Well, it’s been two years since the Iraq invasion, and it seems the Bush administration still needs to learn how to pick its battles. The U.S. Senate voted 90-9 yesterday to prohibit the “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” of prisoners in U.S. custody. In reality, the measure — an amendment to a military spending bill — merely clarifies rules of prisoner treatment that had been thrown into ambiguity ever since the invasion of Afghanistan, when the Bush administration decided to toss out the Geneva Conventions as a binding standard for military behavior. Nevertheless, the vote drew fierce opposition from the White House, which threatened a veto of the entire $445.5 billion Defense Department spending bill if the measure was not removed. The anti-torture amendment, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, “would limit the president’s ability as commander-in-chief to effectively carry out the war on terrorism.” (The proposed ban on torture, by the way, doesn’t apply to the Central Intelligence Agency, nor does it prevent the military from moving prisoners to other countries where torture is allowed.)

Fortunately, many Democrats and Republicans — chief among them, Senator John McCain of Arizona — are standing up to the White House on this issue. An explicit ban on torture is the only moral and sensible thing to do, they say. “We have to clarify that this is not what the United States is all about. This is what makes us different from the enemy we are fighting,” said McCain, a former Navy pilot who was held and tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

In his remarks McCain cited a letter written to him by an officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, Capt. Ian Fishback, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. “Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees,” Fishback wrote in a September 16 letter to the senator. “I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment.” Fishback said he had complained to superiors for 17 months that soldiers were operating under conflicting views of what was humane treatment, and yet no one was able to point him to any explicit standards.

Fishback was the officer interviewed in the Human Rights Watch report on prisoner abuse that I mentioned in a post last week. While the Abu Ghraib investigations netted the convictions of nine low-ranking soldiers, the claims made by Fishback and others suggest that the problems at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere began at the top: with the generals and politicians who refused to impose clear standards of conduct. McCain took this case to the floor of the Senate yesterday. “We demanded intelligence without ever clearly telling our troops what was permitted and what was forbidden,” he said. “And then, when things went wrong, we blamed them and we punished them.”

Given all the other political fights it needs to focus on, it’s puzzling why the Bush administration is so intent on keeping its policy of no policy in place. Forty-six of the 90 senators voting for the amendment were Republicans. More than two dozen retired senior military officers, including Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili, have also come out publicly in support of the measure. The fact that so many members of his own party are opposing a wartime president on his wartime policies must be disquieting and humiliating for Bush. Of course, there’s still a good chance that the commander-in-chief will get his way: The House version of the military spending bill does not include the torture provision, and McCain and other supporters worry that it could be gutted in the negotiations to reconcile the two bills, if not axed by presidential veto.

As the White House well knows, the widespread, well-publicized abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became a sort of Pearl Harbor for Muslim extremists around the world: If they had any doubts that the fight against the American Satan was a cause worth spilling blood for, now they could rest easy in their paranoia. Top officials in the Bush administration recognize the serious damage caused by the prison abuse scandals. What’s more, it is clear to some — including Bush-appointed CIA Director Porter Goss — that the American occupation, plagued as it has been by a host of tactical and moral failures, has become a rallying point “to recruit new, anti-U.S. jihadists.” How, then, can the administration persist in its belief that having a clear, consistent policy against torture will somehow endanger its war on terror? Having no policy clearly doesn’t seem to be helping things.

Now, what definitely seems to be harming things is the vitriol from anti-Muslim extremists like Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. “I believe we are seeing the beginning of a crusade against freedom from the militant terrorist Islamic entities throughout the world,” said Stevens in opposing the amendment. “If this amendment passes, the United States will not have effective control of those people.”

“Crusade”? “Effective control of those people”? Did I say they were paranoid?

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

What you allowed to happen happened. Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel. As long as no PUCs [“persons under control,” i.e., detainees] came up dead it happened. We heard rumors of PUCs dying so we were careful. We kept it to broken arms and legs and shit. If a leg was broken you call the PA — the physician’s assistant — and told him the PUC got hurt when he was taken. He would get Motrin [a pain reliever] and maybe a sling, but no cast or medical treatment…. People would just volunteer just to get their frustrations out. We had guys from all over the base just come to guard PUCs so they could fuck them up. Broken bones didn’t happen too often, maybe every other week. The PA would overlook it. I am sure they knew.

—U.S. Army sergeant, 82nd Airborne Division

Human Rights Watch (HRW) came out with a new report this week that presents graphic accounts of torture by U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the extent of the prisoner abuse problems afflicting an overextended U.S. military, and the damage that poor leadership has caused to the Iraq war effort. The report features interviews with two sergeants and one officer stationed at a base in central Iraq who said they witnessed the torture of Iraqi prisoners — torture that was ordered, the soldiers said, by their superiors and by intelligence officers. The practice was so common that soldiers had developed a lingo for it, the report says: “‘Fucking a PUC’ referred to beating a detainee, while ‘Smoking a PUC’ referred to forced physical exertion sometimes to the point of unconsciousness.”

One factor that encouraged prisoner abuse was that the soldiers guarding a detainee were often the very ones who had been shot at by that detainee hours before — contrary to the military’s own policy, which states that prisoners should be placed in the custody of military police far from the frontlines. Not surprisingly, soldiers put in these situations would go beyond the need to collect intelligence and start collecting their pound of flesh. A sergeant described one such incident of retribution:

We had these new high-speed trailer showers. One guy was the cleaner. He was an Iraqi contractor working on base. We were taking pretty accurate mortar fire and rockets and we were getting nervous. Well one day we found him with a GPS receiver and he is like calling in strikes on us! What the fuck!? We took him but we are pissed because he stabbed us in the back. So we gave him the treatment. We got on him with the jugs and doused him and smoked and fucked him.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s denials that the Geneva Conventions apply to its war on terror have created a kind of moral havoc within the ranks. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers were trained to avoid torture, period. In fact, the Army’s own Field Manual 34-52 on Intelligence Interrogation states explicitly that the use of force is not an effective interrogation tool: “Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” In today’s military, however, soldiers guarding detainees no longer have clear rules for deciding what is permitted and what is not. They are simply told that they must extract information and that their actions must be “humane” — a dangerously vague standard. “Well, what does humane mean?” said an officer. “To me humane means I can kind of play with your mind … To [another officer I spoke with] humane means it’s okay to rough someone up and do physical harm … We’ve got people with different views of what humane means and there’s no Army statement that says this is the standard for humane treatment for prisoners.”

When stories of prisoners being humiliated and beaten at the Abu Ghraib prison became public, terrorists trying to sabotage the U.S. military in Iraq suddenly had a perfect recruiting tool: concrete evidence of the evil of the American occupation. Now there is reason to believe these abuses are more widespread than first thought, and not just the actions of “rogue” soldiers. In fact, soldiers at one base told an officer that they had taken Abu Ghraib-like photographs but burned them once the Abu Ghraib guards started “getting in trouble for the same things we were told to do.” “It’s unjust to hold only lower-ranking soldiers accountable for something that is so clearly, at a minimum, an officer corps problems, and probably a combination with the executive branch of government,” said the officer.

Did the abuse halt after the media broke the Abu Ghraib scandal? Things “toned down,” said the sergeant, who was interviewed between July and August 2005. “We still did it but we were careful. It is still going on now the same way, I am sure. Maybe not as blatant but it is how we do things.”

The irony is that in torturing detainees with the goal of stamping out the insurgency, the U.S. military has driven even more Iraqis to the cause of the insurgency. That connection was quite clear to one of the sergeants interviewed:

If a PUC cooperated Intel would tell us that he was allowed to sleep or got extra food. If he felt the PUC was lying he told us he doesn’t get any fucking sleep and gets no food except maybe crackers. And he tells us to smoke him. [Intel] would tell the lieutenant that he had to smoke the prisoners and that is what we were told to do. No sleep, water, and just crackers. That’s it. The point of doing all this was to get them ready for interrogation. [The intelligence officer] said he wanted the PUCs so fatigued, so smoked, so demoralized that they want to cooperate. But half of these guys got released because they didn’t do nothing. We sent them back to Fallujah. But if he’s a good guy, you know, now he’s a bad guy because of the way we treated him.

As the officer interviewed in the HRW report makes clear, the abuses he saw were not perpetrated by “dishonorable” individuals. These were courageous soldiers who also happened to be human, he said. They were being put in charge of people who might have tried to kill them or their friends. At a minimum, they deserved leaders who could set clear boundaries and accept responsibility for what happened. The fact that they have not received such leadership has jeopardized America’s mission in Iraq, both morally and practically:

We’re mounting a counter-insurgency campaign, and if we have widespread violations of the Geneva Conventions, that seriously undermines our ability to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world…. [I]f America holds something as the moral standard, it should be unacceptable for us as a people to change that moral standard based on fear. The measure of a person or a people’s character is not what they do when everything is comfortable. It’s what they do in an extremely trying and difficult situation, and if we want to claim that these are our ideals and our values we need to hold to them no matter how dark the situation.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Here are results from a 2003 survey of American global justice activists, most of whom filled out questionnaires during the protests surrounding the Free Trade Area of the Americas ministerial conference in Miami late that year. (The findings were previously posted on the site as a PDF file, but this format should be easier to read.) For more background about global justice activism, you can read my article here.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Recently I read an essay by the late, great Civil War historian William E. Gienapp (a former teacher of mine), which made me think of the so-called “culture war” now besetting America. In his essay, Gienapp shows how the unique structure of American democratic government exacerbated the conflict over slavery and made war likely, if not inevitable. For example, the Republican Party, America’s first successful sectional party, could win the presidency because of the rather undemocratic workings of the electoral college, which (as it was put into practice) granted all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes. Thus, anti-slavery candidate Abraham Lincoln could receive 98 percent of the North’s electoral vote even though he won less than 54 percent of the popular vote in that part of the country. He could win the presidency even though he had no support in the South and only 39.9 percent of the nation’s popular vote. (A different electoral system — with states of smaller sizes, for instance, as Founding Father Thomas Jefferson once proposed — might not have given Lincoln enough electoral votes to prevail.) The fact that a candidate with the backing of just one part of the country could win the presidency had profound consequences. With such a divisive figure as Lincoln in the White House, radical Southern leaders felt they had no choice but to secede, Gienapp writes. They did — and brought the nation into an awesome conflict that rooted out, once and for all, the evil of slavery. A nation divided against itself could not stand, and America would eventually become all one thing — and not the other.

Flash forward a hundred some-odd years. A look at the presidential election map from 2004 shows that the two parties have increasingly become sectional parties, with only a few swing states in play. This does not mean that Americans themselves are deeply divided. Their views on gender roles, racism, homosexuality, crime, and  other hot-button cultural issues have not grown more polarized over time — in the population as a whole or across social classes, races, religious groups, or even the notorious red/blue state divide, as this book by political scientist Morris P. Fiorina shows (abortion may be the one exception, though it depends on which study you believe). In fact, in many cases, political attitudes have converged: in the last few decades Americans across the board have become more liberal on gender issues and more conservative on criminal justice issues, for example.

On the other hand, the two major parties — and the activists who lead them — have become more polarized in their attitudes and beliefs, Fiorina argues. The majority of America’s moderate voters are not really divided on the issues, but rather ambivalent, forced to choose between starkly opposed options. In this sense, America in 2005 is not much different from antebellum America, where radicals on either side had come, by the eve of the Civil War, to dominate the national political debate and the two major parties. Rather than strengthening the moderates and weakening the extremists among their ranks, the leaders of both parties chose to inflame sectional animosities, Gienapp notes. “It was they who politicized issues and framed the choices before the electorate, and it was the leaders, not the voters, who made the crucial policy decisions” that led the country to war.

I certainly do not think that Americans will fight another civil war anytime soon. But it is clear that the two major parties are engaged in an increasingly intense ideological conflict, one with other kinds of casualties — namely, the civility and unity of our nation. The fact that the Democrats and Republicans have essentially transformed themselves into sectional parties, too, means that the national political crisis that began with the 2000 election debacle will likely repeat itself again and again, because our electoral system tolerates the election of presidents without truly national mandates. Whoever wins in 2008 — or 2012, or 2016 — the result will inevitably be rancor on the losing side and increasingly strident calls for further battle. One wonders whether a house divided against itself can stand for much longer.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Whenever national calamity strikes, the same group of disloyal Americans starts to sow seeds of disunion in this country. Rather than searching for who is really responsible for the ills afflicting our nation, they blame their fellow Americans. They refuse to show compassion for the suffering of innocent men, women, and children. They point fingers and accuse the very victims of the perpetrated crimes.

Who are these shameless, unpatriotic Americans? I call them the “Blame Black People First” crowd.

New Orleans, ground zero for the government’s belated and botched hurricane relief effort, is predominantly African American. It also has a poverty rate almost twice as high as the national average.

As usual, the subversive element in this country has not stooped from singling out these suffering Americans as the perpetrators of their own misfortune. Somehow, they always blame black people first.

Some examples:

1. Media commentators self-righteously decry the outbreaks of looting in the devastated city — forgetting that some people might like food and clean clothes after being left to fend for themselves in a flood zone for several days. Says Julianne Malveaux of BET.com:

When hungry folks take food from flooded grocery stores, that’s called survival, not looting.  When people, who are strapping cardboard to their feet because all of their possessions have been swept away, go into a store and take shoes, that, too, is called survival.  The calls for zero tolerance for looting were absurd, and the images of Black people “looting” (along with the more benign images of White people “finding” food) fanned the flames of every racial stereotype there is.  Then rabidly conservative talk show hosts — Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson among them — piled it on by foaming at the mouth about looters while ignoring the conditions even George Bush called “unacceptable.”

2. Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly berates the city’s poor for not applying themselves during the disaster. (I agree. Whenever I see people drowning, I tell them to just buck up — there’s no use whining about it, save your breath!) Says Nikki Finke of LA Weekly:

FNC’s Bill O’Reilly, who spent last month verbally abusing the grieving mother of a dead Iraqi war soldier, then whiled away the early days of Katrina’s aftermath giving lip to New Orleans’ looters and shooters and then basically blamed the hurricane’s poorest victims for expecting any government help at all. “First, the huge, bureaucratic government will never be able to protect you. If you rely on government for anything, anything, you’re going to be disappointed, no matter who the president is,” he scolded. And, “If you don’t get educated, if you don’t develop a skill, and force yourself to work hard, you’ll most likely be poor. And sooner or later, you’ll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help…. Chances are that help will not be quick in coming.”

3. Sen. Rick Santorum suggests that the government fine hurricane victims. In an interview over the weekend about Hurricane Katrina, the Republican from Pennsylvania said: “You have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.” (After he was criticized for his remarks, Santorum said that he actually didn’t mean to include people who lacked cars among those who should be fined. They, instead, would get a tax credit on the purchase of a new hybrid car.)

A long time ago, Harry Truman said, “The United States has become great because we, as a people, have been able to work together for great objectives even while differing about details.” How much our country has changed. In this time of national tragedy, how is it possible that these people are resorting to such divisive, un-American rhetoric?

But then, they always blame black people first.

The American people know better. They know that black people built this country with their sweat and blood. They know that African Americans have contributed heroically to America’s art, literature, science, and way of life. They know that it’s dangerous to blame a group of victims for terrible problems that they did not cause.

You would think that the Blame Black People Firsters would be ashamed of what they say. Don’t they know how much these people have suffered? Didn’t they watch “A Concert for Hurricane Relief”?

But then, they always blame black people first.

Black people will never seek a permission slip to defend their security. If they need to invade a neighboring store to advance black people’s interests (i.e., not starving), then this is their right as God-fearing, freedom-loving Americans. If they feel the need to criticize out-of-touch leaders in that far-off land of Washington, then other Americans will stand by them in their struggles to spread democracy.

Let us put an end to the blame games, the blame gaming, and the blaming games. This unpatriotic, treacherous element should not be allowed to spread its false accusations. It must be rooted out of our government, our way of life, and our 24-hour cable news channels.

The “Blame Black People First” crowd is a threat to this country. Americans will not be safe until we rid ourselves of this Red menace.

(With apologies for my blatant plagiarism from Jeane Kirkpatrick’s 1984 speech at the Republican National Convention.)

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The Onion — for those moments when you don’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or throttle your nearest elected representative.

The headlines:

God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again

Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq

Government Relief Workers Mosey In To Help

Refugees Moved From Sewage-Contaminated Superdome To Hellhole Of Houston

White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters

Another Saints Season Ruined Before It Begins

Shrimp Joint Now Shrimp Habitat

And this one about sums it up:

Bush Urges Victims To Gnaw On Bootstraps For Sustenance

WASHINGTON, DC—In an emergency White House address Sunday, President Bush urged all people dying from several days without food and water in New Orleans to “tap into the American entrepreneurial spirit” and gnaw on their own bootstraps for sustenance. “Government handouts are not the answer,” Bush said. “I believe in smaller government, which is why I have drastically cut welfare and levee upkeep. I encourage you poor folks to fill yourself up on your own bootstraps. Buckle down, and tear at them like a starving animal.” Responding to reports that many Katrina survivors have lost everything in the disaster, Bush said, “Only when you work hard and chew desperately on your own footwear can you live the American dream.”

Last but not least:

Bush Appoints Some Guy From Horse Group to Head Nation’s Disaster Relief

Whoops, that one is actually real news …

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The News & Observer, a paper based in Raleigh, North Carolina, has an article on Dr. Gregory Henderson, whose email dispatch from New Orleans was mentioned in my post last week. (Snopes.com has also concluded that the original email message was authentic.)

Henderson sent out an update on Saturday to his original email:

I am replying to all of your letters of prayers and support in this way in the interests of time.

1. thanks for all your letters of support and prayers and offers to help.

2. i am safe, and now based at the Sheraton hotel where we have a new makeshift clinic established.

3. the situation at the convention center is urgent and disastrous = 10-20 thousand people in dire need of health care from minor to severe. A small MASH unit was established there last night. I will be joining them today – I desparately need the help of as many medically trained individuals as possible to triage these patients, treat if necessary, and evacuate – only the most serious will be seen at the MASH

4. i need to figure out how to set up a morgue. there are several dead at the convention center

5. some supplies are ariving today courtesy of Fred Eschelman and PPD Inc of north carolina – I will get these supplies to the convention center as soon as they arrive.

6. i need mobile dialysis units – thousands haven’t been dialysed in over a week.

7. i can be reached pretty well on my cell phone at [number deleted]. now is the time to act – i need help – i haven’t found any other physicians in the field yet and i can only do so much

9. Ochsner is the only fully functional facility in the city – they are effectively taking care of all of their patients and offering extrordinary help, an lots of supplies – i am proud to be part of this organization.

Greg Henderson

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Sunday’s New York Times has an interesting piece by Louis Uchitelle on American companies that continue to do much of their production in America. “Made in America” is more common than you’d think. In spite of two decades of intensified globalization, the United States remains the world’s top manufacturer, accounting for 23.8 percent of manufacturing output worldwide in 2004, compared to 24.6 percent in 1982. (This is measured by “value added,” which takes into account the dollar value created at each stage of production through the addition of materials and labor.)

Uchitelle profiles three companies — Harley-Davidson, Haas Automation, and Hiwasse Manufacturing — to see what drives their decisions to either keep their production and supply lines in America or look overseas for cheaper options. For those companies that managed to stay rooted in America, two factors stand out: the benefits gained from tariffs and other forms of protectionism, which stymied aggressive foreign competitors and sustained companies during their most vulnerable years, and the efficiencies brought about by automation, which slashed labor costs and helped American firms compete with competitors abroad who pay much lower wages (for example, Chinese firms).

But given the particular advantages they enjoy, the companies in Uchitelle’s article may be the exceptions that prove the rule. Today, with the World Trade Organization and other free trade agreements in place, it’s harder for the U.S. government to protect industries — a fact that may be good for poor people in China, India, and other developing countries, but does not bode well for Americans toiling in the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the automation that helps American firms compete is quickly spreading throughout the world. These companies may not be able to rely on their technological edge for much longer. (Indeed, as Thomas Friedman points out in his new book, America is falling behind other countries in churning out the engineers and scientists who can fuel its future innovation.)

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The National Guard is finally out in force on the streets of New Orleans, but for some it is already too late. Survivors recount stories of infants and elderly victims who died of dehydration and exposure after days without help. Journalists describe the situation as a war zone, with corpses decomposing in open air and rapes taking place even in supposed safe havens. Criticism in Washington mounts as refugees ask why the government relief took so long in coming. “We are throw-away people,” a refugee tells Reuters.

We won’t know for some time the full extent of Hurricane Katrina’s toll, but it will likely reveal many of the dead to be African American and poor. In New Orleans, the city devastated by a one-two punch of hurricane and levee collapse, 68 percent of the population is African American, according to 2004 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. One in five individuals and one in seven families in New Orleans live under the poverty line, which in 2004 was $18,850 for a family of four. “If Sept. 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation, rent by profound social divisions,” wrote Mark Naison, a professor of African American studies at Fordham University, in a piece quoted by The New York Times. (Kanye West was a bit less diplomatic in his choice of words.)

Has New Orleans been ignored by the nation’s leaders? Mayor Ray Nagin thinks so. Democrats (and some Republicans) have harshly criticized the federal government for its handling of the disaster. Some have complained that the Bush administration diverted funds that could have gone to levee building and reinforcement to the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy. Matthew Barge of FactCheck.org provides an even-handed assessment of this charge, concluding that, yes, the president drastically underfunded an Army Corps of Engineers project to enhance the levee system protecting New Orleans: Bush’s budget allocated $3 million of the $11 million the Corps requested for the project in fiscal year 2004, and $3.9 million of the $22.5 million requested in 2005 (Congress subsequently raised the funding to $5.5 million in both years). That said, it’s unclear whether the money cut would have made a difference. “The Army Corps of Engineers — which is under the President’s command and has its own reputation to defend — insists that Katrina was just too strong,” Barge writes, “and that even if the levee project had been completed it was only designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane.”

What is clear is that local officials had been complaining as early as four years ago that not enough funds were being devoted to hurricane protection. Federal officials knew of the danger, but little was done. The last paragraph of the FactCheck.org analysis is especially chilling:

Whether or not a breach” was “anticipated,” the fact is that many individuals have been warning for decades about the threat of flooding that a hurricane could pose to a set below sea level and sandwiched between major waterways. A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report from before September 11, 2001 detailed the three most likely catastrophic disasters that could happen in the United States: a terrorist attack in New York, a strong earthquake in San Francisco, and a hurricane strike in New Orleans. In 2002, New Orleans officials held the simulation of what would happen in a category 5 storm. Walter Maestri, the emergency coordinator of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, recounted the outcome to PBS’ NOW With Bill Moyers:

Maestri, September 2002: Well, when the exercise was completed it was evidence that we were going to lose a lot of people. We changed the name of the [simulated] storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B… kiss your ass goodbye… because anybody who was here as that category five storm came across… was gone.

A terrorist strike in New York, a hurricane in New Orleans, and an earthquake in San Francisco — is our government trying to win the Triple Crown of disasters? This time, an entire American city was turned into a war zone. An entire urban population was thrown onto the trash heap. Do we have to wait for a third catastrophe for the people in charge to get the message?

UPDATE, 9/8/05, 12:20 a.m. EST: The Guardian points out that earlier allegations of rape have not yet been substantiated by authorities.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

If you want to help the relief efforts in Louisiana and elsewhere, please consider making a donation to the American Red Cross. The local and national websites are jammed with visitors, so you might want to try the Red Cross donations site set up on Yahoo.

Below is an excerpt of an August 31 message by Dr. Greg Henderson, a pathologist in New Orleans. The email, which has been circulating on the Web, gives a first-hand account of the devastation in that part of the country. (The text has been edited slightly for typos.)

UPDATE, 9:34 p.m. EST: If you live in the Southeast and can offer hurricane victims a place to stay, the grassroots organization MoveOn.org is organizing an emergency national housing drive. Also, a reader asked if the authenticity of the email below can be verified. It was sent to me by a friend who said her family knows this doctor, so I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. If you know otherwise, of course, please let me know.

UPDATE, 9/4/05, 7:37 p.m. EST: Some errors corrected and the email header changed in the text below, based on the original version of the email posted on the Web (I was using a forwarded version before). The rumor-quashing site Snopes.com is looking into the veracity of this email, so you might want to check this page later for their determination.

UPDATE, 9/6/05, 1:52 p.m. EST: See this post for more details.

From: Gregory S. Henderson MD, PhD
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:21:55 -0500
Subject: Re: thoughts and prayers

Thanks to all of you who have sent your notes of concern and your prayers. I am writing this note on Tuesday at 2 p.m. I wanted to update all of you as to the situation here. I don’t know how much information you are getting but I am certain it is more than we are getting. Be advised that almost everything I am telling you is from direct observation or rumor from reasonable sources. They are allowing limited internet access, so I hope to send this dispatch today.

Personally, my family and I are fine. My family is safe in Jackson, Miss., and I am now a temporary resident of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New Orleans. I figured if it was my time to go, I wanted to go in a place with a good wine list. In addition, this hotel is in a very old building on Canal Street that could and did sustain little damage. Many of the other hotels sustained significant loss of windows, and we expect that many of the guests may be evacuated here.

Things were obviously bad yesterday, but they are much worse today. Overnight the water arrived. Now Canal Street (true to its origins) is indeed a canal. The first floor of all downtown buildings is underwater. I have heard that Charity Hospital and Tulane are limited in their ability to care for patients because of water. Ochsner is the only hospital that remains fully functional. However, I spoke with them today and they too are on generator and losing food and water fast. The city now has no clean water, no sewerage system, no electricity, and no real communications. Bodies are still being recovered floating in the floods. We are worried about a cholera epidemic. Even the police are without effective communications. We have a group of armed police here with us at the hotel that is admirably trying to exert some local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant. Most of it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the people are armed and dangerous. We hear gunshots frequently. Most of Canal Street is occupied by armed looters who have a low threshold for discharging their weapons. We hear gunshots frequently. The looters are using makeshift boats made of pieces of styrofoam to access. We are still waiting for a significant national guard presence.

The health care situation here has dramatically worsened overnight. Many people in the hotel are elderly and small children. Many other guests have unusual diseases…. There are [Infectious Disease] physicians in at this hotel attending an HIV [conference]. We have commandeered the world famous French Quarter Bar to turn into a makeshift clinic. There is a team of about seven doctors and PAs and pharmacists. We anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central business district and French Quarter.

Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police escort. The pharmacy was dark and full of water. We basically scooped the entire drug sets into garbage bags and removed them. All under police escort. The looters had to be held back at gunpoint. After a dose of prophylactic Cipro I hope to be fine. In all we are faring well. We have set up a hospital in the French Quarter bar in the hotel, and will start admitting patients today. Many will be from the hotel, but many will not. We are anticipating dealing with multiple medical problems, medications and acute injuries. Infection and perhaps even cholera are anticipated major problems. Food and water shortages are imminent.

The biggest question to all of us is where is the National Guard. We hear jet fighters and helicopters, but no real armed presence, and hence the rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no Salvation Army. In a sort of cliché way, this is an edifying experience. One is rapidly focused away from the transient and material to the bare necessities of life. It has been challenging to me to learn how to be a primary care physician. We are under martial law so return to our homes is impossible. I don’t know how long it will be and this is my greatest fear. Despite it all, this is a soul-edifying experience. The greatest pain is to think about the loss. And how long the rebuild will take. And the horror of so many dead people.

PLEASE SEND THIS DISPATCH TO ALL YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED IN A DISPATCH from the front. I will send more according to your interest. Hopefully their collective prayers will be answered. By the way, suture packs, sterile gloves and stethoscopes will be needed as the Ritz turns into a MASH.

Greg Henderson

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

An anonymous reader took the time to write a detailed response to my post last week about Cindy Sheehan and her efforts to meet with President Bush. Here it is:

Why would you meet with a woman who said the following at a S.F. rally in A[p]ril 05:

“We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!”

So declared Cindy Sheehan earlier this year during a rally at San Francisco State University.

Sheehan, who is demanding a second meeting with Bush, stated: “We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now.”

Sheehan unleashed a foul-mouth tirade on April 27, 2005:

“They’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites! And we need to, we just need to rise up…” Sheehan said of the Bush administration.

“If George Bush believes his rhetoric and his bullshit, that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he is spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free?”

“The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go to this war.”

“We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog shit in Washington, we will impeach all those people.”

—But I wouldn’t expect someone who can only look at one side of an issue to see why the President wouldn’t want to meet with her. Common sense people. Stop thinking with your lust to hate Bush and use common sense.

It’s certainly true that Cindy Sheehan is not the most subtle or diplomatic public speaker. Personally, I wouldn’t phrase some of those comments the way she did. But then again, I didn’t lose a child in Iraq. If anyone has the right to be angry, it would be Sheehan. Most of us Americans have the luxury of living our lives as if the United States was not in a state of war. Sheehan no longer has that privilege. If she’s not the most moderate voice in the chorus, there may be a reason.

The reader justifiably complains about the hateful rhetoric that afflicts this country. The first step we can take to stop the hatred is to start a dialogue. If Bush would meet with Sheehan, he could begin such a dialogue. Meeting with her doesn’t necessarily mean that Bush would have to compromise his views, or Sheehan hers. But it’s a necessary step to begin some healing. It’s the only way that both supporters and opponents of the president will ever learn to look beyond their side of the issue and consider seriously what the people across the aisle have to say.

Instead of constructively engaging his critics, the president seems to believe he can wish them away. Thankfully, however, there are Republican leaders who want to see a dialogue take place. Some have had the courage to speak out publicly, comparing Iraq to Vietnam and asking tough questions about when the troops will come home. A few have even come out in support of Sheehan’s request to speak with her elected representative. Senator George Allen, Republican from Virginia, said that it would be good for Bush to invite Sheehan in “just as a matter of courtesy and decency.” Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican from Nebraska, said that “the wise course of action … would have been to immediately invite her into the ranch.” The fact that Bush is not doing the “courteous and decent” thing is inflaming hostilities and showing the world that Bush would rather stick his head in the ground than face the reality knocking on his doorstep.

Cindy Sheehan is one woman with a tragic story. Fervent supporters of the president have spent a good deal of time dragging her name into the mud. What’s more important than what this suburban mother said or didn’t say, though, is what she represents: a conversation waiting to happen. A conversation on this war and on its future end. A conversation that this country needs and the president needs to begin.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Forget elephants or donkeys, hawks or doves. What does the Bush administration most resemble? An ostrich. With the mother of a fallen Iraq War soldier camped outside his ranch for nearly two weeks, a vacationing George W. Bush refuses to stick his head out the door and say hello. Meanwhile, the American effort in Iraq is, well, in its “last throes” — by which I mean it will probably go on for another five, six, eight, 10, maybe 12 years. Arianna Huffington sums up the current state of the Iraqi union:

How bad is the situation there? Barham Salih, Iraq’s minister of planning and development, tried to look at the bright side of things by saying, “We are failing to reach compromises. But we are not killing each other.” You know things are in trouble when the good news is that the Founding Fathers of the New Iraq are not blowing each other to bits.

Personally, I don’t mind if the president takes a vacation — running the country, after all, is “hard work” — but I’m puzzled why he won’t meet Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq last year. For one thing, it’s just good manners. Bush points out that he already met with her once last year, along with other relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq. Fair enough, but if a woman who lost her son in a war you started decides to come all the way to Crawford, Texas, for another chat, you might as well take 10 minutes out of your fishing trip and give her a good listen.

Avoiding Sheehan is just a dumb political move, too. I’m not sure who’s advising him these days — is Karl Rove too busy fending off special prosecutors? — but someone knowledgeable should have taken Bush aside and told him that if he didn’t talk to Sheehan soon, he’d just be enticing an army of reporters to come out to Crawford and turn his ranch into another Elián González/Terri Schiavo hatefest.

Well, the hatin’ has already begun: On Monday night a local resident drove his truck out to the protesters’ roadside encampment and ran over about half of the 500 wooden crosses they had hammered into the ground — crosses that bore the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

Where was our valiant “war president?” Out on the range, with his head stuck in the ground.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen