566 ChaPter^11
Americans being bombarded by constant talk of terrorism, and showed itself
entirely unprepared to deal with the other half of its mandate [and by impli-
cation all of its activities], preparing for and responding to natural disasters.
The outright failure of the department to work with local officials in the days
before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans was made evident to all Americans
and foreign nations as televised reports across the globe demonstrated just
how ill-equipped the department was deal with the disaster. We can hardly
forget the sight of thousands of Americans huddled on bridges and over-
passes in flooded out New Orleans waiting endless hours for rescue, while
thousands more were forced to endure not hours, but days in squalid condi-
tions at the Superdome. What does it say about a department designed to
“secure” the “homeland” – indeed an entire federal government – that left it
up to residents of New Orleans, 73% of whom lacked their own transporta-
tion, to find their own way out of the city following an evacuation order?
While the DHS was demonstrating its inability to deal with crisis at
home, in this case a natural disaster, administration and law enforcement offi-
cials worked to institute their expanded powers under the Patriot Act, arrest-
ing, confining, and even torturing hundreds of individuals suspected of terror-
ist activities. Many of them ended up in the most well-known detention
facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Not long after its establishment, the
International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] completed its “Report on
the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody.” The report
confirmed much of what other media had reported in bits and pieces, that
American officials at Guantanamo and in other areas of rendition [the transfer
of suspects to another country] engaged in some of the more horrific exam-
ples of torture that one can imagine –waterboarding [hooding a suspect, put-
ting him on a board with head below feet, and dousing him in water to
simulate drowning], physical attacks, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse, and other
forms of brutality and psychological duress. The lack of concern for human
rights and dignity by many American officials, and the utter uselessness of
most of the “intelligence” gathered produced outrage, if not shock, on the
consciences of many Americans who began wonder how such abuses could
take place.
The attacks of 9/11 did not occur because “they,” Arabs and Muslims, “hate
our freedoms” but because, as bin Laden himself said, the U.S. had for too
long caused too much distress in the Middle East. He even cited 3 particular