No One Could Have Imagined
Steve Bates called his post: Caught On Tape. A lot of people have noted the video released on the pre-Katrina briefing.
In my Katrina post on August 28, 2005 I wrote:
At the moment, I’m reminded of Hurricane Camille in August of 1969. My Dad was in Biloxi, Mississippi when it hit and I drove through a month or so later. It looked like carpet bombing with destruction continuing well inland.
Katrina is now a Category Five with sustained winds at 175 miles per hour. There will be massive waves and a storm surge. New Orleans is six feet below sea level on average and needs levees and pumps to keep from flooding in normal times. If this storm comes anywhere close it will flood.
The flood wall failure made it worse, but even without that failure, when the power failed, the pumps would fail, and the city would fill with water.
As the disaster of Iraq becomes plain, everyone who supported the war says that no one could have imagined this mess.
Except that annoyed people like Professor Cole are posting Golden Oldies, from February 27, 2003, outlining what was going to happen.
Of course, we should ignore the warnings in A World Transformed by George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, explaining why they didn’t invade Iraq during the first Gulf War.
That garbage put out by Condoleezza Rice about no one could imagine using airliners as guided missiles was buried under reports about Pentagon war games, Congressional Research Service reports, and several spy novelists who all used this specific action.
What we really see is the country being ruled by a group of unimaginative, incurious, lazy, shiftless, ignorant people who have been carried through life by others.
