25,000 Body Bags

Crisis Profiteering: Dick Cheney, Halliburton and Hurricane Katrina

Interview excerpt from September 9th Democracy Now
JEREMY SCAHILL:

Well, you really start to see, when you get into Mississippi and cross over to Louisiana, you start to see the sort of outside of the damage of Hurricane Katrina, you will see twisted roadsigns, etc., but even here in Baton Rouge, where I am right now – actually, a supporter who is trying to get Democracy Now! on the air, she had her home destroyed. A tree fell on top of it, and so they have lost their home, and that's – this is about an hour north of New Orleans.

But right when you start to drive toward New Orleans, you see – you start to see the massive flooding of the city. And I yesterday was in Jefferson parish where people were getting their last opportunity to go by boat into their homes and take out what things they could, and then retrieve them, because now Jefferson parish is going to be locked down for the next three weeks, and people are being told that they won't be allowed to go back in. This is happening as they're doing forced evictions in other parts of the city.

But one of the things, Amy, that is not being talked about a lot is the fact that the East of New Orleans, of the city of New Orleans has largely been untouched by anyone. Rescue workers haven't made it there, journalists haven't made it there. I was talking to a Louisiana state trooper yesterday who said that he flew over the area in a helicopter, and he said that there are bodies and animals floating everywhere and that the military is guarding the area, preventing people from coming in on boats, that they have M-16s and that they're preventing people from coming in. There are reports that in one school, for instance, in that area, that there could be upwards of hundreds of bodies in the east of New Orleans, and people are not able to get in there, as well.

You know, right now, the official death toll of hurricane Katrina stands at something like 294, but as with we hear those numbers we have to understand that in St. Gabriel’s, which is not far from Baton Rouge, where I am now, they have set up a massive warehouse that is going to serve as the main morgue. They have brought in more than 25,000 body bags into the area. So we're just now at the beginning of what is going to be a very, very horrifying aftermath as the city itself dries up.

Full Transcript:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/09/1411242