Free Republic

A great city has descended into chaos. In much of New Orleans yesterday, food and water remained in short supply. Medical help was nowhere to be found. And answers were impossible to come by. Then hope ran out and it was the biggest loss of all. At the city's convention center, a frustrated and angry mob rioted, furious that they had been dumped at a place where there was no food, no water and no one in charge. At the Superdome, fights broke out in the huge crowd that assembled on an upper parking deck. The crowd jostled for position...

As buses finally started arriving to pluck refugees from the Louisiana Superdome yesterday, a horrifying picture emerged of the squalor, violence and mayhem that they faced during the days spent huddled in the stadium. Twenty-five thousand miserable people — many of whom lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina — hunkered down with little food and little water, overflowing toilets, stifling heat and the unbearable stench of human waste. Children slept in pools of urine. Crack vials littered the bathrooms. Bloodstains smeared the walls near vending machines that had been pried open. Gunfire has ricocheted down the corridors. There were two...