Tight
Constraints on Pentagon's Freedom Walk. Event Remembering 9/11,
Troops to Be Kept 'Sterile,' Limited to Preregistered
Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are
taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and
concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event
closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.
The U.S. Park Police will have its entire Washington force of several
hundred on duty and along the route, on foot, horseback and motorcycles
and monitoring from above by helicopter. Officers are prepared to
arrest anyone who joins the march or concert without a credential and
refuses to leave, said Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford.
The event, the America Supports You Freedom Walk, is billed as a
memorial to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks and a show of support
for those serving in the military, topped off with a concert by country
singer Clint Black, known for his pro-troops anthem, "Iraq and Roll."
Organizers said they expect 3,000 to 10,000 participants.
What's unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest.
Park
Police officials said security and safety were concerns, especially
because Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld will participate in
some of the day's events. They said they have approved a permit for a
small group of protesters that plans to stand along Independence Avenue.
The Washington Post and other corporate entities initially signed on as
co-sponsors. But critics from within the newspaper and from the antiwar
movement said partnering with the Pentagon raised questions about
objectivity, and three weeks ago The Post pulled its co-sponsorship.
John Pike, who has been a defense analyst in Washington for 25 years
and runs GlobalSecurity.org, told Knight Ridder, referring to the
Pentagon rally, "I've never heard of such a thing." Others worried that
it would re-kindle attempts to link 9/11 to the war in Iraq.
Clint Black's song, "Iraq and I Roll," also includes these lyrics:
NOW YOU CAN COME ALONG
OR YOU CAN STAY BEHIND
OR YOU CAN GET OUT OF THE WAY
BUT OUR TROOPS TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE
FOR THE GOOD OLD U.S.A.
YOU CAN WAVE YOUR SIGNS IN PROTEST
AGAINST AMERICA TAKING STANDS
THE STANDS AMERICA'S TAKEN
ARE THE REASON THAT YOU CAN
SOME SEE THIS IN BLACK AND WHITE
OTHERS ONLY GRAY
WE'RE NOT BEGGING FOR A FIGHT
NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY
WE HAVE THE RESOLUTION
THAT SHOULD PUT'EM ALL TO SHAME
BUT IT'S A DIFFERENT KIND OF DEADLINE
WHEN I'M CALLED IN THE GAME
I PRAY FOR PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR
AND I NEVER WILL FORGET
THERE'S NO PRICE TOO HIGH FOR FREEDOM
SO BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU TREAD
IT MIGHT BE A SMART BOMB
THEY FIND STUPID PEOPLE TOO
AND IF YOU STAND WITH THE LIKES OF SADDAM
ONE JUST MIGHT FIND YOU
I'VE GOT INFRARED, I'VE GOT GPS AND I'VE GOT THAT GOOD OLD FASHIONED LEAD
THERE'S NO PRICE TOO HIGH FOR FREEDOM
SO BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU TREAD
The shock and awe of the last two weeks is too fresh in everyone's minds,
and the Katrina cleanup is just barely starting to get underway. But
what is beyond reprehensible is that this is a PARTY. A BBQ. A CONCERT.
That's what we do on 4th of July to CELEBRATE the signing of the
Declaration of Independance.
We should NEVER be CELEBRATING what
happened on 9/11. NOT EVER. It should be a National Day of MOURNING.
There should be no parties, no BBQs, no pro-war concerts sponsered by the Pentagon. Period.
For the past couple of days more stories
are circulating about police preventing people from leaving New Orleans
after Katrina hit, but many people didn't pay much attention to it.
Big mistake. Not only is the story true, it's worse than you can imagine.
If you happened to see and hear Geraldo Rivera, reporting for Fox News, sort of exposed this issue in
his reporting. He was at the Convention Center and was emotional and
crying at the miserable conditions he saw there. He kept saying
something like, "Why don't they just open the doors and let the people
leave this horrible place?" Too bad he (or any other reporter) did not
dig further and connect the dots. Because, obviously, the answer was
that the "conventioneers" were prevented from leaving the Convention
Center and/or entering a neighboring city. They stayed there because
they could not go to any other place. It wasn't New Orleans cops keeping people in, it was cops from other cities keeping people out:
"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of
Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International.
...The bridge in question — the Crescent City Connection — is the
major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi
River.
Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police
from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent
City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three
access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.
...."If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of
the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing
the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was
only way out of the city.
"The only way people can leave the city of New Orleans is to
get on (the) Crescent City Connection ... authorities said," reads a
Tuesday morning posting on the Web site of the New Orleans
Times-Picayune newspaper, which kept reporting through the storm and
the ruinous flooding that followed.
Similar announcements appeared on the Web site of local radio station
WDSU and other local news sources. "Evidently, someone on the
ground (in New Orleans) was
telling people there was transport here, or food or shelter," said
Lawson. "There wasn't."
"We were not contacted by anyone" about the instructions
being given to survivors to use the bridge to get out of town, he said.
Kevin Drum says,"This story exposes a calculated savagery far worse than anything that
happened in New Orleans. Stuff like this makes me fear for the future
of the human race."
It's amazing how our worldview can be reshaped in a matter of a couple
weeks isn't it. Before Katrina I used to think that civilization
was a mighty pillar, a force that held humans up above the rest our dna
based peer organisms. While there have been many cases of
down-and-dirty racism throughout this whole debacle--the core issue has
been the miserable way in which we devalue and ignore the poor, poverty
affects blacks disproportionately. This nation seems to think that being poor isn't punishment enough, we
have to abuse and hate them, too.
Now I realize that civilization doesn't work from the bottom up and
never has. It is merely a thin veneer, a shining patina over a boiling
cauldron of feral selfish rage. No matter how far we think we have come
from our roots in the primordial soup, we are still so close. All it
takes is one little gust of wind, like this, to blow it all down
and expose the raw
evil inside us all. This was the worst disaster to hit the US,
and without doubt the last week was the very worst of times, but I can
say some individual stories show, that as bad as it was, some people on
the ground could see this process repeated in the aftermath of Katrina.
When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking
out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for
your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met,
people began to look out for each other, working together and
constructing a community that some even called tribes.
Trying not to take my eye off the main ball, major American cities
are targets for any WMD terrorist attack. Does this mean all the
expressways would be blockaded by suburban police to keep city
residents from escaping the center city that was nuked with a dirty
bomb? This is kind of a pressing question.
Al
Qaeda's planning a series of spectacular terrorist strikes in October,
targeting American interests as well as U.S. allies in Europe and the
Middle East. The plans are said to be coordinated by Osama bin Laden
and his top lieutenant in Iraq - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- and are the
subject of a non-public report issued by terrorism experts this week. Report warns of terrorists Great Ramadan Offensive
For the past couple of days more stories
are circulating about police preventing people from leaving New Orleans
after Katrina hit, but many people didn't pay much attention to it.
