Cute. Your smarminess isn't fooling anyone. If it was exaggereated, it was exaggerated.
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Posted on 09/27/2005 11:36:58 AM PDT by andyk
NEW ORLEANS
On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."
Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
The ugliest reports _ children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement _ soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.
The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.
But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.
They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.
One of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.
"It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.
Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said.
To be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees. Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The elderly and very young were desperate for food, water and medicine.
Police said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center, and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when an evacuee tried to take his gun.
A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.
Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention center were overblown. He was head of security at the Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen who went in to secure the center on Sept. 2.
"The incidents were highly exaggerated" _ the result of fear and hopelessness, he said. "For the amount of the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment."
Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape.
Bill Waldron, a homicide detective from Florida in New Orleans for a murder trial, was stuck in the convention center until Sept. 1. He said he saw a couple of fights between young men, but "no murders, no rapes." He said that he did see people dying, but that those deaths were most likely a result of the heat and lack of water.
"People were wanting just some type of authority to come in and say, `Hey, this is what's going to happen,'" Waldron said. "People were scared."
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion of attempted sexual assault but received no official reports of rape.
Judy Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation sites. Because the evacuees and any perpetrators have been scattered across the country by Katrina, and now Hurricane Rita, victims may come forward later, she said.
"It is extremely difficult to get good statistics about rape under normal circumstances, and these are certainly not normal circumstances," she said.
Bill Ellis, a folklorist at Pennsylvania State University, said rumors in an environment like that at the evacuation centers are to be expected, given the frightening circumstances and paucity of authoritative information.
"Rumors become improvised news. You become your own anchorman," he said.
The chaos also seemed to affect some reporters and editors, said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists at the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
"You get so hung up as a reporter on what the big picture is that you use generalizations that become untrue," McBride said.
Two murders is like a slow week down in New Orleans.
Nancy Grace was particuarly "outraged" by all this...
It was amazing to see so many freepers get duped.
And on top of that, it was the behavior of blacks that was exaggerated. Liberals always find it easy to point to 'primitive' blacks who obviously need their attention and largess to improve themselves. How many accounts of resettled evacuees gone wild were posted right here on FR? I personally read of a white family who had taken in evacuees and was murdered in their beds. I knew at the time it was BS, but the racebaiters and hate mongers of both sides are always at work - this wretched reporting just fed the flames.
If I had a turn of mind that lent itself to conspiracies, I'd almost think it was done by the press on purpose.
Yeah.. well that scenario was repeated in spades around here during Katrina.
While some were duped there is a frigntningly vocal contingent on here that wanted the stories to be true to confirm their racist worldview.
Who are we going to believe? The MSM or the people who were actually there.
And BTW, why would the behaviour of these savages in NOLA be a reflection on the Bush administration?
Cute. Your smarminess isn't fooling anyone. If it was exaggereated, it was exaggerated.
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So whom is responsible for providing these people with water and safe temperatures? Mayor Nagin...
People in New Orleans said it was exaggerated. Now who do you believe?
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There were no homicides.
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"I think he was in Baton Rouge...Who knows?"
He was in the city.
He was in the city.
Even if he was, did he really make a difference? It would have probably been better if just never showed up.
That's what it was.
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That's understandable. But remember we're talking about the MSM here. Their whole raison d'etre is to lie, obfuscate, and enhance the Left at any and all cost. What I suggest is that after hearing them, just hold up a minute. We're dealing with liars here, and everything may not appear as it seems coming from them.
They have proven time and time again that they are not to be trusted. That's sad, but nevertheless true.
I wouldn't have believed those airliners slammed into the WTC at first if I didn't see the second strike in real time. I don't trust the MSM, like I don't trust Democrats, at all.
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It isn't meant to fool anyone. Not everything is a grand conspiracy against you.
What's more insulting is the MSMs excuse for not showing the Big Picture: that their audience isn't smart enough to see it (kinda like those Magic Eye posters). So they zoom in on the parts they want you to see and don't show the rest, assuring you it's all you need to know. Every day they promise you chicken and show up with feathers... and think you won't know the difference.
Well, thanks to AlGore's internet, anyone can find out what they need to know or want to know...Big Picture, Microscopic Picture and everything between...without a TV, radio, newspaper or magazine. People are finding facts and stories that the MSM has grown too lazy, corrupt or indifferent to provide. That's why Dan Rather is crying.
Did I say or infer that it was, sapphire?
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