It wasn't even two weeks ago that the AP launched their latest "get Bush" campaign by trying to say that new video evidence proved that President Bush was warned about the possibility of levees breaking, despite an interview on ABC where he said:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees"

The AP story, put forth by a former Rathergate era 60 Minutes II producer (among others) showed video of pre-Katrina briefings in which the President was involved and there was passing mention of levees being "topped", and tried to claim that this directly contradicted the President's statement a few days after the Hurricane Katrina hit. The problem is, the story and video didn't support the AP's claim. Nowhere in the pre-Katrina briefings did we see anyone warn of the levees breaking/breaching, only passing mention of overtopping, and this wasn't some new video dug up by he AP, it was readily available to the media, and just pulled out now in an obvious effort to attack the President.

Bloggers, myself included, were all over this immediately pointing out the AP's lie. The controversy went on for a few days while virtually every media outlet pumped this story as some sort of huge blow to the President and his credibility, and basically treated it as a documented lie. There was no question that it was in fact the AP lying, because they made a claim that they said was supported by the video montage, which it wasn't.

After the "news" was out, and the damage was done, the AP waited until that Friday night to issue a "Friday Night Clarification", which was basically a short article copping to their lie. They conveniently waited to release this "clarification" until the week's news cycle was over so that no one would pick it up. They figured they did their damage with the first impression off of their original lie, and that they could skate out by saying "we corrected it", without any attention really being given to the correction. Lucky for us people like Drudge picked it up, allowing the bloggers to be all over it and expose it to some of the public (though we don't reach the audience the evening news programs could have.) The "clarification" was a very limited release, and I still don't know if the AP ever put it out on the wires.

Well, thanks again to Drudge, we learn that there is yet another development in this story, yet the AP doesn't tie it in to the old bogus story as they should have. Basically the Army Corps of Engineers (most likely where the President and others were getting their information) had maintained that there wasn't concern of the levees breaking/breaching:

The corps called it an unforeseen combination of events that split the earthen levee and toppled the floodwall.

Of course it should be noted that we all know now, that the levee should have held had it not been for design and/or construction flaws, especially considering New Orleans only endured category 1 to 2 conditions. Also, in the aftermath, this same Corps of Engineers has tried to blame the failures on the category 4 storm, but again, the experts have downgraded where the eye struck at landfall to only a category 3, and said that NOLA only dealt with category 1 to 2 conditions. So these "experts" that we were relying on at the time, obviously didn't know what they were talking about, and it has only been in the aftermath that other experts have determined the real causes of the break. The Corps of Engineers is really dealt a heavy blow in this article:

Scientists working on an independent study of a floodwall that collapsed during Hurricane Katrina said Monday that a government test 21 years ago predicted the wall could fail.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' built a levee and floodwall system to test a design similar to the 17th Street Canal in 1985, which "indicated that failure was imminent," according to a statement from Raymond B. Seed and Robert G. Bea, in charge of the National Science Foundation's Independent Levee Investigation Team.

"Not only did they have that in their repertoire of information, they failed to use it, as best we can tell," Seed said in a telephone interview from the University of California, Berkeley.

Seed said that "sometimes there's separation between the engineers in the research center and the working Joes in some of the districts. It wasn't all that surprising. It was just disappointing."

What a lot of this seems to boil down to is that the Army Corps of Engineers screwed up big time and should have been screaming these warnings that they've denied knowing, but the evidence now seems to show they had. It is my understanding that these were the experts we were relying on for information, and again they've been proven to be a failure in the aftermath.

It should also always be noted that Louisiana's own emergency planning agency was indicted and awaiting trial before Katrina for blowing as much as $60 million in unaccounted for federal money. Anyone know what happened with all that yet? Also, should it be a surprise that if $60 million disappeared, and the people responsible were awaiting trial, that we have a city unprepared for such a disaster. Remember, FEMA organizes relief, they aren't the "on the ground" "first responder" types. The relief effort requires competent local and state agencies and officials.

The main point to go back to is that there is no evidence that the President was warned about levees breaking/breaching which makes his comments on ABC completely accurate. Liberals will say that this is playing semantics with "breaching" and "overtopping" but it's not. There is a huge distinction there, and again this line about the Corps of Engineers just reinforces that:

The corps called it an unforeseen combination of events that split the earthen levee and toppled the floodwall.

Read the latest article now if you hadn't done so already. And a note to liberals, before you start your predictable whining - "How can you use the AP as your source when you slam them for being biased liberals who put out the original story", just settle down. For starters that is the point. If I were using Fox News or something you'd whine about it being a story spun by conservatives. But you can't get away with it if it's the AP. But beyond that, this is my analysis tying it in to the other story. The AP isn't being as honest as they should be here, by pointing out all what I did in this post (i.e. that the Corps of Engineers is saying basically reaffirming Bush's "no one anticipated" statement.) The AP, rightfully, slams the Corps of Engineers with this article, but doesn't point out that these were the "experts" who supposedly had the most knowledge before the storm, and who's brains everyone relied on. This story should be framed as a follow-up to their "clarification", instead of forcing me to do it.

See previous:
BREAKING: AP Issues Friday Night "Clarification" On Bush/Katrina/Levee Breach Video
SMASHED: AP's New "Bush Lied About Levee Breach Worries" Campaign Destroyed By Bloggers

Others who blogged the original AP lie and "clarification" (hopefully sending trackbacks from this post will get the word out on this development):
Mark Noonan at Blogs For Bush, Bryan Preston at Junkyard Blog, Ripclawe at Narcissistic Views, Sister Toldjah, 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, Wizbang, Powerline, Outside The Beltway, Willisms, Flopping Aces, The Jawa Report, Don Surber, Scott at Powerline Blog also here, Captain Ed, RedState, Delmarva Dealings, Gina Cobb, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings, Newsbusters

UPDATE:
Paul at Wizbang is all over this thing. Also, if you read down in to the comments, he makes a lot of sense when discussing the future of levee building in NOLA. Paul uses this article and this article from the Times Picayune as the main source for his post.