This is incredible. The Bush administration and FEMA have been encouraging Katrina donations to a supposed charity called "Operation Blessing," headed by Rev. Pat Robertson. Many people pointed this out, in recent days. But what's truly shocking is that it has been well documented that Robertson's Operation Blessing diverted charity funds during the Rwandan genocide to bring in diamond mining equipment for a Robertson-headed mining corporation to Zaire. The NY Daily News reports:

Back in 1994, during the infamous Rwandan genocide, Robertson used his 700 Club's daily cable operation to appeal to the American public for donations to fly humanitarian supplies into Zaire to save the Rwandan refugees.

The planes purchased by Operation Blessing did a lot more than ferry relief supplies.

An investigation conducted by the Virginia attorney general's office concluded in 1999 that the planes were mostly used to transport mining equipment for a diamond operation run by a for-profit company called African Development Corp.

And who do you think was the principal executive and sole shareholder of the mining company?

You guessed it, Pat Robertson himself.

Robertson had landed the mining concession from his longtime friend Mobutu Sese Seko, then the dictator of Zaire.

Nauseating. Is Robertson basically a glorified arms dealer? More on the diversion by the pilots used in the bait-n-switch.

Can we get a bipartisan commission appointed to oversee Katrina reconstruction, to prevent the worst sort of corruption, abuses, and fraud we saw in Iraq? The kind that seem to grow like barnacles off the current administration? Democracy Arsenal's Suzanne Nossel calls for "Fairness in Contracting Post-Katrina."

Update: Hmm. That's very interesting. Operation Blessing seems to have been removed in the past two days from FEMA's website. Anyone save the earlier webpage? Update II: Here's what the FEMA page looked like before changes were made September 4th (via Americablog).

Here's what it looks like now.

Update III: I suppose this total revision of recent history is, under the circumstances, progress!

Posted by Laura at September 6, 2005 07:41 AM