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They're going fast!
Posted on 09/25/2005 11:19:46 PM PDT by Leroy S. Mort
After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - 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, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.
(snip)
"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
I do believe those of us who said the rumors of rape, murder, and mayhem were greatly exaggerated have been vindicated.
Hysterical media failed again.
All wrong. What was the name of that idiot whose report of the bodies being devoured in NO was cited on FR? Obviously they have eaten the rest of the corpses, and were running out of them with only 6 left by the time FEMA arrived. Good they did not eat FEMA personnel.
I think that remains to be seen. While coverage of the hundreds of dead stacked in the aisles of the Superdome prompted cries of anguish and gnashing of teeth (all directed at the Bush administration) from the mainstream media, details of reality are trickling out quietly with little or no media coverage. I mean, why would they cover it? It makes them look bad and makes the Bush administration seem a little less incompetent (by their measure). So has the American public already turned the channel with echoes of "mass deaths" ringing in their ears, or are they still tuned in and looking at our lying media with new skepticism.
Do you think Tragedy TV is going to do a big retraction and mea culpa?
Yeah, I'm sure they'll spend several prime-time broadcast hours explaining how they reported baseless fabrications and rumors as verified facts, and basked in humongous ratings.
< /sarcasm>
I couldn't agree with you more.
"or are they still tuned in and looking at our lying media with new skepticism."
I think they're still tuned in and waiting for more information. After all, when you hear from local officials and the media that there have been these atrocities (especially that cannibalism nonsense), you expect to hear about the perpetraters being arrested, more details, etc., and we've heard nothing. I blame the media primarily for promoting this hysteria 24/7.
I do believe those of us who said the rumors of rape, murder, and mayhem were greatly exaggerated have been vindicated.
No you haven't. This is a strawman argument - who, precisely, was claiming there were "hundreds" dead? I remember reading stories of eyewitnesses, and they only mentioned a handful of rapes and murders; this was confirmed weeks ago by interviewed National Guardsmen who reported about six dead bodies in the Superdome. This story merely confirms again what we had been hearing all along; if you were hearing "hundreds dead" in Superdome, you must have been reading different media than I was reading.
I thought they were just trying to make it homelike--like the
Desire Project.
That's a good point. But I wonder if the information they are waiting for will ever receive broad exposure. Certainly the idiotic decisions by Nagin during the New Orleans recovery has cast some new public doubt on his competency. And the success of Texas in getting MILLIONS of people out of harms way makes New Orlean's effort look even more pathetic. But I honestly think it will be up to people like you and I to make sure the rest of America is made very aware of how badly they were misled by a media whose sole intent in Katrina was to make the Whitehouse look bad. The fact that 51% of American voters chose George Bush for a second term in office DESPITE the full mainstream media effort against him is some evidence that the MSM can be overwhelmed by other information sources. And just maybe, the most enduring effect of Katrina will be the final burial of a media that finds no inhibitions against lying to push its political agenda. Let's hope so.
So, reports such as this are lies?
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16483597%5E2862,00.html
I don't think so.
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They're going fast!
LOL! There were a number of 'statements' that a young female had been raped repeatedly. Sometimes the person was 14 years old, sometimes 6 or 7. I even read one account that a kid's torso had been slit open.
Excuse me, but if that had happened, wouldn't the mother or nearest of kin been all over the TV by now? You know Geraldo and Anderson Cooper would have been trying to kill each other for that story.
I figured very little of what was said to have gone on, including statements by so-called eye witnesses looking for their 15 minutes of fame, actually happened.
OMG...there must be Zoombies loose.
Not a strawman argument... It is called stating the obvious. (again)
There were quite a few people on Free Republic who believed and reacted to the mainstream media's reports. There were even a few who knew somebody who knew somebody down there who confirmed the worst of the reports.
There were a lot of unconfirmed stories told by survivors of Katrina that were reported as hearsay, but were given the air time and press coverage of "factual" stories.
If the priority of the media's message is to attack a Republican, the stories and coverage are skewed to make situations look more desperate than they really are.
If the priority is to defend a Democrat, the coverage is skewed to downplay the severity of the situation.
nice pic. call me cruel if you want but i have an idea. we could raise lots of money for the INNOCENT victims too. lets restage the superdome thing with volunteers. put it on video and net for one hundred dollars an hour. twenty thousand volunteer to go in, one comes out. whatcha think?
I don't recall hearing "hundreds dead" in the Superdome, but I do recall hearing FoxNews and msnbc reporters on the tube saying they had reports of 40 dead stacked in the freezer at the convention center.
bump
The worst was the convention center, I think people/media confused the two.
Hey - it didn't post my <"sarcasm off"> tag....
September 15, 2005 - 20:00:00 ET
TRANSCRIPT.
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, hard evidence of sex assaults, robberies, gunfire and cops turning a blind eye at the New Orleans convention center. Why is it all being kept secret? Why is there no attempt to document the wrongdoing and apprehend the perpetrators? Hurricane Katrina victims suffered countless assaults while under government protection from Katrina, a total breakdown of law and order.
GRACE: Right now, to Will Haygood with "The Washington Post." Will, for those people that have not read your article, what happened in the convention center?
WILL HAYGOOD, "WASHINGTON POST": There were sexual assaults, reports of sexual assaults. There was gunfire. There were people who died. And it was a fairly horrific five days for those people.
GRACE: Mr. Haygood, correct me if I`m wrong, but doesn`t your article state that there were 250 National Guard troops there in one of the halls of the convention center?
HAYGOOD: Yes, there were, and apparently, they felt that it was not - - it was not prudent for them to go into the hall to try to calm the violence. You know, that was something that...
GRACE: Not prudent. Not prudent. I thought that`s why we had the National Guard, Mr. Haygood. Now, also according to your article, the National Guard actually barricaded themselves into one of these halls, so the people on the outside that didn`t have food, didn`t have water, needed protection, couldn`t get in where they were!
HAYGOOD: Right. Right. And you know -- and there was much worry, of course, amongst mothers and fathers who were anxious to get food and medicine and help for their -- for their children. There were a lot of children there. There were a lot of young single mothers there who had children.
GRACE: Well, also, your article outlines gang rapes, sexual assaults, gunfire, actual deaths, murders there in the convention center, with the National Guard holed up in one of the halls!
HAYGOOD: Right. Right. That happened. At the Superdome, there was -- there was a way to check for weapons as people entered the Superdome Sunday. But at the convention center, there was no such plan set up, and - - you know, and so it was willy-nilly, folks rushed in there. They were frightened. You know, many were scared. It was dark Monday night. You know, it was still raining. You know, flood waters were everywhere. People had lost relatives trying to make that trek there. And it was just a state of sheer pandemonium.
GRACE: Twenty thousand people together in the convention center. We now have learned through Mr. Haygood`s article that rival gang members from various housing projects were all in the convention center together, with young girls, single mothers, little children, the elderly. At one point, Haygood writes, they broke into the liquor and beverage area and got out hundreds of cases of liquor and beer.
DR. GREG HENDERSON, TREATED KATRINA VICTIMS AT NEW ORLEANS CONVENTION CENTER: HENDERSON: Well, I mean, Anderson was very accurate, and everybody else who`s told that story, about basically what happened, you know, during the days at the convention center is just right on. I mean, it was just -- you know, I recently referred to it, it`s as if the entire city of New Orleans seemed to have vomited up its entire population into one place, and that was the convention center. All mass of humanity was just collected there, looking for some sort of help.
GRACE: What crimes did you hear about there in the convention center?
HENDERSON: ... I mean, basically, you can -- it was one continuous hell, but there were two types of hell. There was the hell that was during the day. And the hell during the day was the hell of trying to administer medical care to these people. But then, almost as if it was a Stephen King novel, there was a hell that descended upon the night, when, at nighttime, the gangs -- and indeed, that`s what happened, what I have heard that has happened, is basically, the gangs of New Orleans decided to occupy the convention center and make that their turf and make that their operating territory.
Now, they knew they couldn`t do much during the day because, you know, there were some people watching. But at nighttime, there wasn`t any lights. And the way they would operate -- and this is the way it was told to me by the patients I saw during the day -- is they`d spend the day sort of eyeing and picking out their prey, if you will, young women, some as young as 6 years old, and figuring out that, That`s the one I want to rape tonight.
And then when the sun went down, they`d take their weapons and they`d go out into the crowd and they`d start firing up in the crowd, and that would cause a lot of pandemonium and take everybody`s eye off the ball and everybody would go hysterical. And during that mayhem, they would grab the women that they wanted to assault, drag them into the convention center and rape them, and sometimes they would kill them and sometimes they wouldn`t. One particular incident that just murdered me, practically, was -- because I`ve got a 6-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old daughter, was Wednesday night, I heard a report of a 6-year-old that had been raped and died during the trauma of the rape.
And it`s so -- like I said, it was just -- I mean, Anderson tells it well. You know, it just was hell. It was hell from start to finish, but there was a daytime hell and there was a nighttime hell, and the -- it`s -- the daytime hell is when I think I saw the best of humanity trying to help each other. And the nighttime hell is when I saw what true human evil can be.
GRACE: To Anderson Cooper. Anderson, all those nights you were reporting to us about the waters rising and all the human tragedy you were seeing, we had no idea what was happening at night inside the convention center.
COOPER: Yes, only people who were there, and people like Dr. Henderson, who made trips into there at great risk to himself. I mean, just -- Dr. Henderson is very modest. This is a man who was here for a conference. He wasn`t, you know, sent by FEMA. He wasn`t sent -- ordered to come here to help. He was here, just trapped in the city. He`d gotten his family out and decided, You know what? I`m just going to -- I`m going to do what I can. He helped out the New Orleans Police Department and he decided to help out the citizens at the convention center, to do whatever he could, so...
I just don`t think this should be swept away. I just don`t think that the people who were there -- I think they deserve to have their stories told and for this to be studied and looked at and remembered so that it never, ever happens again. I mean, why were those people told to go there? Why weren`t New Orleans police able to, you know, try to control it more, or at least get help from the state or the federal government. GRACE: You know, Haygood writes of cops going into the bathrooms at the convention center, stripping of their uniforms, throwing their badges in the trash so no one would identify them as police officersGRACE: You know, Haygood writes of cops going into the bathrooms at the convention center, stripping of their uniforms, throwing their badges in the trash so no one would identify them as police officers. GRACE: Twenty thousand people evacuated into the convention center. That convention center can hold over 100,000 people. So why were rapes, gang rapes, shootings, assaults, even murders allowed to happen in the convention center? Everybody keeps saying this is America. We know this is America, but things like this aren`t supposed to happen.
I want to go straight to a man who was an eyewitness to what went down in the convention center. Leon Doby, what did you see?
LEON DOBY, SPENT THREE DAYS AT CONVENTION CENTER: Oh, ma`am, I saw everything, from stabbings to fights to women hollering, being dragged off in bathrooms. I like to call it the mouth of hell. That`s what the convention center was.
GRACE: Is it true that police would just drive by and keep on going?
DOBY: Drive by. They did at least throw out one case of 24 bottles of water when they passed. That`s all.
GRACE: You were there with your daughters, ages 1 and 3. You took them in a crate that you pulled behind you through the water, first to the Superdome and then turned away to the convention center. How long were you in there?
DOBY: Oh, about three days.
GRACE: Mr. Doby, what would everybody do when they would see a lady screaming, getting dragged off by one of these gang members into the bathroom?
DOBY: Well, all I can say is, ma`am, people were really worried about theirselves. Like everyone was saying, they had a lot of single mothers there with their kids, trying to do the best they can, as well as single fathers trying to do the best as they can, as well as couples. We was just trying to do the best we could to get over that. But I have to resent the word "refugees." We`re not refugees. We were people just trying to get over a tremendous storm that just tore us up.
GRACE: When you look back and realize these ladies were getting dragged off to be raped and nobody did anything, how do you feel?
DOBY: I feel horrible. I have two daughters who I love dearly, and I would never want nothing like that to happen to any of them, so...
GRACE: What were you afraid of? Why were you afraid to help? Because you had your two girls?
DOBY: Right, a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. If I`d have let their hand go, they would have wound up being lost somewhere. Then I would really have been in bad shape.
GRACE: Mr. Doby, what was the National Guard doing holed up in one of the -- like, a banquet hall?
DOBY: I don`t know. I don`t know, ma`am.
GRACE: Did you try to get in there to where they were?
DOBY: I asked a few of them a couple of questions, but you know, they wasn`t in no kind of mood to answer no kind of questions or anything.
GRACE: Yes, I guess they weren`t.
GRACE: Doctor Henderson, do we even know how many people were killed in the convention center?
HENDERSON: You know, I can`t give you a specific number. I have heard -- I know it is at least 30 to 40 people.
GRACE: Oh, good Lord in heaven!
HENDERSON: I know that...
GRACE: And that`s over the space of...
HENDERSON: I know that -- I have heard -- again, sort of like you, I`ve had confirmed from so many different sources that there have been at least (30 to 40) bodies on the second floor of the convention center because that -- that became the de facto morgue of the convention center, and that`s by people who died of natural causes, et cetera. And even though I`m a pathologist, I am not a forensic pathologist.
HENDERSON: And I think it`s going to be the job of the forensic pathologists to sort through, OK, who died a traumatic death based upon a crime, and let`s start tracking them down.
GRACE: In the convention center. And Dr. Henderson, we got some photos of these dead bodies there at the convention center, and we are not -- not -- showing them. But you can look at them and tell these people did not die naturally. Their bodies are all contorted, and they`re all bloody. It`s horrible!
GRACE: Doctor, do we even know how many people were killed in the convention center?
HENDERSON: You know, I can`t give you a specific number. I have heard -- I know it is at least 30 to 40 people.
GRACE: Oh, good Lord in heaven!
HENDERSON: I know that...
GRACE: And that`s over the space of...
HENDERSON: I know that -- I have heard -- again, sort of like you, I`ve had confirmed from so many different sources that there have been at least 30 to 40 bodies on the second floor of the convention center because that -- that became the de facto morgue of the convention center, and that`s by people who died of natural causes, et cetera. And even though I`m a pathologist, I am not a forensic pathologist.
GRACE: Well, you know...
HENDERSON: And I think it`s going to be the job of the forensic pathologists to sort through, OK, who died a traumatic death based upon a crime, and let`s start tracking them down.
GRACE: In the convention center. And Dr. Henderson, we got some photos of dead bodies there at the convention center, and we are not -- not -- showing them. But you can look at them and you can tell these people did not die naturally. Their bodies are all contorted, and they`re all bloody. It`s horrible!
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/15/ng.01.html
By this time next month none of it will have ever happened.
I do. What they were reporting as "fact" was a compilation of serial hearsay where each retelling embellishes the story further. The people may well have "believed" what they were saying was accurate, but I'd bet that if you asked them to tell you what they actually witnessed vs what they had heard through the crowd, it would be a different story.
Mortician surprised by New Orleans dead
"He was surprised by the number of homicides — people with gunshot wounds to their heads and backs."
http://journalstar.com/articles/2005/09/26/local/doc4337209e961f8160575422.txt
Someone is lying, the conflicting reports continue.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1491598/posts
The guy named Dr Henderson needs a closer look. Is he for real, or is he another Aaron Broussard type character?
'call me cruel if you want but i have an idea. we could raise lots of money for the INNOCENT victims too. lets restage the superdome thing with volunteers. put it on video and net for one hundred dollars an hour. twenty thousand volunteer to go in, one comes out. whatcha think?'
Already done. 'Mad Max; Beyond the ThunderDome' Although Mel could try his hand at producing his own... 'Mad Max; Within the SuperDome'.
But I thought all reporters for the Wapost are liars.
From the story: "Soldiers were shot."
Has anyone heard of soldiers being shot in the Superdome?
Note the story says women were "threatened" with rape. "Threatened" with rape could mean some big guy looked at them funny. Nowhere does it say any of these Aussies saw a rape.
The article is full of hysteria.
I believe there was an overstating of the amount of deaths but I do not for one minute believe there was an overstating of the violence in the Superdome. Matter of fact I believe the msm understated the facts of the violence in the Superdome in order to not offend.
The Desire Project?
Ah,and that place brings back some memories for me.I will never forget how ironic some of the street names were-Piety,Pleasure,Benefit,etc.
"the Ject"folks got a bad rap back in the Seventies when I was down in NO.In fact,the folks in the Lower Ninth could get real nasty and snobbish when speaking of the Desire residents.
Yet when Desire was built in the Fifties,it was a big step UP on the social ladder for folks in the Ninth Ward.The whole single moms on welfare syndrome was not healthy for the kids coming up.Made it seem to them that dependency was their natural destiny.
I really had a lot of good kids from Desire in my classes.Almost all wanted out of the hood and some DID make it to college and into the middle class.One of my smartest kids later became an attorney and he had just got out of juvenile prison when he came to my class.A real nice turnaround for the kid.
I went to one of my student's wedding receptions at an apartment in the Desire-did"the only white guy there"routine.Everyone was cool and had my back.
Have to admit that I made it a point to get out before the sun set,however!
I for one will never forget the sight of the shamelessly showboating Geraldo reporting from outside the Superdome, licking his lips, ratcheting up the hysteria with his voice booming "It is DANTE'S INFERNO inside there!!! I have NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS!! Come nightfall ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE INSIDE THE SUPERDOME!!!!!
Meanwhile, you could see dozens of evacuees twenty feet behind Geraldo, calmly wiping their brows, fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard, in general looking miserably uncomfortable, but NOT like they were ready to turn on each other and commit the unspeakable acts Geraldo was obviously hungering to report.
I've never been too fond of Geraldo, but what he did in New Orleans was so far beyond appropriate that lookng at his face now gives me the same feeling as when I look at Barbra Streisand or Michael Moore.
On second thought, to correct the record, I think Geraldo was outside the Convention Center, not the Superdome in the first day or two after the flooding. As I remember it was a few days after that...
Shepard Smith stunk the joint up as well. Fox was no better then CNN. (And MSNBC was pure feces.)
I agree. He essentially spent a week screaming "Fire" in a movie theater after seeing someone flick a bic lighter two rows away.
If you don't believe there was hysteria and people scared to death in the Superdome you haven't been reading the right articles.
You don't "believe"? On what evidence do you base this belief? The actual evidence does not support your belief. If things were actually more violent than what was reported where are the bodies beyond the 4 who died of natural causes, the one who died from drug overdose, and the one suicide. There were doctors in the Superdome from start to finish. Where is their reports of patching up the wounded from all the violence? Where is ANY evidence beyond the hysterical heresay of folks like Shep Smith and Geraldo? Seriously. Where is it?
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