"When We Act, We Create Our Own Reality" (Baghdad Bob Redux)
CNN contrasts FEMA chief Michael Brown's account of conditions in New Orleans with the reports emerging from the trenches.
Actually, the CNN piece is a lot more shrill than Jesse suggests.
Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday. The sanitized view came from federal officials at news conferences and television appearances. But the official line was contradicted by grittier, more desperate views from the shelters and the streets.
These conflicting views came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:
And then the CNN article proceeds to recite, chapter and verse, an utter disconnect between statements by federal officials and what Americans were seeing -- simultaneously -- with their own eyes and hearing with their own ears on the air, regarding conditions at the Convention Center, uncollected corpses, evacuations of hospitals, and security.
Amazing. It really is like Baghdad Bob -- "there are no trapped, desperate, dying people regardless of the fact that you think you see them on your TV screens."
Do they think the public are total fools? Or has their command, control and communication system come to a complete halt but they're still behaving as if it were completely operational? If their emergency communication network is totally out of order, somebody at FEMA should just assign a couple of folks to watch cable TV and read the NOLA blog and simply relay the information to the folks who are titularly in charge.