Wednesday, March 15, 2006

20-year-old Corps study warned of breaches in New Orleans

Paul at Wizbang brings us an update on the Corps claims that the breaches were unforeseen:
The Corps came out with their own report last week (a Friday document dump) on why the floodwalls failed. It said the floodwalls failed because of an "unforeseeable combination of events." (Then it listed that series of events)

In other words, "Don't blame us, there was no way for anyone to know the walls would fail, nobody could have predicted this."

That whole "unforeseeable combination of events" line would be more believable if the Corps of engineers had not -themselves- tested the floodwalls and had them fail 20 years ago in the exact same manner they claimed last week was "unforeseeable."

That's right. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers KNEW 20 years ago the design was faulty and they used it anyway. Then they lied (cough again cough) to cover it up.

Paul's information comes from this article. Yes, it seems that the Corps screwed up, though I have to ask about what happened with the walls in these past 20 years. Were improvements made to help protect against the type of failure this study found? I feel we're only getting half of the story here.

In light of these new revelations about the Corps, I am seeing a subtle change of the Bush-bashers' arguments happening. They've gone from "Bush knew about the breaches!!!" to "Someone knew about the breaches!!!" Note that this changes nothing about what President Bush was warned about, which was their original argument. If the Corps did this study, did not make any improvements and were thinking about it in the days and hours before Katrina hit, but did not provide this information to President Bush, then he still was not warned about breaches. As far as what he said on Good Morning America after the disaster, he still was going on the information he was provided. Was he supposed to use his non-existent psychic powers to read minds and see through time and space to find out that people at the Corps knew about the possibility of breaches? "He's too stupid to have understood it even if he was told," they claim, making sure the well is adequately poisoned. The tactics of these people are childish and illogical.

Covering up information that could've saved lives is a criminal act. If people at the Corps did know and they warned no one, then I hope heads roll. However, to the chagrin of those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome, one of those heads won't be President Bush's.

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