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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (5864)	2/10/2006 7:36:11 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

more and more LIES from these dogs Don't forget BUSH only bailed on his 'vacation' from the DIRT RANCH for a brain dead women misdiagnosed by a bad Dr. FRIST....yet WOULD NOT LEAVE THE DIRT RANCH WHEN MILLIONS WERE BEING HIT BY A MAJOR CATASTROPHE....does reading children from an upside down book while the towers burned RING A BELL?! Ex-FEMA Head Says White House Knew About Levees By Edwin Chen, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina came under fresh scrutiny today amid revelations during a Senate hearing that senior White House officials had learned of the disastrous flooding in New Orleans a day earlier than they had previously indicated. The testimony of Michael D. Brown, the ousted director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, raised questions about whether top White House aides had kept President Bush fully abreast of the fast-breaking catastrophe after a levee breached on Aug. 29, allowing the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to cover huge portions of New Orleans. Bush, who was vacationing at his ranch when Katrina struck, has taken considerable criticism — and has accepted responsibility — for his administration's slow response to the hurricane. But the latest information suggests that he may not have known the full dimensions of the unfolding disaster. Top administration aides, and Bush himself, have said that they had been caught off guard on Tuesday, Aug. 30, by the news of the levee breach and the subsequent flooding. Bush has recalled publicly that earlier that morning he felt a sense of relief, thinking that the city had "dodged the bullet." But Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this morning that he had called a senior White House aide, most likely deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, the previous evening, Monday, Aug. 29, to inform him of the levee break. Brown, testifying under oath, was unable to say with total assurance that it was Hagin with whom he spoke that night, but said it "probably" was Hagin, a person with whom he had "a personal relationship." Brown added that he was fully confident that Hagin, who was with the president at his ranch, would inform Bush. "I never worried about whether I talked directly to the president because I knew that in speaking to Joe I was talking directly to the president," Brown testified. "I told him we were realizing our worst nightmare," Brown added. At the White House this morning, Press Secretary Scott McClellan defended the steps the president and his aides took, saying that ahead of the storm the administration had issued warnings and emergency declarations to speed assistance to the Gulf Coast. But, he acknowledged, "there were failures at all levels of government." "The president was focused on saving lives," McClellan said. As Brown recalled the sequence of events, a top FEMA staffer, Marty Bahamonde, first heard reports of the 17th Street levee breach on Monday morning. The aide took a helicopter tour and confirmed the situation around 5 p.m. Bahamonde then informed Brown. Brown said he called the traveling White House in Crawford, Texas, almost immediately. The apparent miscommunication over the levee breach was but one example of what committee Chairman Susan M. Collins (R-Me.) today called a glaring instance of an overall governmental response that was "riddled with missed opportunities, poor decision-making and failed leadership." Collins' committee is winding down a five-month-long investigation of the government's response to Katrina, having held nearly 20 hearings, taking testimony from more than 200 witnesses and reviewing hundreds of thousands of government documents. The Maine Republican said her committee hopes to fully understand the nature of "this enormous disconnect between what was happening on the ground — a city 80% flooded, uncontrolled levees, people dying, thousands of people waiting to be rescued — and the official reaction among many of the key leaders in Washington and in Northern Command that somehow New Orleans had dodged the bullet." Collins said this morning that one lesson she already has learned is that there is "a strong correlation between effective leadership and effective response. Unfortunately, I have also found the converse to be true." In his testimony, Brown also blamed FEMA's slow response on "a culture clash" between FEMA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, that he said was "doomed to failure." Repeatedly, Brown said, top DHS officials rebuffed his pre-Katrina efforts to bolster FEMA's capacities in response to disasters.