I hereby charge Lt. General Arthur Williams with negligent homicide. He, among others, is responsible for the body count of New Orleans.

We all know that the Army Corps of Engineers created the situation where this city was all but killed. Now it is time to name names.

The “Commandeers� of the Army Corps of Engineers generally serve for about four years. So there are many to blame.

Emerson C. Itchner has the best name among them. Old Itchy served as the head of the Corps from 1956 to 1961. I command him to come to New Orleans and kiss the feet of its residents. No, I command him to kiss the feet of someone who has spent hours gutting a house in ninety-five-degree humidity. Penance, Itchner, penance.

This goes for you, too, Lt. General Elvin Heiberg. This fella worked in New Orleans for some years back in the seventies. I sentence you to live for six months in one of our gutted houses. Enjoy the neighborhood, Elvin.

It’s good that they don’t get us. It’s good to be at the edge of the continent, barely attached to America. The government can’t even see us down here. What was the phrase used by Bush? “That part of the world.� We are not even part of the same country, just “part of the world.�

People talk about dismantling FEMA; I talk about dismantling the whole government. Why waste time worrying about one symptom? One itchy and annoying little symptom. Trailers still sit unused in New Orleans parking lots.

I no longer care that our federal government fails to see us. Kanye West said that Bush doesn’t care about black people. He’s right, but that is just part of it: Bush doesn’t care about people. He has written off this whole city.

But I can tolerate that. A hateful man dislikes New Orleans. Fine. Ray in Austin's entry on this blog shows that even the Democrats don’t give a damn about us. They are D.C. as well, and we cannot expect D.C. to get us. Then there are the journalists. They have been here, and have even been commended for their work. Point a camera and win a Pulitzer. When one really looks at the language journalists have used to describe our poor destroyed city, it has been pathetic.

How many times have you heard New Orleans described as “like a war zone�? I don’t know if it really looks “like a war zone� or not. All I know is that the overuse of that simile has made it meaningless. People’s minds glaze over when they hear something described in exactly the same way for the fiftieth time. Repetition makes one numb. The only reason to use a comparison, at least in journalism, is to make the picture clearer.

Everyone in New Orleans knows that the president lied. He staged a speech in front of Jackson Square and actually made it sound convincing. Of course, we had ears to hear what he was saying, and we may have momentarily forgotten who we were listening to. We may have momentarily trusted.

The truth, which by now has become obvious, is that the federal government does not hear us. Our anger, our frustration. Trailers are lined up in parking lots, with no one able to live in them. It will soon be six months after the fact of Katrina. The city sits and disintegrates as a few brave souls work to fix their property. In the "State of the Union," President Bush gave less than one minute to the greatest natural disaster in our history. We seem to be a forgotten part of this “union.� We seem to be on our own.

So the time has come to show what power our city does have. The time has come to blockade the Mississippi.