The New Road

Katrina report thoughts

I looked through the 520 page Katrina report. Here are a few thoughts:

• Didn't the hearings end yesterday? They had time overnight to write 520 pages? And if this was canned, then why hold hearings?
• There are lots of pictures but Bush is shown only twice. The Air Force One picture is not there. And the two images of him look cherry picked to make him look his best.
• There are no pictures of any dead bodies. There are well over one thousand known dead with another three thousand missing, but there are no pictures of them anywhere in it.
• Sean Hannity's insistance that thousands of busses were available (pulled exclusively from a single image which is included) is debunked. There were only hundreds and 80% of those were under water and unservicable.
  
• The report does say that Bush's insistence that nobody could have foreseen the damage that could be caused by levee failure are "not consistent" with the facts.
• Bush is hardly mentioned, actually, having done a search on that term. The Air Force One flyover isn't mentioned. Nor is the party he attended the day after landfall, or the guitar he recieved as a gift.
  

I'll probably spend the time to dig a little more into it. From what I can see it tends to uphold the basic "state and local" line while adding in Brownie and Chertoff for good measure. It debunks the more ridiculous Republican lines (e.g. the busses).

I liked the 9/11 report. But I think that was a lot more balanced than this.