"No one could have anticipated..."
Breaking News...
AP is reporting today on a series of videos shot over the four day period PRIOR TO landfall of Hurricane Katrina. Excerpts from the tape CLEARLY show President Bush talking about all of the FEDERAL resources ready to be brought to bear if the levees fail to hold back the water. Then FEMA Director Michael Brown is seen the day before landfall talking about how in his gut he thinks it's going to be a bad one, discussing all of the concerns he has, and specifically mentioning his concerns about the Superdome, the same Superdome they later claimed they weren't aware was having problems.
I first learned about it tonight on "Countdown with Keith Olberman", but you can read an AP article about it on Yahoo by following this link.
Tapes. Showing that the President and everyone at the top levels of his Administration knew what was likely coming. And yet as recently as yesterday, Bush has still been saying in interviews that no one could have forseen what happened.
Anyone still want to defend this guy? If so, you're in the minority. Recent polls have his approval numbers at a 34%, the lowest of any President since Richard Nixon. And daily, we learn more of why.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 3/01/2006 09:44:00 PM
2 Comments:
The AP issued a correction today distinguishing between "topping" the levees and "breaching" them.
Sunday, March 05, 2006 6:39:00 PM
Yeah, I get the difference between "over topping" and "breaching", but still, how different are they really?
Sure, the FIX is a lot worse for a breach than for a topping, but can anyone seriously argue that if the storm surge had been a few feet higher and the same amount of water had come pouring OVER the levee instead of THROUGH it, that suddenly the Federal response would have been totally on the ball?
To me that's kind of like saying "Oh, it's OK that the fire department took four hours to report to your house fire, because the fire was started by lightning, which no one expected. We were perfectly prepared for an electrical short, but this wasn't that, and no one could have expected a lightning strike."
The fact is, what we needed to be prepared for was FLOODING. Massive, deadly flooding. Which route it took getting into the city is irrelevant.
Oh, and the other point that weighs pretty strongly with me is this: What if the levees had been blown up in a terrorist attack? There would have been a LOT less lead time, a LOT less ability to prepare, and four years after 9/11, one would think if nothing else, FEMA would be on the ball and ready to handle the result of a terrorist attack.
On top of that, there's the newly reported fact that in fact the White House was made aware of the extent of the damage by Monday evening at 10pm, they just (apparently) didn't bother to read the e-mail until the next morning, so about 12 hours were lost.
No, these new revelations do not make the Administration smell like roses, and to focus on something as picky and small as whether the water was in the city because it came OVER the levees or THROUGH them, without any real justification what difference it made feels like more "Look over there!" distraction.
(And yes, I realize that with a breech of the levees, the volume of water to come through was probably higher, and so the cleanup and rescue tasks were probably larger. But the issue is with the slow response all through the week.)
Liam.
Sunday, March 05, 2006 7:36:00 PM
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