Paper: White House Knew About Levees Early

[deminks]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060210/ap_on_go_co/katrina...

WASHINGTON - Twenty-eight government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, reported that New Orleans levees were breached Aug. 29, the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, documents released Thursday show.

A timeline of e-mails, situation updates and weather reports, pieced together by Senate Democrats, indicates the Bush administration knew as early as 8:30 a.m. EST about levee failures that would ultimately lead to massive flooding of the city and its surrounding parishes.

Senate Democrats said the documents raise questions about whether the government moved quickly enough to rescue storm victims once they realized the levees had broken.

Shortly after the disaster, Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." He later said his comment was meant to suggest that there had been a false sense of relief that the levees had held when the storm passed, only to break a few hours later.

Democrats said the documents showed there was little excuse for the tardy federal response

[rzemanfl]

1. Yeah, but Dubyah saved that building in L.A. from those shoe

bombing terrorist Asians, right?

[NanceGreggs]

2. Not to mention how FAST they swung into action ...

... yesterday when several senators were possibly exposed to a 'nerve agent'.

WOW! I was SO IMPRESSED with the immediate response ... to nothing.

[rzemanfl]

3. They are good on t-shirt alerts too. n/t

[NanceGreggs]

5. You're right, I DID forget ...

... "Keepin' America Safe From Subversive T-Shirts" - and THAT'S a
T-shirt in and of itself!

[Wheezy]

14. you silly.

they don't allow asians in NOLA.

</sarcasm>

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

18. Last I heard, there were thousands unaccounted for on the coast.

Poor fishing communities. Haven't heard a whisper of a story since.

[Wheezy]

23. yes, me too. something like 3000 still unaccounted for. :(

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

24. Not counting the NOLA missing.

The 10,000 number is still looking good(bad ).

Fuckers!

[lies and propaganda]

53. or that 80% of the black population is expected to NOT come home

which means it will turn into white, rich, fake antebellum homes mass produced by Shea or KB.

I wish i thought it was going to become that 'chocolate city' it once was.

[panzerfaust]

41. Too Bad

That the Mayor of LA did not seem to know about either the plot or of its foiling: Could it be a - a Lie?

[dubya_dubya_III]

59. But can he stop the giant Marshmallow Man?

[rzemanfl]

61. Cheney's on that, takes one to know one. n/t

[rodeodance]

4. good, it is an AP story--should get good circulation

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 30 minutes ago

[hvn_nbr_2]

17. You mean Coriolis Effect circulation as it spins down...

the toilet drain in every MSM outlet in the country?

(For the scientists: Yes, I know the Coriolis Effect is too weak to determine the direction of a toilet flush rotation, unless everything is extremely still.)

[rodeodance]

6. White House spokesman Trent Duffy said: (still trying to cover up their

mistakes).

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said

President Bush and his top aides were fully aware about the massive flooding — and less concerned whether it was caused by levee breaches, overtoppings of failed pumps, all three of which were being reported at the time.

"We knew there was flooding and that's why the No. 1 effort in those early hours was on search and rescue, and saving life and limb," Duffy said.

Shortly after the disaster, Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." He later said his comment was meant to suggest that there had been a false sense of relief that the levees had held when the storm passed, only to break a few hours later.

[rodeodance]

7. rate it up on Yahoo and email it.

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

Your Recommendation:

Average (30 votes)
4.5 stars

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. This is how Bush reacted when he heard the levees were breaching

HE CELEBRATED!

[sam sarrha]

15. see the look on the real guitarist.. Bu$h asked him to him a chord and

then he turned to the cammra's and posed for photo opp.. and then gave the guitar back to him..

same thing at NOLA in front of the dome.. the water distribution site was set up in minutes and a photo opp was shot,Bu$h bolted, then they took all the water away because they didnt want the Blacks to RIOT..!!!!!!! like it is genetic or something..

[KansDem]

39. G chord nothing! Look at his left hand...

When told of Katrina, he's hand automatically went to "the finger." That's his subconscious response to Americans in need!

Ok, ok, I goofed. To have a subconscious you need a conscious. Let's just say it's the autoBush response to anything involving people in need.

[DoYouEverWonder]

42. Supposedly he used the Mel Bay version

of a G Chord, which just happened to also be a not so subtle way of giving the world the finger.

Just shows you how 'planned' this particular photo op was.

[FiveGoodMen]

49. That chord wouldn't sound very good!

It's a fret too high for a G.

[dubya_dubya_III]

60. But the "Serving America While On Vacation" backdrop artist was

off using up his Kinko's air miles somewhere.....

[fooj]

9. Just another lie.

Peace.

[Gregorian]

10. Is there anything we at DU were wrong about?

So far we're batting 1000. From the WMD's to the levees. And everything in between. Absolutely everything. I even predicted that Bush was spying on us nearly four years ago. People thought I was going overboard. I just had a hunch he was on the other end of the phone line.

But it's what you can prove, not what you know.

[Beetwasher]

11. Criminal Fucking Negligence and Homicide.

End of story.

[sofedup]

37. I second that, beetwasher...

...call every death that could have been prevented by timely intervention what it is- homicide. Of course the liberal media is just all over the story of the thousands still missing.

[sam sarrha]

12. of course, they had looted over $100 billion from the project since 2000

it was a F'n looting glorie hole for them.. they knew all about it

[Nothing Without Hope]

13. K & R. And the day it happpned, Nagin BEGGED for the promised

Black Hawk helicopter aid to plug the levee breaches - but somehow the help never came from the feds. He also said he tried to reach Bush but could not get through.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
thread title (August 31, 2005 GD Forum): CNN/New Orleans:"Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breeches" and that's {only the beginning}

[Ian David]

16. Emperor Bush Fiddles while America Drowns

[twaddler01]

47. nice picture

but sad....

[Metta]

19. They've known since 1998.

Or was it '96? In any case, it was during Newt Gingrich's watch. Two billion dollars to shore up the marshes, etc. Voted down by the Republican congress.

[cal04]

20. White House Knew of Levee Failure on Night of Storm

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans. But
congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department. "FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."

Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to. White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports. But somehow, this alert did not seem to register.

Even the next morning, President Bush, on vacation in Texas, was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew off Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday. The federal government had let out a sigh of relief, when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck," alarm, the investigators have found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.ht...

[tridim]

21. Geez Louise..When it rains, it pours.

It seems like they're dumping all the bad news on one day for the overload effect.

The dam has burst IMO. The BushCo dam that is.

[orleans]

22. k&r n/t

[UpInArms]

25. 54anickel reported it on DU LBN at 8:32 CST on 8/29/05

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

54anickel (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-29-05 08:37 AM
Response to Original message
57. .. A LEVEE BREACH OCCURRED ALONG THE INDUSTRIAL CANAL AT TENNESSE STREET

http://www.wwltv.com /

.. A LEVEE BREACH OCCURRED ALONG THE INDUSTRIAL CANAL AT TENNESSE STREET. 3 TO 8 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED DUE TO THE BREACH...LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO ARABI AND 9TH WARD OF NEW ORLEANS.

St. Bernard Parish spokesman Larry Ingargiola says the parish's two shelters at Chalmette High and St. Bernard High are suffering major damage. He said Chalmette High shelter is losing its roof, and St. Bernard High has plenty of broken windows and glass. He estimates 300-plus refugees at the two sites.

Entergy says 317,000 customers were without power as of 6 a.m. Cleco reported 40,000 without power in St. Tammany Parish.

Air conditioning out at Louisiana Superdome due to power outages.

St. Bernard Parish officials say most of the parish has no power.

[flyarm]

26. this makes me sick to my stomach...those poor people....

i want the fucking chimp behind bars..there is no excuse..how long people were in their attics..the people in the nursing home, the hospitals..many were forced to steal for basic food and water..and then called horrible names..they were left to die and live in squalor in the dome..

and even now as this comes out and as i type many are left homeless...

i fucking hate *..i hate him unlike i ever knew i could have such hate in my heart..

so what will the little lord fonteroys excuse be tommorrow??

who will he shift blame to this time??

when will it ever end..

will this nightmare of the fucker, who was never elected get out of our lives..??

how many more have to die for this incompetant fucker??????????

when ..just when will this little pecker be held accountable???????????

and when will people stop making excuses for this murderer????????????

fly

[Zhade]

27. They let New Orleans die.

I'll never forget that, as long as I live.

[DeltaLady]

28. They wanted martial law.

I will continue saying this until I am blue or hell freezes over. They wanted an admittedly wet "dry run" to try out the martial law scenario. The entire dance the pretender to the presidency and his trogolodytes did with Governor Blanco was an attempt to wrest control away from her (pointedly, her control over the Louisiana National Guard) and give complete authority to the military. Can you imagine what would have happened had she capitulated? No civil authority whatsoever.

In the interest of truth, I will relate an actual incident that occured to two friends of mine (one a writer of some fame) when forced to leave New Orleans. (Both caucasians I might add.)

They were loaded on a helicopter and taken to Armstrong Airport where they were then loaded on a plane. Asking where they were being taken was an exercise in futility until well into the flight when it was announced they were being taken to North Carolina. After de-boarding, they were escorted to an area where showers had been set up. (No joke! They were told it was "assumed" they would all want showers.) From there they were taken to a guarded facility where several women were gathering personal information. Since my friends had both cash and credit cards, they stated they simply wanted to leave and go to a hotel. With the military standing nearby and the ladies most insistent they "register" my writer friend asked "are we still in an area which is under martial law?" He was growing more belligerent as his companion was hastily attempting to again explain that they had the ways and means to take care of themselves from this point forward. Only then were they told they were free to go.

This happened to American citizens in the United States of America, and that was just a test run.

[Karenina]

29. Was it Cheney who referred to

the Katrina "exercise?"

[EFerrari]

33. These lunatics do want martial law.

And the rest of the political class seems too stunned at their comic book mentality to take it in.

[panzerfaust]

38. BS

They want no Law at all

Only Power

[IronLionZion]

48. There are 300 million people in America

There are not enough soldiers in the military to have martial law here. We have way too many people. This isn't Iraq. American soldiers don't want to police Americans. The force of humanity is greater than the force of evil.

The most they can do is a few cities like DC, NYC, LA, etc.

The Siege, watch it.

[Megahurtz]

52. OMG!

[Buns_of_Fire]

30. If you suck at ANTICIPATION, you better be damned good at REACTION

Unfortunately (for the country), BushCo sucks at BOTH.

[xchrom]

31. knew about 9-11 and knew about the levees.

between nola and n.y. -- bushco has let an awful lot of people pass over.

america should be ashamed.

[Moderator]

32. Kick

[savemefromdumbya]

34. Maybe he didn't know what a levee was?

perhaps he thought it was a kind of bread?

(keep up the ridicule)

[meow2u3]

35. This should vindicate Gov Blanco

unless the White House planned from Day One to make her a scapegoat.

[erpowers]

45. Most Likely

I think they planned from day one to make her the scapegoat. The Bush Administration never takes responisibilty for anything that happens on ther watch.

[guidod]

62. Brownie fucked up

more than he is sying. If you have time read all of this shit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Hurricane_Katr...

[panzerfaust]

36. W K

W Knew about ...

... 911

... WMD

... Val

... Abu Ghraib

... Torture

... Secret Gulags

... Renditions

... Disappeared

... Wires

... Diebold

... NOLA

What does W know now,
that he will not know later?

[0xDEADBEEF]

40. When the levee breaks...

Who could have anticipated the breach of the levees?
Led Zeppelin? No, wait, that was a cover of an old blues song.
I know, I know, it was Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe. They anticipated the breach of the levees in 1929.

[RazzleDazzle]

43. Imagine that. And I distinctly remember a thread here at DU

that was not just locked but deleted. That thread alleged this very thing -- that the lack of reponse was intentional. Seems to me the excuse for deleting it was that there was some speculation (only a couple of posts) that the weather had been manipulated too.

This hurts my heart, even tho it's NOT news or unexpected. Seeing it in black and white is shocking. There are still so many missing, still bodies being found, no actual count of either the official hurricane deaths or those that died afterwards from lack of attention, still so many homeless, still such destruction and debris not being properly cleaned up, still no accountability by this administration.

[notadmblnd]

55. it was one of the scanner threads right?

On the Wednesday night/Thursday morning after the storm. There was a fire in the Superdome and the guard was trying to dissuade the NOFD to forget about responding even though the fire was beginning to get out of control. I was convinced if it wasn't for the refusal of the NO Fire chief to leave, 35,000 people would have been victims of genocide by the US government that night.

Absolutely No doubt in my mind. I hate that they disappeared that thread too. so much of what happened that week is documented in them. It's evidence now, not speculation.

[erpowers]

44. Impeachment

Everytime I see a story like this I wonder so when will we impeach this guy. I asked a question similar to this yesterday, but I will ask the question again. Does anyone think Bush put out the terrorist attack stuff yesterday because he know that this, the Cheney information, and the ex-CIA official would be hitting the papers and the media this week? I may have missed it because I did not watch much of the Today Show this morning and I missed some of the headlines, but I did not see any information on the ex-CIA official on the Today Show this morning. So once again does anyone think Bush put out the terror plot stuff in order to keep the media from focusing on the tons of bad news for the Bush Administration that came out this week?

[davekriss]

56. Of course (eom)

[MindLikeAParachute]

46. What utter bullshit.

A good friend of mine lived in New Orleans for about 9 years (probably in the 70's).

I remember, back in the mid-80's, sitting at his kitchen table and talking about New Orleans. I wanted to go there, and wanted to know about it.

One thing he told me, and I've always remembered about it, was how New Orleans was unique because it was below sea level, and then he told me about the system of levees, and how luckily no major hurricane had hit there in a long time, and hopefully none ever would, because if one plowed right up into New Orleans, god save it, because the place would just flood.

So, as far back as the 70s and 80s, residents were acutely aware of the dangers of a hurricane coming straight up New Orlean's butt and what happened with Katrina was that nightmare come true. There was no way in hell it "would have been a surprise" to emergency management, nor a "no one could have imagined" scenario. I don't know how FEMA works, whether they make contingency plans for certain disasters, but I would like to think that they do. I'd like to think they have a contingency plan for a major earthquake in LA, even if they don't know the specifics of how it would be, I'd like to think they have a contingency plan for a major explosion in a major city, and I'd like to think they had a contingency plan for a hurricane coming into New Orleans. No one's asking them to have a contingency plan for a hurricane hit on any other specific city, but since NOLA is the only one (afaik) under sea level, it is uniquely vulnerable, and residents have long known it was a disaster waiting to happen, so I would think someone somewhere would have drawn up plans.

You'd think.

[jamesinca]

50. I guess he was right

George Bush does hate black people. So all of those people that went after Mr. West need to apologize to him for their ignorance, and right wing shilling/whoring. The list of right wing media personalities is to long to list.

[Megahurtz]

51. They knew it and let it happen

just so they could pull off their genocide.

Hey, save a fetus! And fuck the people!

[Name removed]

54. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[fearnobush]

57. This was on NightNight tonight.

Brownie basically said it was all Chertoff's fault.

[antonialee839]

58. Give George a break, the email was a historic document,

and he had a gig to perform the day Corrina hit.