"No one could've anticipated the breach of the levees"
Except the National Hurricane Center, FEMA, and apparently, President Bush too.
They all made that declaration following the disaster that was Katrina and the disaster that was the response to said event. They made it seem as if they were truly surprised by what happened....except that videotape the AP acquired today shows otherwise. They were informed, and still the President went on vacation and got a guitar from a country musician and did photo ops and talked about Medicare here in Southern California before he got his ass in gear and went back to leading. Meanwhile, people drowned.
I think my rant of months ago, while rather vile in its comtempt, is validated by what this tape shows. The breach of the levees was anticipated and considered imminent...but we've all seen how this President judges imminent threats. Attacked the WRONG threat in Iraq, while the big one in Iran is much closer to nuclear weapons. Did not act even close to quickly on the infamous Aug. 6, 2001 PDB which said Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States. This is how he acts on these sorts of things.
It is clear the President, AGAIN, lied to the American people, to Congress, and to the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The question is, will he ever be held responsible for it?
They all made that declaration following the disaster that was Katrina and the disaster that was the response to said event. They made it seem as if they were truly surprised by what happened....except that videotape the AP acquired today shows otherwise. They were informed, and still the President went on vacation and got a guitar from a country musician and did photo ops and talked about Medicare here in Southern California before he got his ass in gear and went back to leading. Meanwhile, people drowned.
I think my rant of months ago, while rather vile in its comtempt, is validated by what this tape shows. The breach of the levees was anticipated and considered imminent...but we've all seen how this President judges imminent threats. Attacked the WRONG threat in Iraq, while the big one in Iran is much closer to nuclear weapons. Did not act even close to quickly on the infamous Aug. 6, 2001 PDB which said Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States. This is how he acts on these sorts of things.
It is clear the President, AGAIN, lied to the American people, to Congress, and to the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The question is, will he ever be held responsible for it?
posted by Thad at 12:37 AM
3 Comments:
Except that, if you watch the rest of the video, you notice that Kathleen Blanco, who was responsible for telling the administration about the levee breach, and had known for three hours about it (through the Weather service) conveniently forgot to mention it to FEMA. Her city was underwater and her quote was "no, the levees haven't breached."
And also, if you want to get particular, both the governor AND the mayor of New Orleans were WELL aware that anything above a Cat-3 would breach the levees, and they received funding for it, which, strangely enough, didn't go to fixing the levees.
Funding, which, I might add, was cut so much so that it wouldn't be enough to upgrade them to Cat-5 strength. Plus, the levees are under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers. The L.A. Times did a story on this months ago (it's behind a firewall now) on how the ACE had constant funding issues over the past eight to ten years because the previous management had consistently overbudgeted for everything, and so they took major cutbacks in certain places, and New Orleans was one of those places. Levee funding was cut by 80 percent when the official assessment was that they needed immediate help. Sen. Landrieu pleaded for more aid back in May 2005, and was rebuffed. The New Orleans Times-Picayune did a major series of stories on the on-again, off-again funding for the levees between 2004 and 2005.
In short, they were WELL AWARE, but the funding they recieved was not sufficient to cover the real world needs, and what funding they got was applied to beginning the upgrade process. The stories are out there, I've read them myself, and there is paperwork to back up the facts in the stories.
Oh, by the way, that tape is from two days BEFORE Katrina hit, so of COURSE she didn't tell them about something that DIDN'T HAPPEN YET.
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