Bush/Rove played politics while New Orleans drowned

Remember the story of how Nero fiddled while Rome burned? Bush played out the same story as New Orleans drowned. It has been clear for nearly three years that the disaster when Katrina hit New Orleans was made immeasurably worse by the incompetence and delay of the Bush White House. But just how bad it really was simply wasn't told by the media.

Now Paul Alexander has written a book about Rove in the White House and Salon excerpted one chapter that tells about New Orleans. The entire Salon article is well worth reading, but here is just one searing story.

Remember when Bush went on TV from 17th street in New Orleans and promised to rebuild the city? Remember seeing signs of construction in the picture behind him? It was all a lie made up for the camera. Here is the real story from Mary Landrieu.

Of all of the stories and subplots, there would be one that, in many ways, symbolized the whole of Katrina, what it revealed about the Bush administration, and how it would affect the lives of so many people. On Friday, Mary Landrieu had been with Bush and Blanco as they toured the 17th Street Canal, where, at last, major work had commenced to repair the damage that had been caused when the levee broke. "Then, on Saturday," Landrieu says, "George Stephanopoulos called and asked to do an interview with me, and I said, 'George, I'm tired of doing interviews. I have to work. And nothing you are airing is accurately showing what's going on down here.' He wanted to go to the Superdome, and I said, 'We still have people stranded on their roofs. If you want to tell the right story, I will help you tell the right story. You get a helicopter and I'll go up and I will show you what is actually happening. It's awful what's happening at the Superdome, but the reason the people can't understand the story is because the entire region is under 20 feet of water. People can't get into the Superdome to help. They can't get out. People are drowning in their homes.'

"So George and I went up in the helicopter and for three hours his jaw was dropping. Then I said, 'George, before we finish I have to show you one positive thing because I can't send you back to Washington to produce a story that shows nothing but devastation and disaster.' So I told the pilot to tack right so I can show George the 17th Street Canal and the work that was going on there. I swear as my name is Mary Landrieu I thought that what I saw with the president was still there -- people working, trucks, sandbags, everything. Then I looked down and saw one little crane. It was like someone took a knife and stabbed me through my heart. I lost it." There, in the cabin of the helicopter, as they flew above the breached canal below them, Landrieu sat devastated.

"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. At that moment I knew what was going on and I've been a changed woman ever since. It truly changed my life."

The real story is that instead of helping the people of New Orleans, Bush and Rove planed to make the disaster worse and then blame the Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and the Black Democratic Mayor, Ray Nagin. While the White House sat on its hands doing nothing and sending nothing except empty promises, they were on the phones to the media spreading lies about the failures of Governor Blanco and the Louisiana government.

This is pure Rove, and his gutterslime accomplice George Bush. To them, politics is always more important than mere human lives.