BUSH TOURS GULF STATES

[mburbank]

From the Wall Street Journal:

No major newspaper printed a headline that literally said New Orleans "dodged a bullet," as Mr. Chertoff claimed. But some did say the city had escaped a direct hit -- which was true, but misleading -- while others focused on the levees along the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, it was the levees along canals extending south from Lake Pontchartrain that gave way.


"But the city managed to avoid the worst of the worst," read a front-page Washington Post article on Tuesday. "The Mississippi River did not breach New Orleans's famed levees to any serious degree, at least in part because Katrina veered 15 miles eastward of its predicted track just before landfall."

But this is from the same article


A look at news reports of the events of Aug. 29 paints a picture of confusion, miscommunication and conflicting information among some government officials and news media. Several major news outlets, including Viacom Inc.'s CBS network and National Public Radio reported the breaking of the Industrial Canal and flooding on Monday, although not all of the reports acknowledged the extent of the devastation. The Wall Street Journal reported the Industrial Canal breach but no others.






The New Orleans office of the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning at 8:14 a.m. Monday, saying "a levee breach occurred along the industrial canal at Tennessee Street. 3 to 8 feet of water is expected due to the breach."

Leonard Downie Jr., the Washington Post's executive editor, says the paper's reporting was hampered by communications problems caused by the hurricane. "Unfortunately, where our communication was good was where it wasn't flooding," he says. "All the media were hampered by the fact that people on the ground didn't know what happened."

In the 5 p.m. news report on News Corp.'s Fox News Channel, anchor Shepard Smith informed viewers of "late word" that the levees had held. But a few minutes later, in the same program, a public-health expert told the channel the exact opposite: "Well, the National Weather Service are reporting that one of the levees was breached. ... People have been forced out onto the roofs of their homes."

Why the confusion? A Fox News spokeswoman says Mr. Smith was referring to levees near his "physical location," which was Bourbon Street in the French Quarter -- that is, levees on the Mississippi.




While that's certainly confusing, for the President, the head of Homeland security and the head of Fema, all of whom have used that wretched made up 'dodged a bullet' phrase, to see it that way based on the information available at the time is an admission of failure. And for them to see their afilure as an excuse, 'oh, well, shucks, folks, eva one of us thought we'd dodged a bullit, so we ain't to blame. Now ain't the time for fingerpointin'. Side's, it was somebody elses job to take care of all this, and you gotta admit, the victims bear at least some of the responsability.