the few residents who have continued to defy mandatory evacuation orders and remain in their homes."

"The cockroaches come out at night," he said of the residents. "This is one of the worst places in the country. You should not be here. Especially you," he told a female reporter.

Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security director, had said Friday that the recovery effort would be done with dignity, "meaning that there would be no press allowed."

The reason why I bring up the two quotes are that they're made by State and City officials. In fact, the city official was in fact extremely critical of FEMA on September 1st (>PROOF<) so it wasn't like he was going to want to help cover for the federal government. Really, reading that story, figuring that state, federal, and city officials are saying the same thing to the media, it looks more of an action to protect the dignity of those that were dead than anything else. The last thing that they wanted to have happen is for a reporter/cameraman to make their name in the lights off of the people that had died.

As for Indonesia, I'm thinking that the government didn't think that at the state level that they didn't have the resources to do that after the tsaunami while for the case of Katrina the federal government felt that the state level had the resources to do so. I guess that what I am saying is that I'd be on board of the federal government cover-up if there was actually documented evidence where state officials were actually saying, "You know, we really can't be responsible for counting the dead since we don't have the resources to do so, but the federal government is still making us do so." Actually, >THIS< link shows that there were body teams going out to gather the dead on September 5th. Figuring that they were still searching for survivors and that there were some people rebuffing rescue at that time, that sounds about right.

Keep in perspective that the confirmed death toll in Indonesia for the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake is around 130,000, with an estimated death toll of around 170,000 (note that there is still around 40,000 missing so even in that case not all bodies are found).
>LINK< That's a far cry from the death toll from Katrina of around 1700. We're talking about roughly 1% of the death toll from the earthquake. Now, if the Katrina death toll was around 170,000, then I'm sure the state's capacity to handle the death toll would have been exceeded and federal assistance and other state's assistance would have been requested.

Finally, this was a huge hurricane with surges that threw bodies into swampy areas. Even if there were morgue teams there 24 hours after the hurricane looking for bodies, there's going to be a percentage that are never going to be found. We're not talking about flatland/grassland, we're talking about swamps. Sometimes the swamp never gives up its secrets.

[Crissa]

In fact, the city official was in fact extremely critical of FEMA on September 1st (>PROOF<) so it wasn't like he was going to want to help cover for the federal government.

You're still focused on this 'cover' and 'conspiracy' thing, and I don't recall anyone but you saying it was a conspiracy...

Why do you argue with facts?

FEMA refused to fund those body teams.

-Crissa

[power_word_wedgie]

Ok, a conspiracy is a plan which goal is to do something secretly, as toward a crime. Saying that they're not wanting to get an accurate death count and not sending troop earlier in order to increase pain and suffering is in itself conspiracies since there isn't any evidence put forward where the people accused openly said that it was their goal to disrupt body counts and increase the suffering of people. If we're not saying that it was their goal, then we're all on the same page.

As for funding body teams, does FEMA normally fund body teams? If the state wanted to get reimbursed for their expense (which is something that I would do if I was them), then if I was them I'd go to Congress and ask for it. I'm pretty sure that they have. As for why aid is given freely by FEMA, a perfect example is >HERE<. Check out the send page toward the bottom. It looks like they were pretty free-wheeling with the money.

edit: The more I thought about it, I thought that I remember that FEMA had done something about bodies in Louisiana. This goes back to the "Criticisms of Hurricane Katrina" link that I quoted to Frank earlier.

A minor scandal erupted when a subsidiary corporation to Service Corporation International, the company involved in illegally disposing of bodies in the Funeralgate scandal, was awarded a no-bid contract by FEMA to count and collect corpses in Louisiana after the hurricane.[54] There was also some concern that some bodies were being improperly disposed of without notification of next of kin.

So though a scandel broke out due to it, it looks like FEMA did award contract to do something about counting and collecting corpses.

[User3]

1147921669[/unixtime]]

1147917118[/unixtime]]So exactly what is your point here anyway.

You seem to be arguing a particular case involved was manslaughter rather than murder

Actually, I'd equate it more as Reckless Endangerment to Murder myself.

How about Felony Murder? (assuming that at least one of them *did* die, of any cause)

[JonSetanta]

This may be a bit off-track, but the most important thing I've learned from Real-Time Strategy games like Starcraft is that an expert gamer must first develop their own forces before sending out an army.
Those that put the most effort in efficiently orchestrating their base growth(s) and climbing tech trees while pumping out units at the same time tend to have a strong, steady, consistent success in 1v1 or even 1v2 games, compared to more random or single-minded 'strategists'.

Now compare to nation development IRL; our own country the U. S. of A. needs leaders that understand and now how to implement these micro and macromanagement skills to RL structures.
We must focus internally, build resource gathering, compile the biggest most successful internal systems on this planet, and THEN set out to impress everyone.

Our neocon government runs this country like a noob that just bought Starcraft a week before attempting the pro ladder on Battlenet; hasty, presumptuous, stubborn, predictable, self-limiting, uncreative, looks too much at neighbors when they should be building, and just begging to be SCV-rushed.

GG, feds. GG.

[fbmf]

[The Great Fence Builder SPeaks]
i get your point, but I refuse to plit off another STARFCRAFT debate from a thread, so keep this one on topic.
[/TGFBS]

[power_word_wedgie]

1179078300[/unixtime]]

1147921669[/unixtime]]

1147917118[/unixtime]]So exactly what is your point here anyway.

You seem to be arguing a particular case involved was manslaughter rather than murder

Actually, I'd equate it more as Reckless Endangerment to Murder myself.

How about Felony Murder? (assuming that at least one of them *did* die, of any cause)

Holy thread necromancy!

Well, at any rate, my post really meant to focus on the legal aspects. Thus, this is what I was able to find concerning Good Samaritan laws

In the United States

Though the details of Good Samaritan laws in various jurisdictions vary, some features are common:

[edit] General guidelines

1. Unless a caretaker relationship (such as a parent-child or doctor-patient relationship) exists prior to the illness or injury, or the "Good Samaritan" is responsible for the existence of the illness or injury, no person is required to give aid of any sort to a victim.
2. Any first aid provided must not be in exchange for any reward or financial compensation. As a result, medical professionals are typically not protected by Good Samaritan laws when performing first aid in connection with their employment.
3. If aid begins, the responder must not leave the scene until:
* It is necessary in order to call for needed medical assistance.
* Somebody of equal or higher ability can take over.
* Continuing to give aid is unsafe (this can be as simple as a lack of adequate protection against potential diseases, such as latex gloves to protect against bloodborn pathogens) — a responder can never be forced to put himself or herself in danger to aid another person.
4. The responder is not legally liable for the death, disfigurement or disability of the victim as long as the responder acted as a rational person of the same level of training would have under the same circumstances.

Now the link mentions that other countries (and even some US states, but it isn't federal) have laws requiring that people help others unless it will put their own life at risk, and in that case notify authorities. And the one of the ones that have it has very little teeth IMHO:

A Good Samaritan law was featured in the May 1998 series finale of the popular NBC sitcom Seinfeld, in which the show's four main characters were all prosecuted and sentenced to one year in jail for making fun of (rather than helping) an overweight man who was getting robbed at gunpoint. In reality, while Massachusetts (where the crime is committed) does have a Good Samaritan law requiring passers-by to report a crime in progress, the most stringent punishment the characters could have suffered under those circumstances would have been a $500-$2500 fine (assuming they were prosecuted under state law).[3]

The fact that Good Samaritan Laws in the United States do not include a citizen's duty to assist, was featured in an episode of the second season of the show Desperate Housewives. Character Bree Van de Kamp is threatened by her son to be exposed for having stood by while a man she used to have an affair with committed suicide. She hires a lawyer who explains that she specifically was not under any requirement to assist this person.

[Crissa]

However, Good Samaritan laws have nothing to do with those who provide services.

If, say, I build a wall for you, and it falls on you or fails in a storm - it's my fault that it did so. It's incumbent upon me to tell you that it will fall or fail in that situation.

The point is that they did not do that. And then they also did not do other things which were already paid for - like national guard troops.

Technically having national guard troops in another country is supposed to take an act of congress and approval by the state they're from - but in practice, no state has ever stood up to that line of command.

However, it's the reason (for instance) California refused to send the extra national guard to the border in other states. We only sent half the troops the feds asked for.

-Crissa

[User3]

I'm not talking about Good Samaritan laws. Rather, I assumed that restircting people's free travel for no good reason has got to be some sort of crime. And if you're committing a felony and somebody dies in any way even tenuously related to your crime, it's felony murder.

[Username17]

Indeed, Good Samaritan Laws only apply to civilians. People who are actually part of an agency which provides services are protected only if they acted in a way consistent with established protocol.

Since preventing shipments of clean water from going in to disaster areas is not consistent with any protocol, there is no defense for the actions of the Bush administration.

It's really quite simple: Bush scuttled the disaster response and people died as a result. I'm not just talking about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that he has condemned to die - that's not a crime in the US because they are from another country. I'm talking about Americans in the US who were killed or displaced as a direct result of Bush refusing to sign off on standing orders that even Richard Nixon was willing to put his name to in the same situation.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

What was that saying, "the devil has work for idle hands"?

[Judging__Eagle]

1179982618[/unixtime]]What was that saying, "the devil has work for idle hands"?

Pedo Bear says: "fap fap fap"

In any case, I'm glad that I not only live in a place where natural disasters are non-existant, but that we have a Monarch that lets people who know how to run a country do so without hampering them in a weak power-grab.

[User3]

Where is it?

[Lago PARANOIA]

In hindsight, though, at least we can say that Hurricane Katrina is what caused Bush's popularity to tank. I mean, the slow burn was already (inevitably) starting with the Iraq War but this was was the turning point.

I think PhoneLobster's incompetent evil bastard theory is the best. It's like Cobra Commander was running our government.

[Vnonymous]

http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/772426.html

It becomes very hard to try and justify the actions of the government as incompetence when you have a look at some of the things that went on, especially this one.

[IGTN]

Incompetent not because they mishandled it. That was deliberate. Incompetent because we know that. Except that they got away with it. They were competent enough to know exactly what they could get away with.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Incompetent not because they mishandled it. That was deliberate. Incompetent because we know that. Except that they got away with it. They were competent enough to know exactly what they could get away with.

Well, we *are* talking about Louisiana here - the Republican Banana Republic of the United States. This doesn't surprise me at all.