Hiding the Evidence of Dead Bodies in New Orleans?

From Frank Rich's New York Times op-ed today about post-Hurricane Katrina, "Falluja Floods the SuperDome,".....

"The captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water" - even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day.

This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer. "

Go read it. He's dead-on correct.

The dead from this bureaucratic disaster will far exceed the number of those who died on September 11, 2001, a deadly occasion this administration uses constantly to invoke fear. But we will only know how many poor souls died in New Orleans if this administration allows a body count.

In a CNN phone interview yesterday with former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who still had relatives trapped in New Orleans homes, Braun said (cried, not said) that Homeland Security was discussing a mass grave for all New Orleans victims.....without identification or even counting.

It's the same approach the Department of Defense uses for the lifeless bodies of Iraqi civilians. Turn your head, ditch them, don't count them. It's the same mentality that prohibits dead soldier's coffins from being photographed. And, of course, the Bush Administration has notoriously refused to tally or publish information about dead Iraqi civilians since the US attacked Iraq in March 2003.

All the better to hide the evidence.....After all, Homeland Security is still NOT allowing even the Red Cross to enter New Orleans to minister to remaining residents, many who are now dying.

Frank Rich is correct. It's Falluja all over again.