Not So True After All (Lying Liars, Part Deux)

Before we get too far afield, we should commend the Washington Post for blowing apart (pun intended) the recently trumpeted "truth" that the Bush Administration "cut" funding which would have reinforced the levees surrounding New Orleans, and thereby caused the flooding of city in the aftermath of Katrina. Some key points in Thursday's Page One article:

"But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects." [Emphasis mine]

Kudos also to the New York Times, which leads today with this factual presentation of how the relief efforts were snagged by political decision-makers, who simultaneously "begged" publically for the exact help they were keeping away.