Am I the only one who thinks it’s just unpardonable that nobody in Congress or the Senate is forcing Bush to turn over relevant records for his handling of the Katrina emergency?
“What do they have to hide,” said Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi. “Why don’t they just come forward and say, ‘This is what we knew, when we knew, and this is how we reacted?”
What’s already determined beyond doubt in this affair makes of Bush an impeachable liar.
His and Michael Chertoff’s quotes from after the storm that they didn’t think anybody could have expected the breach of the levees are given the lie by various things including 1) a notification sent to the White House early Monday hours before the storm hit that it was probable that Katrina would “lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching. This could leave the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months.” And 2) a report sent to the White House that night, after the storm passed, that there was a quarter-mile breach “in the levee near the 17th Street Canal” and that “an estimated 2/3 to 75 percent of the city is under water.”
Of course, Bush was in Crawford, not the White House at the time, but that’s exactly the point. Were the messages contained in these documents related to him?
He was negligent in any event but if those messages were related to him and he did not have a suitable response, it’s one matter. It’s another matter if the messages were not related to him.
The documents he is withholding would likely tell us whether those messages were related to him.
Who can look at his refusal to provide those documents to Congress and not call his refusal an obstruction of justice?
Ken Rapuano, Bush’s deputy domestic security adviser, held a close-door briefing for congressional investigators. At the briefing, when asked about Bush’s involvement in the poor government response to Katrina, he said “I am really not here to discuss specific information that was passed to the president.”
Representative Gene Taylor said of the briefing: “It was as shallow and phony a presentation by the administration as they possibly could conceive.” He says he walked out in frustration.