Bush Lied! . . . No, Wait . . . .
If you're like me you have a number of friends whose palpable dislike for President Bush seems to cause them to accept, uncritically, all claims of nefarious behavior on his part. The latest example is the breathless MSM reporting on the notion that Bush was forewarned about the destruction of the New Orleans levees during Katrina, and later denied being warned.
The Los Angeles Times is the most recent and most visible MSM outlet to provide that calumnious fodder to its overly-credulous readership. Paterrico demolishes the entire story-- not just the Times' reporting on it-- here. I think this is a very telling story of what appears to be a typical MSM rush to negative judgment.
posted by Lowell Brown at 11:50 AM
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9 Comments:
Let's see, he was informed the levees may be topped but it didn't occur to anyone that they might be breached. I suspect you've never lived next to a levee and you are certainly no civil engineer. I guess no one at that briefing was either.
Posted by Anonymous
Dear Anonymous:
Nice try, but I think you'd better abandon the sinking ship you're on before it's too late. The fact is, Bush was warned that the levees might be overtopped . He later said no one expected the levees would be breached. One need not be a civil engineer to see the difference, unless one is stubbornly clinging to an idiotic argument like you are.
Posted by The Hedgehog
An ad hominem response. I probably should have expected such and you have missed the point entirely. Let me see if I understand the distinction you are trying to make. If Bush was informed a funnel cloud might form over Kansas and later said no one expected a tornado might send Dorothy to Oz and then was criticized for failing to anticipate such an event this would be inidicative of a main stream media that is out to get the smartest most competent president ever to be crowned errrrrrrr elected. I think I have it now. Brilliant, as the Guinness boys would say.
Posted by Anonymous
No, my dear courageous but inexplicably Anonymous commenter, to have been ad hominem I would have needed to attack you, not your argument, which is what I called stupid. Actually, I misspoke. The argument is simply specious, not stupid. The breaching of the levees is a far different and graver matter than simply topping them.
Your analogy, by the way, is a lot of fun, but ill-formed. What you seem to be saying is that if Bush had been warned that a tornado might destroy houses in Kansas, that would constitute sufficient warning that Dorothy and her house might well end up in Oz. Stay with me. Then, you would argue, Bush would be lying if he said, "No one expected poor Dorothy to end up there at the beginning of the Yellow Brick Road."
Do you see? Warnings of tornado damage = risk of a house landing in Oz. Just like warnings of levees being overtopped = warning of levees being breached.
Maybe that's how they reason in Oz?
Posted by The Hedgehog
Hello, have you seen the video of the briefing?
Lowell, your blind loyalty to this guy is breathtaking. He is a president who admittedly spends as little time studying issues as possible, and takes more vacation than any president in recent history.
Seriously, what is it about Dubya that you are so enamored with?
Posted by Chris
Yes, Chris, I've seen the video. The hurricane expert warns that the levees might be overtopped. Did you not see that? Do you think "overtopped" and "breached" mean the same thing? If so, please explain why. To me there seems to be a huge difference. Based on that briefing, you and others want to find that Bush was warned about the likelihood of the levees being breached. You can't get there, Chris. You also want to find that he lied when he said no one expected the levees to be breached. You can't get there either. If you can, tell me how.
Posted by The Hedgehog
Also, the very fact that you believe there is a liberal bias in the MSM makes me giggle. Sure, an analysis of Editorial pages in newspapers across the country will reveal a slight leftward slant in bias. But that's not the media that most Americans consume. Most Americans consume the cable news and nightly news, and most of those shows, my friend, are very, very sharply driven to the right.
Riddle me this, why is it that Dubya has only threatened to use his power of Veto twice, once to uphold torture laws and once to uphold the sell-off of US ports to a nation that supports the Taliban?
Compassionate conservative, indeed.
Posted by Chris
I've got another for you. Wind conditions are high, humidity is very low, and a group of drunken boy scouts are building the world's largest bonfire in the mountains near Big Bear Lake in August. No one ever expected, however, that a forest fire might erupt.
You see the problem Hedgehog is except for you and the White House almost everyone else in the ENTIRE WORLD understands that if a levee is overtopped the liklihood that it may be breached increases dramtically. Yet it never occurred to anyone in charge of handling the aftermath of Katrina? I guess we shouldn't be surprised as the current group of hacks in the White House haven't successfully anticipated much of anything. This is the same bunch worried about finding enough little american flags for the Iraqi's to wave at the liberators instead of worrying about having enough troops to secure the weapons depots that were being looted of explosives now being used to blow the hell out of 50 or so people a day. Nice job, Bush, I only wish we could vote him in one more time.
Posted by Anonymous
Dear Anonymous:
You say "almost everyone else in the ENTIRE WORLD understands that if a levee is overtopped the liklihood that it may be breached increases dramtically."
Can you give some examples, other than from Mother Jones or MoveOn.org?
Posted by The Hedgehog
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