| Friday, March 3, 2006 |
09:17 - They do know; they hope we don't
|
(top)  |
So there's this nonsense about the Katrina response:
CNN and the Democrats--sorry for the redundancy--have jumped on the Hurricane Katrina bandwagon. CNN's report repeats the factual error that the Associated Press made yesterday, confusing breaches of the levees with overtopping of the levees. President Bush said it wasn't anticipated that the levees would be breached; the famous video that everyone is watching doesn't contradict that statement. It talks only about the possibility of levee overtopping.
. . .
The Democrats sent out an email this afternoon that contains a flat misrepresentation:
The tapes directly contradict Bush's now infamous claim after Katrina, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
That statement is false, and the Democrats must know it.
MoveOn.org sent out their own mailings a couple of days ago, and you'd think that after all that's come to light, they'd be dropping this one like a frog peeing on their hands.
Well, apparently, not, according to MoveOn.org's latest mailing (emphasis in original):
Subject: Step 2: Bush lied -- Congress must speak out
Dear MoveOn member,
Thanks in part to your efforts, the breaking news about Bush's smoking gun Katrina warning is spreading rapidly. However, the media is largely not featuring what is perhaps the most obvious revelation of all: Bush lied.
Three days after Katrina hit, Bush famously told the country on national television, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.'' But, today, we can all watch the leading hurricane scientist in the country personally informing President Bush, 24 hours before the storm hit, that a levee breach was a "very, very serious concern."
Although the original AP article and video focus on this clear contradiction, other major papers and television outlets have largely missed it.
The mailing has footnotes which include links to two news stories, both of which assert that the newly revealed videos damn the administration's response—but neither of which quote the statement in question by Bush, the one where he said "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees", or differentiates between the breach—which nobody did anticipate—or the overtopping, which everybody understood would happen.
Nor is anyone stepping back and saying, "So what the hell was Bush supposed to do, anyway? Jet to New Orleans like the Rocketeer, streaking across the sky, and then stand on a jetty with his Presidential Magic Wand, shout "Expelliarmus!" at the swirling sky, and dispel the storm to Protect The People™, as is his duty as Omnipotent Leader?"
There's no way the distinction betweeen "breaching" and "overtopping" is lost on MoveOn.org and such at this stage, but they're still flogging this wanna-be scandal. Fortunately they've got all those news stories to link to that don't do anything to destroy their assertions.
|
|
Brian Tiemann
