Bush and Katrina, c'est levee for sure!

Look at this video on NBC last night which shows what The National Hurricane Center’s Mayfield told the President during the final briefing before Katrina struck.

“I don’t think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern,” Mayfield told the briefing.

Not only, did Bush not ask a single question during the briefing but he also expressed quite a bit of confidence to local officials:

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm," Mr. Bush said, "but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm to help you deal with the loss of property. And we pray for no loss of life, of course." (August 28)

On the September 1 broadcast of ABC's Good Morning America, President Bush acted as though the breach of the levees was an unforeseeable event : "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

It is funny to see that conservative anchors still claim the scandal is just the result of Bush-bashing bloggers and their allies in the press - even though the tapes show quite clearly that Bush and Brown knew about potential devasations and still did nothing. (Think Progress)

NOTE: as BAGnewsNotes points out, to fully appreciate the context of the videoconference picture (here below) you need to see other pictures of the room (from another conference) from another angle. Then you really understand the "impressive" urgency of the situation.

Cheap and small, eh?