According to the Associated Press (AP) today (March 2, 2006), George Bush II received explict advance warnings about Hurricane Katrina’s monumental scale and impact late last summer.
"In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms," the AP reports, "federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage." See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627394/
The warning took place during a video FEMA/Homeland Security briefing that Bush II viewed from his vacation headquarters on August 28, 2006, one day before Katrina hit land.
During the briefing, the AP notes, "a top hurricane expert voiced ‘grave concerns’ about the levees and then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren’t enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome."
"Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final briefing," the AP adds, "before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: ‘We are fully prepared.’"
Four days after the storm, Bush II said the following: "I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”
Let me repeat that: four days after the storm, Bush said the following: "I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”
But according to the AP, "the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility — and Bush was worried too."
"Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table."
Will it matter?
Bush lied about WMDs and alleged al-Qaeda-Saddam links in Iraq in order to start a momumentally illegal and immoral war that has killed more than 100,000 Iraqis and 2,000 U.S. soldiers.
The lie has been openly exposed, but Bush II and his guardian Cheney still have their jobs.
Bush said late last year that he would have invaded Iraq even if he had known that Saddam’s government lacked WMD. The real motive, he says, was the export of freedom and democracy: "liberating Iraq."
But if you go back and look at his speeches and radio addresses leading up to the invasion of Iraq, you will easily see that Iraqi WMDs were far and away the critical reason he gave the American people for illegally occupying Mesopotamia. So now he has admited to lying to the American people about why he invaded by Iraq.
Bush and Cheney still have their jobs.
And by the way, Bush is lying when he says he wants to create a genuinely free and independent, sovereign Iraq. Please.
Bush has said over and again that does not condone torture and that America does not engage in that terrible practice. This is total falsification. Bush has consciously approved the use of torture in the execution of his so-called war on terrorism. He’s lying.
His denials have been exposed as deception. His actions have been exposed as illegal.
And still he sits in the White House.
In April 2004 Bush II said that he never orders surveillance of suspected terrorists without first getting a court order "because we value the Constitution."
This has been openly exposed as a monumental lie across the dominant communications empire.
And still Cheney, Rove, and Bush II hold power.
Bush has lied over and over again about the nature of his plutocratic tax cuts, repeatedly claiming that they primarily benefit "middle-class" and ordinary working Americans. They actually work mainly on behalf of the super-opulent few in what was already the industrialized world’s most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society by far. Bush II’s tax deceptions have been openly, systematically, comprehensively, and repeatedly exposed.
And still he sits in the most powerful office on earth.
These are just the more spectacular tips of the Bush Iceberg of High State Deception. Bush’s lies are exhausting to track. They will some day be the subject for multi-volume analysis…multiple monograph accounts that will take weeks to digest.
And still he rides in Air Force One.
I am more into radical social and economic change than I am into impeachment. But it’s iincreasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that that basic constitutional weapon needs to be dusted off and deployed again as soon as possible
We’ve got to get a little democratic self-respect back here in the "land of freedom." Impeachment is a good place to start,
It’s time to knock the table out from President Pinocchio’s elbows.
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