AJ's rants and raves - Welcome to Baghdad

Ok.. lets look at this...
A: Baghdad
b: New Orleans

1: city is assaulted by:
A: US Military
b: Hurricane Katrina

2: Weapons are not guarded and fall into the hands of the mobs.
a: US army dissolves Iraqi military but (poor planning) forgets to guard the bases and supply depots.
b: Police are distracted by poor planning and try to be rescue not law enforcement and weapons at Police stations and sporting goods stores.

3: After attack Power is out, water is out, all basic services are cut off
law and order (usually provided by local authorities are cut off..

a: Military planning forgets this and allows looting to go on as it tries to consolidate its position
b: local police (very few who do show up) ignore looters and try to rescue stranded people.. Overall planning is poor

4: Outside agencies try to provide aid and help
a: Red Cross and UN are not protected by troops and suffer casualties and pull out.
b: Red cross and other agencies are not protected by police and suffer casualties and pull out.

5: Overall response by local, state and Federal Government is both slow, un coordinated, and way short of need.
a: Pre war planning thought everyone would quickly help rebuild Iraq and essential utilities could be maintained by the military. As that became less and less likely change in plan and response was slow to occur. Far to few troops were initially allocated for the needs.. upping troop levels has come slowly and in many cases too late to save lives.
b: Pre hurricane planning expected the local police to be able to keep order, local rescue with state level help could rescue injured personnel and quickly restore essential services. The exact opposite was true. The sending of national guard, other police, rescue, and Military forces has been slow and sporodic. The rhetoric sounds so like the War in Iraq. Start at 2400 National Guard, Ahh we need more.. we plan to get up to 30k troops there to keep order..

6: Local population quickly finds themselves in an untenable position. No food, no fuel, no water, no way to get out of the city.. They then are forced to take what they need to survive from abandoned stores/shops.
a: Baghdad.. Encircled by the US Army and extremist militias.. the locals actually have shown more restraint and civil behavior then the people of New Orleans. Go figure.
b: New Orleans: with no way out the (generally extremely poor or else they would have gotten out) population do what they have to do to survive.

7: Decisions made over 10 years ago in error are coming to bite us in the ass today:
a: leaving Saddam in power after 1991 left us on the path to the attacks of 2003. The US placing and leaving troops (especially women) in Saudi have given is Bin Laden and his people.
b: short sighted Green party/ Sierra Club/ Eco group lobbying successfully stopped the building of any new refineries / nuke energy plants/ oils terminals /oil drilling in the US by massive levels of regulation. The result (these things take 8 years to build and bring on line) we have 0 excess refining and power generation capability so this event massively disrupts fuel supplies (even if we had the oil (Release of Strategic Petrol reserve .. big deal over nothing) we cannot refine it to gasoline. Grim.. whats gas in Atl this week? Its 3.50 a gal for reg in Lake Tahoe.

8: effect on the rest of the nation
a: The fall of Baghdad caused severe disruption of the economy (ok this is a stretch th war did it too.. but this was the center of government and economy) and fuel shortages and rampant black marketing and profiteering in the oil industry. Recovery may take 10 years.
b: The loss of NewOrleans in and of itself is painful but has no major effect on the US Economy.. BUT the loss of the Oil Refineries, drilling rigs in the gulf, and the LOOP Oil terminal (40% of our imports come in there) has been catastrophic. Its the 1970's all over again.. For those not born in the 70's.. google gas lines, odd even gas days, and gasoline anti siphoning devices.


Ok.. there is my rant..
The people who are looting New Orleans are the most impoverished, lower economic class.. lets be honest Poor White/Black trash of the region.. BUT they are doing this in no small way in response to the situation, lack of response by the Police, local government, and the Federal Gov. If troops (National Guard) were there immediately after the storm to provide order.. then the looting would have been Much less. If the Police there had been able (or willing) to do their jobs then this lawlessness might have been avoided.

Dont judge the actions of people in desperate situations based solely on CNN/FOX/MSNBC. examine the reasons foe the actions.

Last note... Imagine if something of this caliber hit New York, or LA or Atlanta....Multiply the population by 10, the impact would be a total catastrophy for this country. Depending on how this all takes its course.. it could be worse then 9/11 by a long shot.


Alan