h/t Drudge

AP FRIDAY NIGHT CLARIFICATION ON BUSH/KATRINA VIDEO Fri Mar 03 2006 19:48:29 ET

Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

I'm not expecting the media to run as wild with this one. This is basically the AP being forced, kicking and screaming, to admit their spin job... though not in so many words, and I don't really consider this "good enough", but it's better than nothin', and more than we usually get. (i.e. Dan 'The documents are fake, but the story is still real' Rather)

Mark Noonan Blogs For Bush adds:

And, of course, it is released after the days news cycle is all set. I'd like a Congressional investigation of this.

What we have here is a very strange confluence of events: this story started just as Mardis Gras brought New Orleans back into the public eye. Normally, the story would be about how New Orleans is recovering - but the story instead was a bogus re-write of videos that the Administration had long ago provided to the MSM. I smell a rat here - a DemocRAT, if you ask me. This is simply too beneficial for the Democrats for it to be coincidence - there could very well be collusion, and that would make what the AP did a de-facto campaign contribution to the Democratic Party. I believe that such a donation - which would have to be figured as a value of tens of millions of dollars - would be illegal under our campaign finance laws.

We should have a full hearing in Congress, with the AP and the DNC forced to turn over all documents which may in any way be related to Katrina from the day it went ashore to the day this AP story ran last week. We need to get to the bottom of this, lest the MSM - by getting away with this - merely become an adjunct of the DNC dressed up as an independent media.

Right on Mark... Sadly we know this will never happen, but I'm glad you pointed out one thing I left out in previous posts, which is that these tapes weren't some "leaked" new revelation, but something that had been shelved for months by many news organizations (I had read that somewhere too, but was to busy with how bogus the whole thing was at the time, and I can't remember where now.)

Bryan Preston at Junkyard Blog is out front on this too, as is Ripclawe at Narcissistic Views, and Sister Toldjah.

See previous:
SMASHED: AP's New "Bush Lied About Levee Breach Worries" Campaign Destroyed By Bloggers
Media Goes Nuts With New "Bush Knew About Katrina/Levees" Video... Distorting All The Way

Others who blogged on the bogus AP attack on the President (getting trackbacks out to bring attention to this new development that most are unaware of at this point... since we know the MSM won't be reporting this part) Wizbang, Outside The Beltway, Powerline, Captain's Quarters, Myopic Zeal, Iowa Voice, Generation Why?, Blogs For Bush, Sister Toldjah, Flopping Aces, The New Editor, Two or Three, MacStansbury, LawHawk, Pursuing Holiness

These folks blogged about the fact that the writer of the story is a former 60 Minutes II producer:
Wizbang, Powerline, Outside The Beltway, Willisms, Flopping Aces, The Jawa Report, Don Surber

The Army of Davids 'done good' forcing this "clarification" from the AP, and has seen many victories in recent years. Now march with this latest development.

UPDATE
The few other bloggers who are aware of this new development seem to all be noting the curious timing of this "clarification". Late Friday evening when it's only blogger types who are going to catch it. The day's news cycle is over, and they now have about 2 and half days for other news to become next weeks story so this thing gets absolutely no attention (not that it would have anyway... do you see any of the evening news programs, or CNN, or NY Times making this a leading story even if it had been released in time?) But this late release time did prevent folks like O'Reilly and Hannity from being able to report it.

Anyway, this is really just par for the course for the AP. Their motto is clearly "lie and retract, lie and retract", only instead of admitting it was a lie and retracting, they issue "clarifications". I'd go a step further than noting the suspect release time of this "clarification", and say this may have been planned all along. Do you think they were stupid enough to not know that the bloggers would bust this? I mean we're talking about a former CBS 60 Minutes II producer, surely she knows the power of blogs first hand, and surely she knew the lies she was telling in this article. Go back and read this "clarification", it is truly an admission of lying if you digest what it actually says. It's not a "this is what we meant", it's really admitting the lie, but trying hard not to.

Here's my other problem with this latest development... Why can't I find the "clarification" anywhere except Drudge? I've done a few Yahoo! and Google News searches and have yet to find it. Yet Yahoo! was running it in the news section of their home page for approximately a full day (maybe two, the days all ran together, but I know it sat at the top of that list for a loooong time, just like this headline has all day today: "Pentagon releases names of Gitmo inmates"). So why is this latest development, admission of guilt, not also top headline or even indexed? Interesting.

Scott at Powerline Blog is on this now too, and wonders if we'll see a similar "clarification" forthcoming from the Democrats for this pile of ridiculous they dumped out yesterday. Scott also has John of Powerline's comments on this:

I think it's reasonable to assume that the AP's "clarification" is the result of our dissection of their incredibly lame story. I think this highlights, though, how hard it is for truth to catch up to error. Hundreds of newspapers printed the AP's misinformation, and it was the basis for television news on all of the broadcast networks. The correction (or "clarification") will never catch up to most of the tens of millions of people who heard the original story. The news business is all about impressions, and corrections, days after the fact, never take away the impression that the original story falsely created.

Exactly. This is such hit and run BS from the AP. They had this whole thing planned - Launch the attack in the middle of the week when everyone will hear it, then "clarify" when no one will, and the damage is done. Disgraceful!

Captain Ed is now weighting in as well, and notes that the new "overrunning" language the AP has brought in isn't accurate either. This was clearly part of their attempt to keep from fulling admitting what they did and retracting the story.

UPDATE
More blogger reax:
RedState, Delmarva Dealings, Gina Cobb, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings, Newsbusters

By the way, I still haven't located this article online anywhere. Like I said earlier, why isn't this on the wires being picked up by Yahoo! News and all the rest? Why isn't this on Yahoo!'s home page right now, like the original bogus story?