The lie of the storm - The Boston Globe

The lie of the storm - The Boston Globe: "March 5, 2006

TELEVISION IMAGES can be misleading, but not in the case of the shadowy video that showed President Bush sitting quietly in Texas as he heard that Hurricane Katrina, bearing down on the Gulf Coast, was going to be ''the Big One.' Dressed in a suit coat even though he was on vacation, he looked like a president but did not act like one. Despite the warning on Sunday, Aug. 28, Bush let several crucial day slip by before he rallied the resources of the federal government to deal with this epochal disaster.
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Instead, it was business as usual when the storm struck on Monday, Aug. 29, and for a day or two afterward. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff attended a conference on bird flu in Atlanta. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld toured military bases in California on Monday and the next day joined President Bush in San Diego for a ceremony commemorating the end of World War II.
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Three days after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Bush went on television to defend his handling of the crisis, saying: ''I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." That may be technically true. The weather specialist who delivered part of the video briefing only expected some water to wash over the levees, but cautioned that worse was possible. Bush did make one misstatement during the video. ''I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared," he said. But the Bush administration was not. History will judge him harshly for this failure.