Since the Katrina videoconference tape was released earlier this week (my $0.02 here), the right seems to have come up with a rebuttal. I’ve seen the argument posed several places, but here’s how it’s framed at Captains Quarters:
What [the tape] does show is an expert saying to the group, “At this point, we don’t know whether the levees will be overtopped or not.”
As Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards points out, breaching and overtopping are two very different events. Neither are particularly desirable, of course, but overtopping would result in the release of excess water from Lake Pontchatrain, while the breaches released an exponentially larger volume, resulting in far more devastation. No one in this clip mentions the word “breach” at all, and the breathless reporting at the AP winds up being highly misleading. It’s used to indict the president, who later said that no one imagined that the levees would be breached — and if this clip is as good as the media has, then apparently the president is right.
That’s certainly true, but it seems like almost as much of a technicality as arguing over the definition of “is” in the run-up to the fellatio-driven impeachment of Clinton.
The proper response to the rebuttal is this: The President gave the impression on TV that levee failure wasn’t contemplated before Katrina. However, we have video evidence that one form of levee failure was discussed prior to the storm. While the manner in which the levees failed was different than what was discussed in the tape, does that make the lack of response any less tragic?
I’ll rescind that statement if I learn that the type of disaster response required if the levees were overtopped would be significantly different than what was required as a result of breaches.
Also, lest you, gentle reader, misunderstand my overall position on the matter — I do think that the recent “revelations” are oversensationalized. There’s plenty of blame to go around, given the magnitude of the failures. While the administration is an easy target here, there are other agencies (federal, state, and local) where improvement is needed. Let’s get the problems fixed and keep this from happening when the next megadisaster arises.
1 response so far ↓
1 Brian Mora // 10 Mar 2006 at 9:19 pm
The problem with the levees existed years before Katrina, in the 1990s an Army Corps of Engineers project was halted by environmentalist extremists’ lawsuits…to speak NOTHING of the underbuilt levees which were supposed to be built to Category V standards in the 1960s and 1970s but turned out to be only Category III…which is devastating in its effects.
What needs to happen is people of Louisiana need to CLEAN HOUSE. That means throw EVERYONE OUT…and get RID of the culture of corruption left by 70 to 80 years of Kingfisher policies. Huey Long is turning in his grave at the mess left by his successors of the present day.
Even Kathleen Blanco misled the President about the true state of the levees which had been breached hours earlier…and was just trying to spin it to save her hide…
And yes, I agree, there is PLENTY of blame to go round at EVERY level. The Federal Government has already begun cleaning house and starting probes; we need to probe Ray Nagin, Kathleen Blanco, and other officials in Nawlins, Orleans Parish, and the state of Louisiana. The LDHS is particularly suspect.