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.
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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.”
