Politics Priceless
Desperately looking for a way to explain away the video released last week that shows Bush being told something he later claimed he didn’t know, the wingnuts over at the Corner have unearthed this little gem.
WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President George W. 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.
Ding! Stop your timers.
See that? He was warned that the levees could very well be overrun, nobody said anything about a breach. A breach, we learn here, is kind of like a hole that allows the water to go through the levees and ruin hundreds of thousands of people’s lives, leaving them stranded for days while their government fucks around and their president plays guitar. An overrun is only a situation where the water goes over the levees, ruining hundreds of thousands of people’s lives and leaving them stranded for days while etc., etc.
Don’t you hate how that damned liberal media is always getting hung up on nuance?
So leave the poor guy alone. He didn’t ignore grave concerns about levees breaching, he ignored grave concerns about levees being overrun. Jeez.
Bush might as well have played the guitar. Once a levee breaches, there's not much the government can do, at least not until the waters subside.