Flood horrors the US can't hide

Some LTTEs in the Guardian.

Perhaps now, following the disaster on the Gulf coast, the people of the US will wake up to the fact the current administration is not and never has been primarily concerned with the welfare of its citizens (Criticism of Bush mounts, September 3). Our federal government is more interested in pursuing a flawed policy in the Middle East than in allocating the funds necessary to protect our cities. As always, it is the poor that suffer. The funds that could have been used to prevent the flooding of New Orleans have been absorbed in tax cuts for the rich and weapons for Iraq.

But while the government can suppress images of US citizens returning in coffins from Iraq, it cannot hide from the world's eyes the horror of bodies floating in the swamp that is now New Orleans.

Elmer Fudd
Santa Barbara, California

To put things in perspective, England, Scotland and Wales encompass a total of 88,745sq miles. The area of total devastation along the Gulf coast exceeds 90,000sq miles.

As I write, news crews are on interstate 10 in New Orleans, filming a large apartment building, 200 feet from them, filled with people and surrounded by 20 feet of water, as it burns. No one can get to them. Many other buildings are certain to burn as well. This is but a single incident in a living nightmare covering an area larger than Great Britain. Local, state and federal resources are totally overwhelmed by the magnitude of it.

Donald Duck
Hertford, North Carolina

Guardian UK

the bushwa..

"Hurricane Katrina is a terrible tragedy. But it's a very American tragedy. The government instruction to "get out if you can" would surely be seen as an abdication of responsibility anywhere else. It left the poor, the weak and the disabled to face the full force of the storm.

Contrast this with the much poorer nation of Cuba and Hurricane Dennis, just two months ago. Faced with the same warning, and with few Cubans having their cars, they moved over a million people out of its path. Just 10 people died. Surely the US should ask itself why a nation as rich as it is can provide so little for the poor among its people."
Jack Ripley
London

...can provide so little for the poor among its people."

We need the answer to this one, and we need it now.

The "War on Poverty" was lauded 41 years ago, and yet poverty is still very much with us.

America has been shamed among the nations of the world this past week, and Bush is to blame.

filming a large apartment building, 200 feet from them, filled with people and surrounded by 20 feet of water, as it burns. No one can get to them." . . .

wonder what happened to those folks . . . I hate to think . . .

One hopes they bailed out into the water,
but I don't expect we will be told by our
"News" media, those people are not important.