If a tree falls in a forest and only FEMA hears it...

From Jonathan Simon:

I agree with your suspicion that the suppression of the body count in New Orleans is massive. I do not agree with you that FEMA spent or will spend any significant time identifying remains (other than those chosen to be part of the official count).

They had three days (last Wed-Fri) with exclusive command and control of critical territory and no media observation before beginning the official search for bodies. They got all the witnesses out. They had to work quickly. Once it was "mission accomplished" (thousands of bodies loaded, transported, and probably cremated), notice how they dropped their opposition to the CNN lawsuit to allow media observers. That is a dead giveaway (as it were). They only needed the three days in the dark.

You can load and dispose of a hell of a lot of bodies in a hurry, if you don't have to bother with traditional identification protocols and/or forensics. And why would they? The vast majority of these victims were all but off the grid, with few traceable ties outside their own families. The black community of New Orleans was very tight knit, but that community in effect no longer exists. Those families have been dispersed and are in many cases being held virtually incommunicado on federal facilities. If each one of 20,000 such families were missing one member, and the death toll was posted at 1000, each would assume that their loved one was among the 1000 and there would be no practical way of aggregating the truth of which each family would hold 1/20,000 part (that is, without the cooperation of the federal government, and we can safely assume that won't be provided).

I believe I understand by now how the Bush junta operates but I'm afraid that the vast majority of Americans would laugh this off and, as with massive computerized election theft, say "it could never happen here." Nonetheless, it is worth prompting as much investigation as possible. I believe individuals in the MSM such as CNN's Anderson Cooper have genuinely had their eyes opened a bit by the sheer magnitude of government malfeasance and by the storm-trooper pose struck by FEMA and other representatives of the Bush regime. They may be beginning to be more receptive to the charge that there is nothing that this regime would not do in order to maintain or strengthen its grip on power and to advance its radical agenda. We shall see.