The sun had come streaming through her windows just hours ago. She had witnessed birds twittering through the branches of the ancient tree outside her window and had felt glad to awaken to such a glorious morning.

The woman in Idaho turned on the television slowly so as not to spill the steaming coffee she took with her.
Her hands were still steady at this point and she had tried to shake the slumber from her body but was not quite successful and the coffee’s aroma tickled her senses with delightful scents and promises of a tasty emergence from the land of nod.

The normalcy of her morning was sadly shaken to its very core by an image on the television that would forever etch itself upon her memory.
The man cried out in desperation. His voice cracked in despair and tears ran freely on his proud and manly face. A vulnerability so palpable that the woman felt his pain and cried with him.
The story unfolded painfully and came from the lips of this man who had not cried often in his masculine life. He cried out mama they will come for you on Monday and save you from the waters before they can overtake you. I promise you Mamma they will come. He cried out Mamma they are coming on Friday to rescue you; hold on Mamma they are really coming this time. He cried out that the mother had succumbed to the enveloping waters and the rescuers had at last come to find her floating in the waters in the nursing home that had once been her oasis. Tears of pain and tears of shame leaked from the man’s eyes and he lay his head on his trembling arms and wept interminably.
The woman sat down slowly and the depths of her grief for this man were deeper then the rising waters where he was and she felt their suffocating knots wrap around her and try to take her down.

Katrina had made herself familiar to the woman via the magic of TV
but the full impact of her wrath had been a distant thing. Almost akin to watching dramas unfold in movies and not really having the ability to touch her here so far away in Idaho.

The pain of this simple man grabbed the woman’s heartstrings and wrenched them tightly in a grip so tight she felt her breath restricted!

The crying woman sat and watched. Compelled to witness all she could streaming across the screen of her television set. There were images of people cramped together like cattle in a pen awaiting execution at a convention center somewhere in Louisiana. Unlike penned cattle these people had not even the simplest of comforts and were screaming out for water and only the most basic of creature comforts to help them through this ordeal. Little children panted in the heat of this steaming hell while mothers were helpless to ease their suffering.

There were images of others wading hip deep in slimy water with television sets roped to their bodies. The news anchors talked of looters but all the woman could see was the desperate need to hold onto their lives of yesterday. An inability to face today and an even darker tomorrow. Why else would a television be a piority with no place to take it and no way to power it up in this water filled reality they lived in?

Inside herself the woman screamed! These are not looters, they are me, they are you, they are family!
The woman sipped slowly at the cooling coffee.
Yesterday the penned people drank coffee. They awoke to birdsong and dreaded going to work another day. They chastised their children to stop watching TV and get ready for school. They thought of the state of the economy. They were American with ordinary American lives. Before that hateful hag Katrina, they ate Big Macs and suffered road frustration while stuck in rush hour traffic.

They are you! They are me! They are family!

The woman watched on sadly.
Silently she wept into her hands, shoulders shaking violently with sobs she tried to keep inside herself.
Grief so deep is hard to contain and when she finally let it go the tears swept down her cheeks in rivers of sadness and oceans of melancholy almost overtook her to drown her in their depths.

By. Tereasa Sanders-Halligan

OK, protect the jewelry stores and shoot to kill if someone wants to steal the diamonds and doesn't drop the gun. Protect the hospitals. Protect the private homes. Forget the Walmarts. They're well insured.

It just seems to me that there's more media emphasis on "looting of bread and water" than on the lack of response of our government on getting the victims to safety on dry ground.

But, someone stole a TV!! Good for him, if he has a generator maybe he can get it working, and he and the neighboring flood victims can watch CNN in his tent to see that Bush is sending the troops in to plug him on sight for looting.

Shades of Les Miserables!! Capital Punishment for stealing a loaf of bread? Get Lost, Dubya!!

We had DC3s and 4s carrying coal to Berlin during the Berlin Airlift.

No excuses can conceal the lack of preparedness and execution on the part of the government.

New Orleans Armstrong Airport is open to emergency traffic.

Regardless, why are there (for example, others are numerous) no C130s airlifting to New Orleans? They land on dirt and we have a lot of them.

Well, Scotty thinks they were. What does "zero tolerance for looting" mean, if not shooting? At the very least, that's irresponsibly vague language that could lead to tragic consequences.

Reporter: Regarding the president's zero tolerance for insurance fraud, looting, price gouging. Does he make any allowance for people who have yet to receive aid who are taking things like water or food or shoes to walk among the debris?

McClellan: I think you heard from the president earlier today about his zero tolerance. We understand the need for food and water and supplies o fhtat nature. That's why we have a massive effort underway to continue getting food and water and ice to those who are in need. There are ways for them to get that help. Looting is not the way for them to do it.

President Bush. Zero tolerance for breaking the law. If he didn't say that, please correct me.

Who said that? It's simple folks, merley the threat of deadly force is a great deterrent to looting. Unless I'm mistaken, N.O. is under martial law. i.e. the local authorities cannot handle the situation. A simple R.O.E. for police and N.G. troops as follows:

Hey jackass, drop the T.V.
FIre a warning shot.
Wax the punk.

Perfectly acceptable response during martial law.

Our authorities are well enough trained to dsitinguish an armful of groceries from a car-jacking, jewelry store heist, or gun theft. (Or someone preventing the evacuation of the superdome because they are shooting at something).

Nobody is talking about open season on people where they don't belong. After all, few are where they belong at all. We're talking about restoring order, with lethal force where necessary, which is not in every situation.

Anybody who's packing heat & doesn't drop it on command, shoot him. Fine. (You'll take out a few irate store owners, but hey, they should obey orders.) But "zero tolerance" for people raiding the grocery store?

Like I said, there's a big difference from the scenario you outline. Our law enforcement officials are not stupid. What are they to do with a bunch of hoodlums walking out of Wal-Mart with an arm load of guns? Arrest them (all hundred), transport them by hover-craft to the (flooded) jail, to await trial in the (flooded) court? There's no mistaking those caught on video, leaving a store with things that do not belong to them, with a big smile on their face- like it's Christmas.

What about the rights of those they kill? Aren't the looters responsible for gaps in the recovery effort, because of their actions? They represent the lowest form of life...

And what if a "looter" turns out to be some poor schmoe whose life has been destroyed trying to recover the few possessions that haven't been destroyed from his own house?

There's a big difference between getting some food for your family and stocking up on new Nikes and jewelry. Crawling over dead bodies to relieve them of their worldy possessions, likely things their next of kin will want, is absolutely reprehensible. How about issuing a statement that all looters will be shot on sight?