Spin control has begun - hold onto your seats

[CatWoman]

HURRICANE RESPONSE
Corps Officials Say New Orleans' Flood Walls Were in Good Condition 9/1/2005
By Tom Ichniowski

Leaders of the Army Corps of Engineers say the city's flood walls were in excellent shape before the storm but weren't designed to handle a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude.

In a phone briefing Sept. 1, the Army's Chief of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, addressed some of the issues that have surfaced about Corps-built structures around New Orleans. Strock said that the project that resulted in the levees along Lake Pontchartrain was designed to protect against a 200-to-300-year storm, which equates to about a Category 3 hurricane, but Katrina was more severe.

Al Naomi, senior project manager in the Corps' New Orleans District, says, "The design was not adequate for a storm of this nature." He adds that to cover a Category 5 storm, work on storm protection improvements would have had to start 20 or 25 years ago.

The levee breaches occurred in areas that were "in excellent condition" before the storm and were inspected, said Naomi. He said there was nothing the Corps could have done involving the completed floodwalls that could have prevented the breaches

http://www.enr.com/news/environment/archives/050901c.asp

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Ugh! Keep hammering home the point they were not made to

withstand a superstorm and that our odds of escaping Katrina-sized monsters forever were not good.

-----------------------------------------------------
Save New Orleans, then save this country!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Yeah well they fired the other Corps of Engineers chief in 2002 or so, who

felt the efforts were grossly inadequate.

[leftofthedial]

3. CYA

no one could have known

[The Magistrate]

4. This Is Too Big To Spin, Ma'am

Not that the jim-jams will not try to....

[PretzelWarrior]

5. heard it on NPR today and was like WTF?

for one...even if that is the case, shouldn't a federal government have supplies and logistics at the ready KNOWING they don't have levee strength for Cat5 hurricane?

But!!!! That is taking huge assumption this guy isn't in political spin. They didn't question this guy at all when he talked this a.m. It sounded like a coverup to me.

I'm just waiting for the right wingers to blame Clinton specifically. They've already said this would have had to be dealt with in 60's and 70's. But they'll probably say Clinton memo released where he specifically said "I'm not wasting money on N.O. levees...F*CK 'em."

[VolcanoJen]

6. They're spinning like crazy now, get it out there before the death toll...

.. is announced.

When Americans learn that the dead are in the thousands (if not tens of thousands), it will be impossible to justify why the rescue effort took so long.

[Igel]

7. Your title presumes that what they're controlling is spin.

I think most DUers would say that the "* is responsible for failed levees" isn't spin.

I think "most DUers" lack the facts to justify the assertion. If they have them, I certainly haven't seen them mentioned or introduced into the discussion.

I don't know if the Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson is correct. But I haven't seen anything contradicting him, even given the many posts concerning reduction in SELA spending from 2003 to the 2006 proposed budgets and extensive Times-Picayune references that don't say what people say they say.

[CatWoman]

11. huh?

:silly:

[Cleita]

8. I think that this time they are too late. The information is out there

and they can't put it back.

[magnolia]

9. There are many facets to this.

The one that will have the biggest effect is the final death count. I think it will be staggering. It won't just be about how many Katrina took...but how many died needlessly, from starvation, dehydration and neglect due to slow response. They can't talk their way out of that because we all watched it happen.

[elehhhhna]

10. They can spin THIS: