We Must NEVER Forget the Lies

Yesterday on Tim Russert's "Meet the Press", ex-New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial made a statement that sounded as though he'd forgotten who lied us into the war in Iraq. Morial said, “New Orleans must be rebuilt. It must be rebuilt as the diverse cultural gumbo that it's always been. It must be rebuilt the right way. Mary Landrieu has had legislation for a coastal restoration initiative now pending in Congress for three years and has not been able to get it passed. What we need here is a reconstruction and resettlement czar, someone like Colin Powell, someone like Andrew Young, someone with broad credibility to lead the efforts to resettle people and provide the leadership for the reconstruction of New Orleans, Louisiana, and southern Mississippi.” Colin Powell? I realize that Morial is black and Powell is black and Morial made his comment because Russert said it was the blacks in New Orleans who had been hit the hardest. But even mentioning Colin Powell's name in the same breath with rebuilding New Orleans is to ignore the fact that Colin Powell lied us into the war in Iraq. It was that war which led the Bush Administration to cut back funds to fix the levees in New Orleans. And it's that war in Iraq that left Louisiana without National Guardsmen to protect it during Katrina. Louisiana had to beg for National Guard troops from other states to help control the looters and to rescue the evacuees. Someone like Colin Powell to restore New Orleans? Have you lost your mind, Mr. Morial? Colin Powell betrayed the American people and lied at the United Nations. And now the American people are being asked to donate money to the Red Cross and Salvation Army to help the devastated people in New Orleans. It's not that the American people shouldn't donate money. The American people would donate money without being asked. But the fact is that our government needs the American people to donate funds because our government does not have the billions of dollars it will take to rebuild the Gulf States. Our government is spending billions of dollars on an unnecessary war in Iraq thanks to Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush and Karl Rove. Karl Rove and Co. began to spin its version of the Katrina debacle yesterday. All Republicans speaking on news shows were told not to deny Democrats claims that the Bush administration had been found wanting. Instead, they were told to praise the belated rescue efforts to the skies. They were told to say FEMA was wonderful, the evacuation of the Superdome was wonderful, the rescue work had become wonderful and the Bush administration is doing a great job of aiding and comforting the folks in New Orleans. In fact, FEMA spent more time arguing over who is in charge than actually getting supplies to New Orleans. FEMA sent away truckloads of bottled water from Wal-Mart because it wasn't FEMA-sponsored bottled water. And as anyone knows who watched the event on television the Superdome evacuation was a chaotic mess. On September 2nd, Rove and Co. faked a film of levee repair rather than actually getting a levee repaired. And when President Bush visited New Orleans, ZDF News reported, “the president's visit was a completely staged event”. 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” left. The real question is: Are the American people buying the smoke and mirrors version of the Great Oz in the White House again, or have they finally looked behind the curtain and realized that the big powerful fearsome leader of the USofA is just a fat toad running a spin machine?