If anyone is concealing the number of dead, it is Nagin.
Haley Barbour of Mississippi had numbers the very first day after the hurricane hit, and those numbers were updated on a daily basis as more became known.
It was Nagin who hedged about the number of dead. First, they said "none" (which seemed odd), then it was "around 100", then it was "hundreds, perhaps thousands."
"If anyone is concealing the number of dead, it is Nagin."
He's not concealing it, he just doesn't have a clue. Some people cannot take the lead and organize in a crisis. Nagin has shown that he can't. He can't see the big picture and delegate and command. He is so bogged down and emotional that he can't even process everything that is going on around him. He might as well have gone to the Superdome and waited to be evacuated out as much good as he's been for the city in this crisis.
It makes you feel bad to question someone when they are crying about a death. I really don't even question that some guy's mom died in a nursing home waiting to be evacuated. If he had left it at that it would have just been very disturbing to me. But, logic just dictates that I have to question this account of her death. The main problems are that she drowned on Friday after talking all week on a cellphone with what appears to be never ending battery power. The alternative is that she was in a nursing home that still had electrity and then I could very well see why there was no rush to evacuate it.
I wish there was some way to investigate this. I think it's important to know the truth on this one.
I think the numbers of dead in Mississippi will be much higher than released so far. But I don't think it's a conspiracy to conceal anything.