<p>Can anyone point to a place in the video that clearly says that there was a warning of the levees being breached? I haven’t seen it so far, so it appears to me to be just a lot of bush-whackers in the media, Congress and CC taking cheap shots. Are there any actual verbatim transcripts of the meetings?</p>
<p>What I have seen from the videos is a President who was NOT just on vacation but participating in multiple conference calls and telephone calls on the subject leading up to the hurricane.</p>
<p>Fundingfather, no, I have not seen warings about “breach” of the levees, so far, only about their topping. But does focusing on that detail really change the overal picture for you? </p>
<p>Any more than lamenting the unexpected effectiveness of IEDs in killing soldiers riding in Strykers excuse originally bypassing the munitions now used for the IEDs? Or or starting out with even less armored Humvees? Or going in without enough soldiers to begin with? Or ignoring warnings about opposition? Or disbanding the Iraqi military which we then tried to reconstitute?</p>
<p>There seems to me to have been a striking similarity in the Administration’s failure to pay attention to ~or the wilful ignoring of ~ the overall tenor of warnings in both cases. As well as the need to plan for eventualities and failure to listen to people (whether it be Max Mayfield director of the National Hurricane Center or General Eric Shinkseki Chief of Staff of the Army) who cautioned about the potential risks of both situations. And a chilling echo to Condi Rice’s statement that no one could have anticipated terrorists flying planes into buildings.</p>
Absolutely. There is a huge difference between “overtopping” and breaching. Ask anyone who lives downstrem from a dam which issue they would rather deal with. This is not just a symantic “detail”.</p>
<p>I misunderstood you, FF, thinking you were only asking about whether anyone could point out where *in the videotape *there were warnings of breaches vs. overtopping.</p>
<p>But in fact, there were warnings of breaches too. The Department of Homeland Security’s National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), e-mailed one to the White House’s “situation room,” at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29.</p>
<p>The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina’s size would “likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching” and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain.</p>
<p>True, this was more prescient (and less dramatic for the media) than Mayfield’s warnings, but only a matter of degree not kind. To minimize the warnings on the tape, claiming that they were only about “overtopping” makes it sound like a little bit of water splashing over the edge of your backyard inflatable wading pool. Clearly that’s not what either of the warnings were meant to convey.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s certainly possible, as apparently occurred with pre-Iraq briefings, that in the pre-Katrina warnings Bush only heard what fit with the plans… already in place.</p>
<p>The point being that at the time the videotape was made, the White House and the President already had warning of the potential breeches, and it was in that context that the emergency briefing was held.</p>
<p>It does not really matter–what could anyone have done about it a few days before the event anyway? What a waste of energy to debate exactly who said what when it would not have changed a GD thing.</p>
<p>The thing is, what Bush said a few days later was clearly not true. So either he was not paying attention at the briefings, or he was telling a bald-faced lie. As mini says, either one of those options tends to destroy trust in Bush and the government he leads.</p>
It should also question our trust in an unbiased media. For days the media and their spokesman, Harry Reid, were claiming a smoking gun in the tapes. Now it turns out that the tapes say absolutely nothing - other than completely dispel the notion that Bush and the the rest of the administration were uncaring, out of touch and on “vacation”.</p>
<p>It is an interesting coincidence that the reporter for the AP who “broke” the (non) story appears to be a former producer at 60 Minutes II - a student of the Mary Mapes school of gotcha journalism.</p>
<p>I am sure the WH was receiving many conflicting messages on what was happening and you have no proof that that exact message ever got to W or how authentic it was. Where is that message?</p>
<p>The question was whether “anybody” anticipated the breech of the levees. And the answer to that is an unequivocal “yes”. That there were “conflicts” about same is essentially proof that there were “anybodies”, that the White House knew about and discussed that so anticipated.</p>
<p>I believe that there were folks in the White House who knew that, and were worried about it, and cared to the level of their professional responsibility. And I believe when the President of the United States, having attended to his fundraising needs, says"I don’t think", we would do well to take him at his word.</p>
<p>I, for one, am tired of your insults on here to “soccermoms” (and others). You have also posted several very derogatory posts which have been deleted. I think you are simply trying to do some kind of annoying passive-aggressive thing to adults (specifically to women). Allow me to remind you that this is the Parents Forum. If you are unable discuss these issues like an adult then please go back to the kids’ forums.</p>
<p>I am not insulting soccemoms, only questioning their intelligence. Its really convinent that my derogatory posts have been deleted, huh? What passive agressive thing? Please don’t make yourself ridiculous by making unfounded statements. I think you’re just angry because I deviate from your Bush bashing tendencies.</p>
<p>Also weenie, you seem to be mad that your Bush bashing points have been proven false. Please don’t take out your stress and your anger by calling me names. Learn to deal with it as an adult.</p>