Baghdad on the Bayou

Baghdad on the Bayou: Disaster Capitalism and the War on Equality

An Interview with Tab Benoit in Houma, LA - November 2007

Tab Benoit is an ardent champion for Louisiana's Wetlands.

Op Ed News dot com's investigative environmental writer Georgianne Nienaber recently interviewed him for his view
on saving the wetlands. Here are some excerpts from that three-hour interview
(the article stated this is part one, so stay tuned…….)


“Three miles off the coast is considered off shore. I mean just right here, right now, if I could take you up in an airplane and show you this; you’d see that the Gulf [of Mexico] used to be 25 miles from the Houma airport, now it’s three miles.”

“We [Louisiana] have got 4,000 rigs in the Gulf, compared to 100 rigs in the rest of the Gulf. We’re not getting the money from the off shore drilling. We’re getting the money from on shore. So it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why there’d be 4,000 rigs in Louisiana waters, and only 100 rigs outside of Louisiana waters that belong to the United States. The federal government gets our [Louisiana’s] share. It goes straight into the federal fund. That’s been our big issue; [and] we’ve fought for it.”

What’s behind the 9th ward? Two major refineries. Those things are running. The refineries are running. Nothing else is [running] in the ninth ward. What else do you need to know? There it is. There are the answers.”


I started Voice of the Wetlands (www.voiceofthewetlands.com) because we had no voice. Nobody was acknowledging that there would be people here. It was all about oil, and infrastructure. You know the first things were refineries and oil ports. Those are the first things on the lists of things to do. And that’s exactly what happened.


The interview covers Tab's opinions on big oil, the media's cover-ups regarding Katrina, Blackwater's activities in the days following Katrina, the attidude of the Federal Government toward the citizens of southeast Louisiana and much more.

It's worth the read.