Bush Administration: All PR, All The Time

Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes:

There was a striking discrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time. The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.


Clearing work only for Bush?

In the parts of the disaster area where the US president visited, auxiliary troops [National Guard] cleared up properly beforehand - but only there. ZDF correspondent Claudia Rueggeberg quoted desperate inhabitants asking, "Why is Bush bringing loud bodyguards and his assistants here in his cars, instead of provisions?"


Along the President's route, troops had cleared debris before Bush arrived would have cleared before Bushs attendance debris and would have hidden corpses. Then Bush left, "and with it", said Rueggeberg, "so did the troops". In Biloxi, the situation remains unchanged - everything is still lacking.

This is from a reporter from the German Tagesschau:
Bottom line: When the convoy of the President arrived, hectic activity broke out for the first time, bulldozers appeared and cleared areas that didn't need clearing because nobody was still living there, and when the President disappeared, so did the bulldozers and workers.

Christine Adelhardt, the reporter, said, that the fake scenario shocked her as much as the destruction she had seen.


Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) reports on BushCo faking levee repairs for a photo-op:

[T]he greatest disappointment [regarding the federal response] stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young and old - deserve far better from their national government.