Prepare thyselves, DUers. It's all about the LOOTERS

[CTyankee]

In 2 of the CT and MA newspapers I read on Sundays there were OpEds decrying the looting. Jeff Jacoby, resident a**hole of the Boston Globe and John Hourihan on the CT Post pretty much blamed the looters for being the main cause of not only looting, but the deaths as well.

This is going to be the argument we're faced with. We progressives will be hammered by the RW even more than we have already on the looters.

We can't let it happen. We must rain down our LTTEs and have our arguments ready for the conversations RWers will be happy to start with us, taunting us to "defend the looters."

Come back at them with everything you've got. I say, "In our democracy, we grant certain police powers to the state so that we can have an orderly society. We support this through our taxes. We democratically remove those elected officials who do not keep their side of the social contract. It is unconscionable that that social contract was allowed to be blasted apart in New Orleans and so many people died as a result."

Go at it, DUers!

[teach1st]

1. Didn't faze Rummy!

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030411-010551-6382r

WASHINGTON, April 11 (UPI) -- U.S. forces should not be blamed for the lawlessness and looting in Baghdad as it is a natural consequence of the transition from a dictatorship to a free country, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday at the Pentagon.

"The task we've got ahead of us now is an awkward one ... It's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here," Rumsfeld said.

"And for suddenly the biggest problem in the world to be looting is really notable."

[ClintonTyree]

7. THAT'S the quote to rub in their faces!

Let's all do it at every turn. Freedom is "untidy", especially freedom from a submerged hell hole in New Orleans!

[iamjoy]

2. Wonderful, They Have Found Their Distraction

just great...it is no longer about the government abandoning thousands of Americans to die.

[teach1st]

3. We could answer...

You're right! Those people weren't worth saving. Bush did the right thing letting all those children suffer and die. And the next time some white people steal pension funds, let's kill all their relatives and employees. They're all animals, anyway.

[Zodiak]

5. "Let them lose their soul" n/t

[Laelth]

4. Stick to the Facts

The best chance we have to stem this rhetorical tide is to stick to the facts. FEMA agents and national guard troops set up check points at bridges keeping the residents of NO in and aid workers out. Relief agencies and individuals were forbidden from airlifting water, food, and needed medicines into NO. Why? Not for fear of looters but because somebody thought that residents with food and water would refuse to leave the city. The powers that be want the entire city evacuated.

It's too early to tell who made this call. It may have been Governor Blanco. It may have been FEMA. It may have been President Bush, himself. Either way, the residents of NO were denied aid as an incentive to collect at mass shelters, the Superdome and the Convention Center, so that government officials could ensure the entire city was evacuated. While water, food, and medical aid were ready and waiting just outside the city, ready to be airlifted into NO, the people remaining in the city were left to suffer and die just so that someone could insure a complete evacuation.

The policy has been extremely effective, as the number of corpses remaining to be found in the city will demonstrate. No living human will remain in NO. There will be only corpses, many of which were people who could have been saved had officials allowed rescue workers and supplies to get in.

The point is that it wasn't the looters that kept the aid and supplies out. It was government insistence on a complete evacuation.

-Laelth

[snappyturtle]

6. Excellent----& indisputable!

Faux news' Rivero pointed this out, the sealing off of the Superdome and Convention Center. Saturday afternoon on NPR in northern MN I heard the report by a man in the French Quarter of how he and others were surviving.....actually partying....using friend's foodstuffs, gas grills, etc. Do you think these people will be forced out--gunpoint--to complete the evacuation?

[Laelth]

8. Good question.

My suspicion is that everyone will be forced out. The excuse will be health concerns ... disease spread by water, alligators, snakes, and toxins in the water. These are legitimate concerns, of course, but it borders on genocide to deny people water, food, and medicine in the name of protecting those same people from reptiles and disease.

-Laelth