Food Blockades Flush People from U.S. and Iraqi Cities

At the time, the official reason for blocking food, water, and medical assistance from entering New Orleans was to force the residents to evacuate. To gloss over the sad reality, the propagandists said the blockade was in effect "so as not to encourage people to stay," or because "it was unsafe to enter," even for law enforcement officers and the red cross.

Perhaps FEMA et al borrowed starvation-of-cities as an evacuation technique from the illegal combat tactic that a U.N. official alleges the U.S. has been using in Iraq and elsewhere. Though the Geneva convention may hold that food blockades are illegal warfare, is it otherwise legal to use the tactic in the absence of war? To evacuate U.S. cities like New Orleans?