News Intelligence Analysis
Jan 24, 2006 5:37 PM
Back to Memos: Hurricane Katrina Would Destroy New Orleans
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the
levees." -- George W. Bush, September 1, 2005.
Imagine for a second that the infamous Daily Briefing our president received in the days prior to 9/11 didn't say, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," but rather: "Bin Laden Deputies Determined to Hijack Wide-body Aircraft and Fly Them Into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon."
Now imagine the president did nothing, not even to assure that the buildings were properly evacuated.
It sounds criminally far fetched, doesn't it? But in the hours before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the White House received exactly that level of specificity about the threat posed to New Orleans by the storm. And still, it did nothing.
This is the blockbuster revelation buried on page A2 of today's Washington Post, which details that both the White House and FEMA were apprised -- prior to Katrina's landfall -- that the storm could inundate and destroy the Crescent City.
A Homeland Security briefing delivered to the White House "situation room" in the hours before the storm . . .
. . . 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. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.
Of course, Bush, vacationing at Crawford, was nowhere near the situation room. And unlike the Teri Schiavo charade, this perilous threat to one of the nation's most vital cities somehow wasn't deemed worth disrupting the president's "me-time."
Two days prior, The Post reports, FEMA had received even more detailed threat assessments, including the warning that . . .
. . . the hurricane's Category 4 storm surge "could greatly overtop levees and protective systems" and destroy nearly 90 percent of city structures. . . . It further predicted "incredible search and rescue needs (60,000-plus)" and the displacement of more than a million residents.
In short, the administration had in its possession a deadly accurate Katrina threat analysis, and did jack shit about it. As a result more than 1,100 people are dead. If this isn't criminal negligence, then I don't know what is.
URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/nataffdaily/story/9182182/memos_hurricane_katrina_determined_to_destroy_new_orleans
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