In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.
A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document. . .
The documents shed new light on the extent on the administration's foreknowledge about Katrina's potential for unleashing epic destruction on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities and towns. President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm," Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
To quote New Orleans-born Chuck:
You fucking lying sack of shit.
You knew, and you and Brownie and all your buddies sat there and did nothing, and then tried to blame it on our weak governor (who has enough to answer for), saying that she wasn't specific enough when she called to beg for "everything you've got."
We don't buy your bullshit recasting of that statement as "He said A, but what he really meant to say was B, which we would have never said he said until you called us on A." We can't believe that the warning you got also wouldn't have mentioned the storm surge up MR-GO which wiped out St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans East (including my family's home), either. You knew, 48 hours in advance, what was going to happen, and where were you and your people? Playing guitars, seeing Broadway shows, shopping for shoes, working on your vacation homes, eating in Baton Rouge restaurants and bitching about needing at least a full hour to do so and about your FEMA attire.
Given the above, it's truly amazing in retrospect that Bush didn't try to blame 9/11 on Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields.
Or was that day's PDB entitled "Katrina Determined To Attack New Orleans"?
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