A preface is needed, something that was said best at Obsidian Wings:
Criticizing the administration’s response to this or any other disaster is not ‘politicizing’ it. There are, I think, two ways of politicizing something. One is to drag politics into a discussion where it does not belong. Thus, if I decided to make a big issue out of Laura Bush’s birthday party, that would be ‘politicizing’ it. I can’t imagine in what possible world criticism of the administration’s response to a catastrophe would count as ‘politicizing’ in this sense.
The other way is to use something to score cheap political points. Criticism of the administration’s response to Katrina only counts as ‘politicizing’ if that criticism is motivated by partisanship, rather than by genuine outrage. Criticism of people as ‘politicizing’ the disaster is, fundamentally, a criticism of their character: it means either that they have allowed partisanship to skew their judgment, so that they overstate their criticisms, or that their motives are not grief, outrage, and anger, but a desire to score political points.
This is important. If all criticism of the administration were out of bounds, we would have no way of registering any of its failures. And people who dismiss all criticism as scoring political points prevent themselves from any serious examination of this administration’s record. By conflating people who believe the administration has fallen short because they take every opportunity to slam George Bush with people who hold the same belief because they have examined the evidence and concluded that it is true, they spare themselves the trouble of actually thinking about George Bush’s record, or about the possibility that some of his critics might be right.
Now, from CNN.com, “Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist“:
Defending the U.S. government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.
But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.
Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans. (See the original CNN post for video on a local paper’s prophetic warning — 3:30)
“That ‘perfect storm’ of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody’s foresight,” Chertoff said.
From later in the article:
Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that “there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned.”
He added: “There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I’m telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt.”
But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.
“We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane” on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.
Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called “Hurricane Pam,” the officials “had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents,” the Reuters report said.
In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city. (Read: “Times-Picayune” Special Report: Washing away)
Scientists long have discussed this possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario.
On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, “This is what we’ve been saying has been going to happen for years.”
“Unfortunately, it’s coming true,” he said, adding that New Orleans “is definitely going to flood.”
There is more:
Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans.
“It wasn’t until comparatively late, shortly before — a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall — that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area.”
As far back as Friday, August 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city.
But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect.
Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29.
The local newspaper wasn’t the only public venue where the information on the expected results of a major storm were available. At my weblog, Random Fate, I posted a link to an article in Scientific American from October of 2001 that predicted almost exactly the scenario that occurred.
The only flaw in the prediction? The levees lasted 24 hours longer than expected.
To put it bluntly, the scenario did exist, long before the disaster occurred, and it was widely available everywhere apparently except in the offices of those responsible for planning for and responding to the disaster. The information was out there, and not only found by obscure specialists in the field. The first article I recall reading on it was back in the 1980s. I am not responsible for emergency planning and so do not normally seek out this type of information, yet I was aware of the scenario, especially the results of computer modeling that were published in Scientific American in 2001.
It is not my habit or preference to quote so extensively from articles available online, relying on the readers to go to the source of the information for themselves. In this case, I had to make an exception, because the conclusion that arises from this is indisputable unless you are taking a position completly bound by partisan blinders.
The conclusion: Either we are being lied to in an effort of spin-control, or the people in charge of our government are incompetent beyond all comprehension or belief.
Personally, even though I despise being lied to, it is safer for my country if they are lying, but the results indicate otherwise.
This cannot stand.
I wrote a long commentary, “Accountability” that I placed here at The Moderate Voice along with posting it at other weblogs where I write. In that commentary, I point out that ultimately, we the voters are accountable for the actions of our government, because we are a democracy and elect these officials at the local, state, and national levels.
We are being lied to, or we have incompetents in charge.
Neither case is acceptable.
This cannot stand, not if we are willing to be accountable to ourselves.