When the Levee BreaksThose two of you who've been reading me since 2005 (Gayle and Kitty) may remember that I spent a lot of time debunking the claim that there had been plenty of warning that the levees around New Orleans would break in a Katrina-style hurricane. In fact, what I found consistently was that there had been warnings that the levees might be overtopped.
Greg Palast returns to take
another bite of the apple:
On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the State Police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.
What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the city was about to drown. Bush's boys did not notify the State of the flood to come which would have allowed police to launch an emergency hunt for the thousands that remained stranded.
Of course, Palast's claim is missing one small item: evidence.
