What a SPIN of a story. Those of us on the right have to admit - - This was a MAJOR screw-up and Bush LIED. He then tried to cover up. He lied to congress about not having copies of briefings, now, voila - those briefings are leaked by the Whitehouse to try to put more spin on a bad situation. Bush LIED - period.

He no longer has my support. Impeach him now. Please

This may be the most ludicrous thing I've read in a while. You're basing your defense on the difference between "breaking" and "breaching?" Good grief. Maybe next you can figure out what the definition of "is," is.

The White House admits they screwed up. The GOP Congress tore them a new one. Even conservative commentators have figured it out. But you're still trying to pin it on the locals.

I don't think anyone anticipated that this video would be released.

Yeah "gman" like we've never heard a liberal pretend they are a conservative who changed their mind about Bush... you guys are so pathetic

And Michael, I expected comments like yours... In one sense it seems like you have a point.. but the fact is what happened and the concern discussed in the video are totally different things. Remember most people had thought that NOLA and their levees had dodged a bullet when the weak storm hit, and it was only recently revealed that people on the ground saw the breaks in the levees right after the storm hit... but I suspect that when Bush did this interview (4 days later) he, like everyone, hadn't expected the levees to "breach" because as far as most knew, the storm had passed and the levees had survived.

I don't think any explanation is going to help you here, but that's the gist.

Wow Jon what a come-back. Then again you can see why I've changed my tune. I've been a lifelong Republican - 47 years and your only defense is to attack me because I say something you don't like and think only a liberal could say it. I call it like I see it. Period.

You an only tote water for so long. A lot of other things I saw as maybe not his fault. Bad intel on WMD. Bad post-war planning by his staff. Disengaged on the ports deal.

But he looked into the camera and lied.....point blank. (Just like "I did not have sexual relations with that woman")
Spin all you want, we all know (common sense test) whether there was concern for the levees or not. Breach, top, break, spill, leak, etc. all means the same thing.

There has been concern for years. An exercise a year before identified it. And here a day before there were serious concerns. Once again common sense test, this means it was anticipated, a possibility, a concern, an alternate outcome. Unless the next defense is no one said it was a "definite". Remember, nothing is definite except death and taxes.

So feel better, only liberals can be concerned and question whether our president lied to save face. To me, anyone who lies, liberal, moderate, conservative, loses my support.

Correction

Previous post should say "wow RANDY" and not Jon!
sorry Jon, was reading the top and not bottom.

Randy, see how easy it is to admit a mistake! I was wrong, I corrected it, I didn't lie to save face.

no one is pointing to the fact that at the end of the video he assured that he would send people and aid in RIGHT AFTER the storm. yet we know tha people waited several days for help.
P.S. yes i am a liberal which by definition means i'm open minded.
P.S.S. you're arguement is senseless anyway since you should look up the definition of Breach http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=breach&db=*
also, you should probably look at the documentaries like modern marvels that actually did an investigation on the levees thus saying it was topped AND breached. Of course i have no idea what that has to do with the fact that he knew the info ahead of time and lied about not knowing or even receiving the info.

Look GMan, I have no way to force you to be honest... but I believe you are just a liberal using the common liberal tactic of claiming to be a conservative who's turned on Bush in order to bring more legitimacy for your statement.

I explained it all above, and if you don't get it, it's because you don't want to. But I think we're looking at what, a 5 second clip in the context of an unfolding story in which given what actually hit NOLA, no one expected the levee issues that actually ocurred, and the information about the extent of the design and/or construction flaw (again not overtopping from the storm) caused was slowly rolling in, and no one was expecting that.

as for john speaking on the exact definition of "breach", that has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm saying... I use it only because that is the term the media uses and generally tries to tie it in with the image of overtopped levees, not broken down ones as actually occurred.

But here's another look... the overtopping that was feared and discussed (but not necessarily "anticipated") wouldn't have caused the damage that the break did. There was expected to be flooding if the levees were overtopped sure, but no one anticipated a break/breach that caused the unexpected amount of flooding that actually ended up occuring. I think I'll update the post with that angle, thanks for helping me realize it libs.

check out my update... I know you libs still won't accept the obvious reality here, but there it is anyway... I'm actually the stupid one who didn't realize at first that the President clearly meant that no one anticipated the break that occurred and caused the immeasurable damage. Of course everyone knew about the overtopping concerns that had been raised for decades, but that damage would have paled in comparison to what occurred as a result of the break "breach" that no one anticipated.

Lines I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot of from us snarky types:

- It depends on what the meaning of "Breach" is.
- There was no controlling disaster authority.
- I was prepared for the disaster before I was unprepared for it.
- I did not have a video conference with that man, Mr. Brown.

Whether Bush "lied" is going to be another one of those Jesuitical arguments, like the argument about the build-up to Iraq. (Yes, he mentioned things as absolute fact when he knew there was considerable doubt as to their validity, but is that really a lie?) It hardly even matters anymore.

Bush will be President for two-and-a-half more years, and he has completely internalized the "liberal media" myth to the point that he thinks his unpopularity is just due to the MSM being out to get him. It's not (the MSM tried to throw things at him back in 2002, and it didn't hurt his popularity; the people, not the media, decide what stories are important).

What's important is that this guy is President, doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't understand what he did wrong and has no intention of doing anything differently. We're doomed, and all we can do is feel nostalgic for a real President (Clinton, Bush 41) or a real almost-President (Gore, Kerry).

This is so NOT news.

If you haven't realized this guy is the NO ACCOUNTABILITY President by now, nothing will open your eyes.

Good job of protecting "merikans" though.
NOT

Get out any dictionary and look up "breach", and in the future don't be so eager to make excuses for a clearly incompetent administration.

I really don't blame Bush for the flooding itself, or the breakdown of the levees. I have the feeling that people in general blame him for two things: the appointment of ann incredibly underqualified official to head FEMA, and his seeming indifference to the enormity of the storm before, and in the hours immediately after landfall.

It is not clear that appointing someone more qualified that Brown would have changed the situation greatly, nor is it clear how much better the situation would have been on the ground if Bush had been more attentive and ersponsive beforehand. It still would have been a terrible tragedy no matter what.

But, these mistakes, even if they weren't incredibly significant in terms of how things played out on the ground, are just clearly wrong. They flow from two characteristic ethical deficiencies of the administration: cronyism and callous indifference to human suffering. The public can easily tolerate poor, but well-intentioned judgements, but they will not abide sabotage or deliberate indifference.

The capstone of the tragedy was going back to New Orleans after the waters had subsided for a bit of cheerleading and moments restrospection. This was handled brilliantly- the dissonance between how defective the administration is at governing against how effective it is at politicking pretty much set the public's opinion with regard to Katrina.

Ultimately, the details of the levees breaking are irrelevent to judging the administration, even though they are what caused the bulk of the damage.

It doesn't matter where the eye hits, it could hit St. Louis, since water flows to the ocean.

Oh man, I feel your pain. How many muscles did you pull coming up with this tortured defense of Bush's Katrina debacle? I didn't know it was possible to stretch that far.

Sounds like you need some Motrin and a healthy reality check. Dude, THEY GOT IT ON VIDEO!!!

OW!!@#$@!!%^!!!!!

pretty amazing. I guess it takes being a "liberal" to want to hold this administration up to any standard at all.

A classic example of the "liberal" media going nuts was the ceaseless repetition of the Swift Boaters' musings. What is it, anyway, with the spitting out the word "liberal"? It is always done with a far greater degree of venom than uttering the label, "conservative". There really is no comparison.

Geez, louise, you are a doofus. There's just no other word. This is not about language, terminology or design structure -- this is about knowing that people's lives were in danger and then doing Nothing. Get it? It's called "negligence," "malpractice," "stupidity." How many died while BushCo did Nothing? The levees were a Goner -- that doesn't mean people's lives couldn't have been saved; or, to some degree, ACTION TAKEN that would have reduced the loss of life.

Brownie appears to be more on the ball than Bush in the video, which is even worse a thought than my screaminglingly left-wing imagination could have come up with in my most paranoid "What could this administration screw up next" imaginings.

Webster's says: "breach: to break"

Okay, so my question for the idiot who wrote "the levees were never breached or overtopped" is, are you stupid or a liar? The levees were clearly breached - there were great big gaps with water running in - and the breaches were caused by water piled up by prevailing winds and channeled against deteriorating banks.

So is it you just don't know what the word "breached" means - or was it another cynical attempt to put positive spin on the manifold failings of the most incompetent and corrupt administration in the history of the Republic? Inquiring minds want to know.

"that the levees never "breached" or "overtopped"

This is not a known fact. Although the majority of the floodwaters were deemed to have been a result of the levee breaches, some of the flooding WAS caused by overtopping.

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:04vrEHC7cgQJ:www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22238.pdf+new+orleans+levees+katrina&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=7

You should probably have looked up "breach" before asserting that "the levees were never breached." Here's the Oxford American Dictionary:

verb [ trans. ] 1 make a gap in and break through (a wall, barrier, or defense) : the river breached its bank.

Whether or not the levees could have been built better is irrelevant here--they had never had to cope with such a challenge, and experts were reasonably concerned with whether they would be up to the task and anticipated the possibility that the levees might be breached even if they were not overtopped.

The poster seems to have a remarkable ability for ESP, given that he knows, "Because he meant the "break" type of breach that happened, not the overtopping by storm surge that had been antcipated." Anyhow, whether you want to call it breach, topping, break, broke, flooded, whatever, my question is what is the end result of the levees being broke, topped, etc, etc. I fail to see how upon being told that it was a grave concern that a Hurricane of this force could "top" the levees, you could concievably argue that it was suprise when those same levees were broken or breached, because basically the exact same thing would have happened: the destruction of an entire city. But the other element from the tape that is unmentioned above, is when Bush tells everyone that the federal government is ready for this scenario and will do everything it can to help local and state governments. How'd that one work out?

It's time to admit it. Republicans hate government and are not good at it. They're good at rigging elections and that's it. Once they get in, they see it as a way to make money through the revolving door of K Street. The public interest means nothing to them. Democracy means nothing to any of them. besides an inconvenient way to gain power.

No one could have known the levees would break, or breached or whatever, except for those of us who knew.
If we are to believe these liars, they are the last people to know anything. I'm tired of an administration that uses incompetence as an excuse for their deliberate malfecence. .

How can anyone defend this slow motion train wreck of an "administration"
any longer?

Face it, you 34%ers are just dead enders....just like the insurgents in Iraq.

It's shocking that hundreds of people died unneccessarily, and in response this one slow Bush supporter spends effort defending his man by splitting hairs on "breach" versus "break." Appalling, really.

Can't you just see the tragedy that happened, look at those responsible (as per the investigation and piles of supporting evidence) and hold Bush responsible for his share of the failure? Is that so hard and painful to do? Are you working so hard to avoid so you don't have to share that feeling of responsibility.

Absolutely pathetic.

I mean, is this post serious?
Do you have any shred of intellectual integrity left? Are you really denying Bush outright lied to make himself look as good as possible?

Are you serious when you advance this argument or is it a joke? It must be a joke:
This is supposed to be used to bust Bush "lying" when he said a few days later, on Good Morning America:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees"
What everyone is ignoring is that the levees never "breached" or "overtopped", they broke because of design and/or construction flaws. This is a known fact.

Funny joke.

I don't think that George Bush lied. I think that he is merely an extremely simple person, profoundly uncurious, and this foundation leads him to say things in honesty, that appear to be lies. He is a gifted politician, and a leader in ideas of a portion of the populace; but as a government official his qualifications are largely absent.

Lyle,

Allow me to translate.
Bush isn't a liar. He's a moron.

Thanks.

I mean, it's all about what you mean by "sexual relations" err, that is, "breach." I mean, it's not really a lie if you take a certain definition (mine) and apply it. And really, it's just a lie excusing the stranding and deaths of lots of Louisanans, not something important like a blow job.

Guess it just depend's on what your definition of "is" is, as in "George Bush is a bald-faced liar and a pathetic, cowardly excuse for a president, as he is equally as a man".

You're defense of the President in this sad and tragic episode is positively Clintonian - "It all depends on the definition of 'is'"

Breach or Break or Overtopping? What's the difference? About 1,000 people died. Does it really matter how it actually came about? And as far as the hurricane being a cat 1 or cat 4 - it doesn't matter - the city still flooded! And it happened on Bush's watch - if it were President Gore/Kerry/Clinton/any democrat who was in power, you'd be calling for their head!

Unabashed partisanship like this would do the Communists proud! Defend our dear leader regardless! No wonder why the republicans have adopted red as their color....

You know, at some point you just have to put facts ahead of ideology.

The Bush administration is incompetent. Katrina is perhaps the most glaring example, but they've done everything badly: social security reform, balancing the budget, the prescription drug program, energy, the creation of DHS, and of course the occupation of Iraq. It stops being about whether you like a guy's ideology if he just cannot get the job done. If Bush was a pitcher he'd be sent down to the minors. If Bush was a surgeon he'd be an undertaker's dream. He's incompetent, and when he screws up he lies about it.

F*ck up, lie about it, repeat.

Now we've reached the point where Bush has to be excused by telepathically re-interpreting his statements to mean anything other than that he straight-up lied.

And this is itself used to help repair another excuse, that no one in the administration had any idea the levees could breach; this is used to excuse the criminally negligent federal response to Katrina in New Orleans.

I thought that Republicans and conservatives were supposed to be about accountability and individual responsibility.

Aren't you tired of making excuses for someone who's supposed to be a grown-up man?

The good news is that the video shows that actual briefings and planning for the worst were taking place, with Bush in the loop, before Katrina hit. There had been an impression that the White House was totally out of the loop.

The bad news is that Bush on his ranch seems totally disengaged during the briefing, like he couldn't care less. THAT is what is going to hurt him in the logn run on this issue.

George W. Bush is a human being. He is not a God. Why do you mindlessly defend the guy's every blunder?

Even if he was suprised by the breach, break, crack, whatever he had days to prepare for the worse. Is not the federal goverment supposed to be ready for the next terror attack?!

This post is some of the worst misdirection I have ever seen. I sure hope you don't make a living as a magician. Cus the thing that matters, the thing that rings of 'truthiness (tm),' is not the definition of 'breached,' or whether Bush had a memo stating "Katrina Determined to Hit U.S.,' it's that he DID NOTHING. He FAILED TO LEAD. He sat in an important briefing about a major catastrophe that was about to hit our country, and he asked no questions. He did no follow-up, prefering to continue his campaign tour and play guitar. He had his top guys tell him that one of America's greatest cities could be underwater in a matter of hours, and it took him FOUR DAYS to get back to it., and then only because his aides strapped him to a chair and made him watch the evening news. This whole episode is about shedding light on perhaps the greatest lie perpetrated upon the American people: that George W. Bush is a strong leader who can protect us and help us in our hour of need. This video is just another reminder of just what a crappy 'leader' he really is. You can try your slight-of-hand, but we've all seen this trick a few too many times, and we know how it's done.

Okay folks, as I said, I will be posting a more clear post on this later... but for all those who keep telling me to look up the definition of "breach" because it means "break"... THAT'S MY POINT!

Initially (before updates) in the post I was using the word breach with overtopping and talking about how I hate that the media constantly does that to mislead people and make us think that overtopping of the levees is what caused the damage. This is flat out wrong.

It was my bad for not making it clear in my original post, yes if we're being technical "breach" makes more sense when talking about what happened, a "break"... My problem with the word was with the media usage of it. Sorry. But that only bolsters my point! It was one of you who brought that up in an early comment and led me to the the absolute proof that Bush didn't lie here, and he was completely accurate in what he said.

So, we've established that "breach" meant break right? That is what you're all screaming about. So when the President said:
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees"
He was completely accurate. No one did. People were concerned about an overwhelming storm surge that would have caused bad flooding... but that flooding would have looked like a puddle compared to what was caused by the unprecedented flooding we saw as a result of the breach.

So again, to be clear, my bad on on the language I used in the original post... I can see it wasn't very clear because I was in a hurry just trying to get it out there... But for all your whining, all you've done is supported my point that no one did anticipate the breach. There were concerns of overtopping, but no one anticipated the breach and the difference in damage between the two is night and day.

Randy:
No, that's not what we're all screaming about.

We're screaming about the fact that Mr. Bush was disengaged, unfocused, unconcerned as disaster loomed.

That he had appointed someone entirely unqualified to head FEMA, and yet that incompetent, who was more clued-in obviously than the president, was then hung out to dry in a shameful effort to cover the president's behind.

We're screaming that Mr. Bush was not parsing words when he made his infamous "no one thought . . ." remark, he was lying, deliberately leaving the American people with the impression that the possibility of a levee failure never entered anyone's head.

And we're screaming that at some point Mr. Bush's supporters need to get in touch with reality, put their love of country ahead of partisanship, and recognize the simple fact that this man is a disaster as president.

The semantics of "breach" aside, it is simply wrong to claim that the NO levees were not overtopped. In fact, the November 2, 2005 preliminary report of the investigations into the flooding indicated that "most of the levee and floodwall failures were caused by overtopping."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_New_Orleans

I'm confused. Wasn't the concern that a Category 5 hurricane was going to hit New Orleans? Wouldn't a Category 5 hurricane have broken the levees?

So if Bush were to have been speaking completely accurately, according to you, what he should have said was "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees from a Category 1-3 storm, but we were expecting a Category 5 storm, so, yeah, I guess we did kind of anticipate it." Right?

The point is that concern wasn't for the breaking/breaching of the levees. The concern had been for bad flooding from high storm surges, and that wasn't what caused the immeasurable damage we saw. So the President was completely accurate when he said no one anticipated it. Again, to understand the difference place a cup filled to the brim of water in an empty bowl and blow on it.. .You'll get some spill over. Reset but this time smash the glass with a hammer. Imagine this bowl is NOLA and the cup is the levees. Which is worse for the residents? Of course the break, which again was not anticipated.

And talk about semantics Dirk, fine there was isolated and minimal overtopping that isn't worthy of headlines, especially not compared to the damage caused by the breaking of poorly designed and constructed levees. You can point to user written articles on wikipedia all day long, but the experts agree that the levees broke as a result of poor design and/or construction not of overtopping.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092001894_pf.html

The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

But you're still giving Bush the credit for knowing this post hoc analysis pre hoc, so to speak. When Bush said what he said he was lying because he and everybody believed the levees had been breached in exactly the way experts predicted they would have been.

It's the same thing as "Nobody anticipated terrorists flying planes into buildings" which was categorically untrue as well.

And again, the point of the debate is not the semantics of whether Bush was technically lying or not, the point is that Bush couldn't be bothered to worry about Katrina until 3 days after the rest of the country was in full "Oh Sh*t" mode. And he appointed incompetents to handle the situation. No parsing will eliminate those facts.

That's simply not accurate spike.... Everyone knew that the levees had breached/broken in the days after the storm... it was later determined why (the design/construction) but there were helicopters flying over showing what happened in the first day or two after the storm... don't divert back to his response because that issue has been done to death and this doesn't change a thing, other than show that he was involved in meetings behind the scenes.

The point was that this AP attack was the "smoking gun" for liberals to call him a liar, and without bloggers the media would have been able to run wild with this thing. Luckily enough people have figured out what's really going on here.

Randy,

Let's give Bush the benefit of the doubt and take his original comment out of context: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

This is clearly not a true statement, as documented here:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509030001

Now, was Bush lying when he said this, or was he just a misinformed moron, as Lyle suggested above?

You seem to be saying that in this new videotape only the possibility of "overflow" was discussed, not an actual "breach". Based on that hairsplitting, you have argued that he wasn't lying.

OK, I accept your argument. Let's just agree that he's a clueless moron instead. Either way I don't think he should be running our country.

I understand your point overtopping is completely different than breaking or breaching.

But you are treating the difference as though the levee breaking is on the same level as Godzilla attacking N.O.
"No one expected a giant atomic lizard to crawl out of the ocean." If Bush made that statement I coud understand.

A cat 5 hurricane the size of Texas can do alot of unexpected things but breaking a 100+ year old levee system is not one of the "unexpected".

Randy, you're mincing words here. A breach means that the levees fail to do their job, whether technically by "overtopping" or some other means.

Just as in military parlance: if your defenses have been "breached," it means they have failed. This failure might be because a bunch of enemy forces climbed over your walls, or through a gateway, or that they blew them away. The "how" is not important, the result is important.

Bush was clearly informed of the concern that in SOME fashion the levees in N.O. would fail to protect the city from massive flooding. Thus, when he said "no one anticipated the breach of the levees," he is saying, "no one thought that water would get past the levees." False. And he knew it. That makes it a lie.

The failure of the poorly-designed and poorly-built levees was due to overtopping, which caused erosion of the foundations and ultimately caused their failure. This has been repeatedly addressed in the media, often as a means to defend the administration against its critics. These are not left-wing lapdogs making this point, it's the government's own engineers, courtesy of the Army Corps. This was their conclusion as to the anatomy of the levee failure.

The failure of the levees was known nationwide by anyone with a television set by the day after the actual hurricane. How, and why, wasn't the President aware?

The mere fact that the full category 5 force of the storm missed New Orleans does not excuse the fact that dire warnings had been made, several times, to the administration and to the President himself, in the days leading up to the event itself, yet he subsequently denied all knowledge of these warnings.

This might well have turned out the same no matter who was in office, Repub or Dem, and the same covering lie might also have been used. But it is your guy who used it in this case; against a backdrop of similar "who knew?" shoulder-shrugs (i.e., 9/11 -- who knew? YOU knew -- you were warned! Iraq will be a cauldron of violence and anarchy? Who knew? YOU knew -- you were warned! Medicare prescription coverage will fail to work as advertised? Who knew? YOU knew -- you were warned! Want me to go on?) it's easy to understand why few are willing to cut the President slack any longer, if they ever were.

You need to come to recognize that, yes, this is indeed one very incompetent leader. He has a cavalier attitude about every issue that comes before him, and it's decidedly dangerous for the country and the world.

It's long past time to impeach Mr. Bush. By the end of this summer, Republicans may be singing that song too. Why? Because a lot more information about similar failings is going to be coming to light, and like most if the other revelations, they're going to be leaked by White House and/or Republican insiders. THEY have been the ones getting this information to light up to now, don't forget that.

It should say something to you that the consciencious staffers throughout the Bush government feel so compelled to get the truth out. If they're that scared of Bush's combination of incompetence and willfull ignorance, why then aren't you?

Let's leave aside Bush's lame "No one could have anticipated..." excuse for a moment. The fact that in the era of instant communications he didn't know the scope and severity of the flood damage, or knew and just didn't do anything for four full days is indefensible. If you want to go on pathetically defending the indefensible on this blog, go ahead, but don't you sense a pattern of incompetence or deliberate negligence? Are you too completely brainwashed to believe the evidence of your senses?

I am sure that the loved ones of those people who died or are missing will be relieved to hear that the levees broke because of a design flaw and not because they were topped or breached. I know such knowledge would ease my mind.

Reports by the Army Corps of Engineers since the 1830s have worried about the stability of the levess protecting New Orleans. There is no excuse for not knowing that a catastrophic storm might cause flooding in a city parts of which are 14 feet below sea level.

The president's lack of questions and hollow assurances offered in the face of some frightening scenarios should prove to a reasonable person that this president views facts as annoyances to be ignored instead of a call to action.

Preparations for flooding caused by breached levees is completed different from the preparation required for flooding caused by topped levees. Clearly, insofar as no one thought the levees would be breached all the pre-storm flood preparation was focused on the levees being topped. Once the breaches occured DHS/FEMA had to go back to square one with their preparations.

The President pretending to play guitar is an intregal part of the preparations for levee topping floods but appears clueless and out of touch in breaching flood scenario.

MSM's failure to recognise these distinctions is once again attributable to liberal bias.

oh.. you guys are so boring and repetative... read all previous...

but for Kool Kurt specifically, even your liberal buddies could tell you how idiotic a statement this is:

A cat 5 hurricane the size of Texas can do alot of unexpected things but breaking a 100+ year old levee system is not one of the "unexpected".

It was a 3 that hit MS, and between a 1 and 2 that hit NOLA, not a 5... and newer sections broke, not a "100 year old levee system"

for the rest who can't undertand the difference in flooding that would have come as a result of anticipated overtopping would have been nothing compared to the unanticipated break/breach that occurred. Nothing.

thank you hoipolloi, someone with some sense around here finally

overtopping would have been nothing compared to the unanticipated break/breach that occurred

New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 28, 2005:

Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish's emergency management director, gauged the threat in terms that chilled New Orleanians old enough to remember the summers of 1965 and 1969: Katrina was following Hurricane Betsy's track, he said, with the strength of Hurricane Camille. A computer model run by the LSU Hurricane Center late Saturday confirmed that. It indicated the metropolitan area was poised to see a repeat of Betsy's flooding, or worse with storm surge of as much as 16 feet moving up the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and topping levees in Chalmette and eastern New Orleans, and pushing water into the 9th Ward and parts of Mid-City. High water flowing from Lake Pontchartrain through St. Charles Parish also would flood over levees into Kenner, according to the model.
Also flooded would be much of the north shore below Interstate 12, including Slidell, Madisonville, Mandeville and Lacombe, according to the model. And the model doesn't take into account the 5- to 10-foot waves that would be on top of the surge, which could top levees all along the south shore of the lake.

Hurricane Betsy slammed into New Orleans on the evening of September 9th, 1965. The eye of the storm passed to the southwest of New Orleans on a northwesterly track. The northern and western eyewalls covered Southeast Lousisana and the New Orleans area from about 8pm until 4am the next morning. Around 1am, the worst of the wind and rain was over...
Unfortunately, Betsy also drove a storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain, just north of New Orleans, and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a deep-water shipping channel to the east and south. Levees for the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet along Florida Avenue in the lower Ninth Ward and on both sides of the Industrial Canal were overtopped and failed. The flood water reached the eaves of houses in some places and over some one story roofs in the Lower Ninth Ward. Some residents drowned in their attics trying to survive the rising waters.
These levee breaches flooded parts of Gentilly, the Upper Ninth Ward, and the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans as well as Arabi and Chalmette in neighboring St. Bernard Parish.
It was ten days or more before the water level in New Orleans went down enough for people to return to their homes. It took even longer than that to restore their flooded houses to a livable condition. Those who did not have family or friends with dry homes had to sleep in the shelters at night and forage for supplies during the day, while waiting for the federal government to provide emergency relief in the form of trailers. In all, 164,000 homes were flooded at the second landfall.

Who knew that "Preparations for flooding caused by breached levees is completed different from the preparation required for flooding caused by topped levees."? That really sheds some light on the subject. Apparantly 14 feet of flood water is somehow different if it comes from a breach and not a topped levee. No wonder it took Bush four days to react. I suppose if I were Bush and I had to learn all these new definitions of levee damage, I wouldn't have done anything either. I mean, what's the sense of being ready for the worst case scenario? After all, they were only negroes.

nice try bud, but you cleverly left out this part:

The Army Corps of Engineers' Hurricane Protection Program came into existence as a result of Betsy. The Corps built new levees for New Orleans that were both taller and made of stronger material, designed specifically to resist a fast-moving Category three hurricane like Betsy. The resulting levee improvements spared the city from similar flooding in 1969 when Hurricane Camille impacted the area, but failed when Hurricane Katrina, a large and slow-moving Category 3 hurricane made a near-direct hit on New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

Although as we know it wasn't even a Cat 3 that hit New Orleans

The point stands, no one anticipated the breach, despite some concern of overtopping... which again wouldn't have caused nearly the damage that the breach/break did.

Hello, McFly? That's why I included the first excerpt from the Times-Picayune.

It clearly states that a repeat of Betsy's flooding, or worse was anticipated from overtopped levees resulting in breeches just like in 1965.

And other thing, genius. How did Bush know he was talking about engineering failures three days after the hurricane, when that wasn't determined until weeks later?

I just watched the AP video. Does anyone else find it extremely absurd and just a little bit unsettling that Bush is gesturing like he's giving a stump speech?

I mean he's on a conference call – closed circuit TV – there's no one to sell to George... And yet there he is, geturing wildly while making all sorts of promises that he will somehow completely forget about in less than 2 days!

You can't really make out his face but you can just picture his expression – as he promises everyone lots of support – its that same look of complete ambivalance that, if I needed his "support" on something, and he was making that face, I'd know that I was up sh•• creek without a paddle...

Amazing piece of journalism. As far as the difference between "breach" and "overtopped" as an excuse: you would first have to convince me that Bush would:
1. Be able to sit through a nuanced discussion/briefing that would probably take longer than 15 minutes.
2. Comprhend enough of that data to know he was making a distinction and not just using a form of "break" in his "Good Morning" interview.

Good Luck with that. Its the height of hilarity to even suggest that the guy who can pronounce every other 3rd word correctly is somehow going to pronounce anything clearly and consistantly enough to even consider it "parsing".

I don't believe any human could possibly have "anticipated" this catastrophe. With all the technology we have, it will never be enough to totally prevent tragedies. Beating up on the Federal Government and Mr. Bush is also out of line. We had a mayor who left busses unmoved and consequently floating. Taking the warnings serious should have started at the state level and escalated to the Federal level.

HAHAHAHA

Yes, sincere thanks to hoipolloi for finally bringing some sense to this discussion. And humor.

Check out Wizbang; they discovered that one of the writers on the AP story, Margaret Ebrahim, is a former producer at 60 Minutes II, who probably lost her job at CBS when the show was cancelled after the Rathergate incident. I'm sure she has no axes to grind against the President. ;)

"Taking the warnings serious should have started at the state level and escalated to the Federal level."

Um, they were taken seriously at the local level. That's why a state of emergency was requested for all the parishes in New Orleans. I remember that some Republicans were claiming that Governor Blanco didn't request emergency status for the parish of Orleans, which was a complete lie. I read the request myself on the white house website and Orleans was in there, it just didn't get declared and emergency zone by the Bush administration for some unexplainable reason (racism maybe). Then they did what they usually do when they screw up and blamed someone else.

According to the Patriot Act, once the Federal Government has proclaimed a state of emergency, it's Homeland Security's resposablity to marshall resources and coordinate a disaster response. That's the law. BTW, lot's of people were anticipating this catastrophe, just not the right people. Instead of preparing for the worst, Bush just hoped for the best.

You wrote: "What everyone is ignoring is that the levees never "breached" or "overtopped", they broke because of design and/or construction flaws."

The definition of a breach is "to break through as in a wall or barrier."

What did you think a breach was?

folks read entire post before commenting.... no one is saying anything to refute the fact that what Bush said in the ABC interview was accurate and relates in no way to concerns about levee overtopping, as the AP's hit piece tried to make it appear.

And yes, Brainster, Wizbang uncovered that one of the AP writers on this story is a former 60 minutes producer who may have gotten the axe due to Rathergate.. but either way, her former job makes this thing all the more interesting... I'll be including this development in my new post on this.

Randy, may I inquire, with the utmost of respect and tact, what age you have attained in years? Not months, I'm specifically referring here to years, as in the current definition of one complete annum, or rotation about the sun, in case you have trouble understanding what a "year" is?

You come across as very young and naive.

Sweet Jeebus, you have a limber brain. That's some fabulous mental twister.

He was not using the term breech to refer to poor engineering (as I said, he couldn't have known that when he made the statement). He was referring to failure of the levees. Failure of the levees - a breech - can be caused by overtopping.

Here's Bush explaining what he meant by the "breech" quote:

Q Did they misinform you when you said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees?

THE PRESIDENT: No, what I was referring to is this. When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that's what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to. Of course, there were plans in case the levee had been breached. There was a sense of relaxation in the moment, a critical moment. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify that.

Notice the backtracking. He admits he was warned about the danger of the levees failing, and then tries to claim that everyone thought the danger had passed. Which is avoiding the issue - why weren't federal assets put in place when he was warned about the levees failing? Why did he wait until the storm passed to make a decision?

he wasn't warned about the levees failing, that's the point... and the whole picture changed as everyone realized that there was a 700 foot whole in the thing and the city was essentially no more.

And the meaning of "Is" is?

Levees often break before they're "overtopped". Media reports, FEMA models, and Bush himself all anticipated a disaster from massive flooding. Bush promised full and rapid response

Bush lied. No wonder he fought the release of the tapes.. Just like he refused to disclose the NIE 2002 summary sheet which shows he lied about Saddam's threats repeatedly.

Thank God for leakers who blow the whistle on such incomptence.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the Aug. 28 video "makes it perfectly clear once again that this disaster was not out of the blue or unforeseeable.>b? It was not only predictable, it was actually predicted.

Another Bush Failure captured with 20/20 Foresight and video tape!

Demand more Bush videos...We want the Abramoff Series, the Valerie Wilson TreasonGate, and of course, Iraq 2000-20?? multi-volume set.

Actually, any claims that the levees were never overtopped is simply erroneous. Most of the breacheS that occurred were caused by overtopping, which then allowed the water to scour away the foundations on the unprotected back side of the levees, which rather promptly caused their failure..

Please, to be reading....
http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=290

Good lord, Randy. Your ability to fend off all reason with your power of putting your fingers in your ears and relentlessly repeating the same inane assertion is stunning! I wish I could do that. But then my friends wouldn't talk to me.

There would have been no grave concerns expressed in the briefings if no one was in fact actually talking about the sort of damage that did occur, regardless of whether it was due to overtopping or breaching or whatever. Bush is clearly implying no one anticipated the level of destruction by saying no one anticipated the breaching...This is the lie. The level of destruction was feared, anticipated. And when this was known to have happened, nothing was done quickly, because the grave concerns were not taken seriously.

Now of course you want to make a distinction that saves Bush from being a liar. But, as you've had pointed out to you repeatedly, you're employing the Clintonian legalese all righties claim to despise. So, let's call BS for what it is. This constant parsing to the point of shamelessness is necessary to preserve fictions both past and present. You can't hold Bush to the same standard you held Clinton, because that would make all the animosity and carefully orchestrated outrage clearly the political crap that it was. The Right has embraced hypocrisy as a primary tool in maintaining its narrative.

If you were truly a patriot first, as all these "liberals" can't possibly be, you'd simply acknowledge that whether via breached or overtopped levees, Bush was warned of the possible catastrophic flooding of New Orleans, and then, when nothing was done, pretended that no one foresaw such devastation, and that he had been misled by the MSM, when he quite obviously has the ability to know things no one else does. If he so chooses.

This is something to be ashamed of in any leader. You can still be a Republican, just demand a competent Republican to lead us.

Look John, you're spinning in circles far beyond even what the AP did.

If Bush had been warned and knew the potential for levee breaches/breaks, then where is the evidence? Max Mayfield briefly mentioned levees topping. Where were all the engineers and experts screaming dire warnings of the breaching/breaking possibilities? Particularly when the type of break wasn't caused by anything foreseen, but from poor design and construction. Chertoff even had Blanco in on a conference call, and she was reassuring them that the levees were fine 3 hours after the first breach was reported.

This is pointless because you are comparing this to the Clinton "is" is thing, and it's not even close. We simply see no evidence of Bush being warned about breaching levees, and certainly not to the extent we saw that wound up destroying an entire city. So he was completely justified in saying what he said. You can say it's playing semantics, but that's simply not true... Obviously you'll continue to say it, but that doesn't make it true.

pj et al,

You need to remember the 2004 election campaign.

That was when Bush said HE was the one to trust to protect Americans.
HE was the one who said he wouldn't ask anyone else if he should protect Americans. He didn't say unless the local govt. says so.

He's an incompetent who doesn't give a shit about the American public.
Look at his record: as President and prior.

Worst President in the history of the United States?
Damn right he is, and by a loooooongshot!!

History will be the judge of that

As far as I am concerned, this is the left blowing smoke and pointing fingers, while trying to rustle up any decent candidate for the '08 presidential election. I would have liked to have seen a Democrat president tackle this problem. Just keep throwing Dr. Dean out there to hide that there are NO viable candidates for the next election. I just pray that the next president of our great country is not faced with all that President Bush had on his plate.

I swear, I am at a loss.

I would think that is becoming a lot of effort, making excuses for this man. He keeps messing up. Now you're forced to nitpick the miniscule difference between 'breach' and 'break', in order to alter the intention of Bush's words so that he appears to not have contradicted both himself AND the record.

Why are you nitpicking for Bush this badly? What do you get out of it? Does it make you feel better about yourself, for voting for him? Does your need to prove liberals wrong outweigh all other considerations?

Bush is supposed to be the leader of this country. He is supposed to be decisive, to care about American lives, and not take any crap that gets in his way.

You tell me: Did Bush spend that weekend on the phone barking orders? Yelling at Blanco and Nagin? Straightening things out? Making sure everyone had the resources they were begging for? Making sure ice trucks went to the right places? Even **trying** to get enough soldiers on the ground?

No. The man played guitar, ate cake, and flew to California to sell his Social Security plan to seniors, while THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS DROWNED TO DEATH, WAITING FOR HELP THAT NEVER CAME.

Please. Just think about that for second. Really pause and get present to that fact.

Why doesn't that make you angry?

I would have liked to have seen a Democrat president tackle this problem.

Dude, all it would have taken was to cancel a freakn' vacation, and get on the job.

Condi's buying shoes and going to Broadway plays. Our taxes, her salary, our country's citizens drowning waiting for help.

If Bush **had** cancelled his vacation, busted his butt, and failed, then we'd have a different argument.

But he didn't even think it was important enough to TRY. to even CHANGE HIS PHOTO-OP SCHEDULE.

Okay, it's not nitpicking and the AP has now come out and admitted their lie with their late friday night "clarification", so you have absolutely nothing to stand on there... as for Condi and Bush, well I'm not sure what Condi was supposed to do, but we see from these videos that Bush was more involved than previously thought... But what was he supposed to do? Does he have 700 foot sandbags with him in Crawford that he could fly over and drop from Air Force one? By the way, he (or Chertoff actually) offered help to Brown and was turned down.

You want to scream at him about all these people drowning... um, why were they still in town? There had been a hurricane Pam exercise, the city had an evacuation plan calling for use of buses, thousands of which Nagin left sitting, despite begging from the President, Blanco refused to order a mandatory evacuation, and Louisiana's emergency planners were all sitting, awaiting trial for an unaccounted for $60 million in federal money... But none of that contributed to what happened right?! Because Superman Bush should have flown in and single handedly repaired the levees that no one warned him would break.

It's not semantics, we see no evidence of him being warned, and there was simply no way to prepare for that anyway, other than a mandatory evactuation which he can't order but begged the governor to order. There was failures at all levels, and no one said the Feds were all-stars, but the President doesn't personally do all of this stuff... But he's admitted the buck stops with him if people he hired screw up. But again, it doesn't seem like we have any evidence of ignored warnings, just hindsight sniping.

It should also be noted that Blanco blocked the Red Cross from entering the city because she didn't want to create a "magnet" to the Superdome and convention center. She also waited two days to specifically request military, and she was caught when she thought the camera wasn't rolling, realizing this with her spokesperson.

Whatever, your Bush hate is beyond ridiculous... You guys offer no solutions just attacking the President, and it's been clear from the moment this "development" came out that it was nothing more than that.

It's already been noted, but this argument is reminiscient of Clinton's parsing the word "is"--and just as believable. Bush clearly lied to LA about being ready to send resources, and then lied to US about what he'd been warned about.

And why is this a surprise? How can anyone even pretend to believe the man? He's fabricated his way through his whole administration--the effects of his tax cuts on the economy, and their cost; the Saddam/9-11 link; the WMD and the similar claims of ignorance after; the advice he got on Medicare and just about every social program; etc. etc. etc. Moreover, he's lied every time he's implied he cares about the American people, or that he's not in the pocket of big business. The man is a liar--I can't think of any valid reason for not knowing that, by now.

However, I am heartened by the registered Republicans on this site who are finally getting the picture. With a 33% approval rating, Bush has clearly lost significant support even among conservatives. (And no wonder; he's ruined our deficit, raped our land and people, and done nothing for family values.) But to those who say we shouldn't bash Bush because we're just spouting useless hatred; remember there's an implicit suggestion in every anti-Bush point made: REPLACE HIM. Impeach him if possible, or at least clip his wings for the rest of his term. Don't elect whoever he supports in 2008. And so on. There *is* action behind the anger; the rest of the country's been waiting for y'all to come around, so now that you have, remember that for every misdeed on Bush's part, there's something you can do or support that will help atone.

And remember too that left- or right-wing, we all have something in common: We're all Americans. And we all want to see this country begin to heal. Hatred doesn't help, but being honest with ourselves about our current leadership and our own mistakes as well as theirs, does.

Lol, what a speech Max Farrow... very idiotic .... uh...moving?

haha, okay, for starters:
the effects of his tax cuts on the economy, and their cost; the Saddam/9-11 link; the WMD and the similar claims of ignorance after;

Yes the economy is just booming on it's own right?

I don't believe The President made a Saddam 9/11 link... Though Putin told us after 9/11 that Russian intel learned that Saddam wanted to launch terrorist attacks on the US. By the way, not sure if you've read all the Qaeda/Saddam connections, and it's only gotten deeper this week with the release of some of the documents captured in Iraq, only a fraction of which have even been translated.

As for WMDs, I wonder if you would say that all the top Democrats who'd been making the same and stronger statements since the early 90s were liars too? Or the world community that basically agreed they were there, or at least that they were unaccounted for (since we know he had and used them)... Hey, Clinton attacked Iraq for the same reasons, because they were defying the UN, and Clinton even explained why them versus another WMD country. I'm so tired of repeating all of this.

(if you need links for any of that, I'd be happy to provide them.)

As for this post, this is old... The updated clarified one can be found here:

http://www.rightwinged.com/2006/03/smashed_aps_new_bush_lied_abou.html

not satisfied? Here's the AP backtracking and admitting they lied:

http://www.rightwinged.com/2006/03/breaking_ap_issues_friday_nigh_1.html

need a little more? Here's more proof that the President wasn't warned because the F-ing Army Corps of Engineers (supposed to be our experts down there) have even recently still tried to claim that it was unforseeable, even though their own 20 year old tests should have clued them in!!!

http://www.rightwinged.com/2006/03/hey_bush_knew_the_levees_would.html

Not to mention that the Louisiana emergency agency folks had been indicted and were awaiting trial for squandering an unaccounted for $60 million in federal cash. Wonder if that had anything to do with anything?