[Vision2020] Is FEMA ready for Al Qaeda?

[Joan Opyr]

In light of Pat's "why didn't they move" argument, and Jeff's haggling 
over who's responsible, FEMA or the State of Louisiana, here's 
something else to consider: it's been nearly four years since the 
attacks of September 11th, 2001, and we are still not ready for a 
large-scale disaster.  If New Orleans had been struck by a dirty bomb 
rather than a hurricane, what would we be doing right now?  Would we be 
arguing about George Bush?  Would we be defending his wholly inadequate 
FEMA director?  Would we be asking ourselves why people "choose" to 
live all bunched up in cities rather than dispersed throughout the 
countryside, where they'd be harder to hit?  Why don't we open the 
doors here in Latah County by reducing the number of acres required for 
a home lot and help spread out the national population a bit?

God forbid an Al Qaeda operative with a van load of plastic explosives 
(easy to make -- they sell the recipe in a little black book at gun 
shows) should blow a great hole in the Dworshak dam.  How long would it 
take to evacuate the lower levels of Lewiston?  Why do those people 
live down there, anyway?  It smells bad.  There's a toilet paper mill 
blowing stink across the whole city.  Sure, I like the Lewiston 
Round-Up, but it's no Mardi Gras.  Why can't those lazy white people 
move up the hill to Genesee or Moscow?  What's the matter with them?  
If Dworshak goes, and Pat has to swim for it, it will be no one's fault 
but her own.

Well, Pat's fault and George W. Bush's, and Dirk Kempthorne's, and 
Michael Chertoff's, and the director of FEMA's.  After the creation of 
a Homeland Security department, after millions of dollars have been 
poured into restructuring the federal bureaucracy and into making war 
on Afghanistan and Iraq, we now know exactly how our beefed-up state 
and federal governments would respond to massive disaster here in the 
United States -- poorly, slowly, and inadequately.

I was watching ESPN yesterday.  A college football player from New 
Orleans who had just learned on Saturday that his aunt had been killed 
by the hurricane learned on Sunday that his two younger brothers were 
drowned in a gymnasium where countless people had gone to shelter.  The 
City of New Orleans is awash with dead bodies.  Any diabetics who 
weren't evacuated -- and you can take my word for it, New Orleans was 
full of very poor Type II diabetics -- are now dead.  Insulin has to be 
refrigerated.  And anyone needing an oxygen tank to breath is now dead. 
  Dialysis patients are dead.  Epileptics are dead.  The poor, the sick, 
the elderly, and children huddling in a gymnasium are all dead, all 
drowned, all gone.

You blame who you like, Pat, but there's no need for you to wonder what 
Andreas or I might say about you behind your back or offline.  I'll say 
it to your face; if George W. Bush shot your dog, you'd say, "That was 
one bad poodle.  People shouldn't have dogs.  I like cats."

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.auntie-establishment.com