They aren't to be used collectively. They are large enough to house evacuees from that area. Unless Haliburton has a history of only building internment camps it isn't suspicious of that. It may be suspicious of the bidding process. I don't find it irregular that given the desire to change the Bush administration failures such as what happened in the Superdome during Katrina that this would be proposed during the first week. What I find odd is that the people would leap that because this was proposed there is a logical connection to the centers being used as internment camps. It is especially illogical given the other measures undertaken by Obama early on in his administration. He bans torture, issues orders to close Gitmo, etc. All of those are contrary to someone who would want to lock up dissidents.
And many more feel that FEMA did a terrible job. The government isn't monolithic and the Coast Guard certainly did a good job but that doesn't mean that FEMA and some other agencies didn't. Not quite true. Even Miss. Governor Haley Barbour criticized FEMA and you are also ignoring the fundamental differences in regard to nature of the damage in Miss. and FL as opposed to NOLA. The problems in FEMA's response though hasn't been limited to Katrina as even in the aftermath of Ike there have been complaints along the Texas Gulf Coast that FEMA and the Fed. response wasn't that good. For that matter if you are making a criticism on staff consider that most of the FEMA staff currently is still Bush Admin. staff.
FB has done a good job responding to these but let me add in one thing. If you seriously believe that the government is building massive detention centers that are going to be used to round up people consider this is pretty much the same government that had trouble evacuating willing people out of NOLA couldn't even totally evacuate people out of Galveston and the Bolivar pennisula during Ike. Let me put to rest any fears you might have of FEMA engaging in massive internment that FEMA's own incompetence will undermine any attempt to send mass amounts of Americans to gulags.
couldn't that statement be just as easily inverted, to show that the problems in NOLA shouldn't be laid at the feet of FEMA?
That's a reasonable comeback, but that's not the issue. The issue isn't the magnitude, the issue was their readiness. see franchiseblade's response to your thirty thousand number
Not exactly. NOLA was a far more problematic situation but FEMA still had a responsibility to respond in a competant manner. To give FEMA a pass on that then that would be like saying "well FEMA does a good job when things are easy." that doesn't make sense when their job is to deal with disasters. That said FEMA wasn't totally responsible and every level of goverment from the city to the Fed deserve part of the blame.
I think a huge problem people are missing is that in NOLA, airports were underwater. We can land a plane on a strip that was frozen cause the ice is solid and can be removed. When you have all the streets and strips in the city totally flooded it is pretty freaking hard to do anything. Not a conspiracy theorist but if you give them a few months warning and a good airfield and cleared freeways, I am pretty sure they could handle it.
Whoa, show me where Obama 'bans torture'. As far as I can tell, imprisonment without trial still exists, as well as extraordinary rendition, Bagram prison camp is still open, and harsh interrogation techniques were not banned either. re: FEMA, if they're so inept, why are they being heavily funded and given more power? If tons of people were to be rounded up forcefully, UN troops could be used, as well as mercenaries. Obviously completely unconstitutional but that doesn't seem to be a problem for this government. I think that the idea is to get the poor people to come to the camps on their own accord, but I think that in some point in time that certain outspoken threats to the government (like the ~1 million people on 'terrorist watch lists') will be sent to these camps discretely. Also factor in that these camps are also in close proximity to railroad tracks, and often have a helicopter landing pad. It is not THAT hard to ship the majority of people in. Also, if they're so inept as to round up millions of people, surely they must have recognized that and must have measures in place to do so, otherwise what's the point of building all these camps in the first place? Just using common sense here. What is the need for Wyoming to have 4 FEMA camps? What emergency could they be anticipating? Old Faithful erupts at Yellowstone?
Wyoming could have freezes as well as take in refugees from as far away as CA if there were a major earthquake in Northern CA. This is from rimrocker in the other thread about rendition http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=161845&highlight=rendition If you check out his actual post he has some stuff bolded in there. The basic idea is not only that are our interrogators ordered not to torture, they will not ship them off to other nations where detainees will be tortured. Anyway those are real changes that this administration is making and which seem to not be in the same vain as setting up secret internment camps inside the U.S.
I've read all of this, but am more interested in a link to a government website where this is written down, in the form of an executive order or legislation.
