Iraqi blogger shocked by devastation in New Orleans

by quaoar
Mon May 07, 2007 at 07:43:28 AM PDT

How bad is it in New Orleans? Bad enough that a blogger from Iraq -- visiting the city while on a journalism project -- compares it to Baghdad and feels sorry for the city's residents.

What shocked me the most in this trip was how the city looked like Baghdad. New Orleans looked like Baghdad after the war in 1991; I swear I kid you not. The devastation, empty houses, the people returning to their life in the city, the "rituals" people practice before they completely come back, the bumps in the streets and the smell of destruction (it has a distinctive smell people. Yes it does.)

I arrived to New Orleans Thursday. On the way to the hotel, I saw the same thing I saw on tv two years ago, destroyed buildings. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Two years later and the scene is the same? Where are we? A government that spent hundreds of billions of dollars on wars overseas is not capable of dealing with a crisis on its own soil! A crisis that all what it needed was money!

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