[Flatley] has compared Irish step dancing to “having four or five orgasms and seeing how many you can go.” … With his pants casually unbuttoned, Flatley gives off a kind of tortured, middle-aged sexuality, like Bono only with a more uncertain accent.
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Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an “alert” as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of “robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness.” The Los Angeles Times adopted a breathless tone the next day in its lead news story, reporting that National Guard troops “took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance.”
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA … came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies. “I’ve got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome,” Beron recalls the doctor saying. The real total was six.
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US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan – an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed – that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel. A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years.
New Orleans is already displaying signs of a demographic shift so dramatic that some evacuees describe it as “ethnic cleansing.” Before Mayor Ray Nagin called for a second evacuation, the people streaming back into dry areas were mostly white, while those with no homes to return to are overwhelmingly black. This, we are assured, is not a conspiracy; it’s simple geography–a reflection of the fact that wealth in New Orleans buys altitude.
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As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff’s department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the citys jail … These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level … Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling. … Many of the men held at jail had been arrested for offenses like criminal trespass, public drunkenness or disorderly conduct. Many had not even been brought before a judge and charged, much less been convicted.
Three former members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves … “They wanted intel … As long as no PUC’s came up dead, it happened.” He added, “We kept it to broken arms and legs.”
Fishback said he was especially bothered when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the [US Senate] committee last year, right after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, that the military was obeying the rules of the Geneva Convention. “I was immediately concerned that the Army was taking part in a lie to the Congress, which would have been a clear violation of the Constitution,” he said. “Interrogation techniques that violated the Geneva Convention found their way into Army systems. The problem was systemic, and it was widespread.”
More than 60 Palestinian women have given birth at Israeli checkpoints since 2000 and 36 of their babies have died as a result … The report says delays force women to give birth unaided and some women and their children die as a result. Israel says it has imposed restrictions on movement in the West Bank and Gaza to cut down on militant attacks.
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Diplomats in the [UK's] Foreign Office are working frantically in private on what they refer to as the “exit ticket” from Iraq. In contrast to the official line that British forces will remain until the job is done, the Foreign Office wants to engineer a set of circumstances in which both Britain and the US can begin to reduce troops next year. But the speed with which unrest and violence is growing is making this harder … Reflecting lowered expectations, the source said the priority for withdrawal was merely that “George Bush is not seen to have failed. He will have to have at least set Iraq on the road to democracy”.
Many have assumed that foreign fighters form the bulk of these terrorists, and some that that they include a large Saudi presence. For example, an Israeli report claims that 61% of the foreign fighters killed and 70% of the Suicide bombers in Iraq were Saudi … intelligence experts and the patterns in detentions indicate the largest component of the insurgency is composed of Iraqis. While no one knows the number of active and part time insurgents, paid agents, and sympathizers, the pattern of detainments and intelligence analysis indicates that the total number of foreign volunteers is well below 10%, and may well be closer to 4-6% … the number of Saudis is around 12% of the foreign contingent (approximately 350), or 1.2% of the total insurgency of approximately 30,000. Algerians constitute the largest contingent at 20%, followed closely by Syrians (18%), Yemenis (17%), Sudanese (15%), Egyptians (13%) and those from other states (5%).
In an hourlong conversation I had with four Blackwater men, they characterized their work in New Orleans as “securing neighborhoods” and “confronting criminals.” They all carried automatic assault weapons and had guns strapped to their legs. Their flak jackets were covered with pouches for extra ammunition. When asked what authority they were operating under, one guy said, “We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.” Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, “He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.” The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.
