UPDATE 3-4-06: From the Nelson Muntz "Ha-Ha!" department, WizBang Blog notes this retraction by the Associated Press after being hammered by bloggers for two days:
Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESSWASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.
The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.
Behold, the power of the blog.
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All you need to know about the Bush Administration hack-job perpetrated by the AP and disguised as a "news" story is contained in the links below:
WizBang: ReWriting Katrina History, AP Style
PowerLine: More Leaks; This Time, Katrina
The AP claims to have acquired "new" video footage of briefings and teleconferences held during the six days prior to the August 30th landfall of Hurricane Katrina and attended by President Bush along with various state and federal government officials. Funny, I thought Bush was on "vacation," "clueless" and "out of touch" before Katrina struck. Silly me.
But according to the White House, complete transcripts of the exact same meetings have been available for months. Isn't it funny that the mainstream media can't seem to get excited about a story unless they have pictures to look at? (Unless those pictures are cartoons of Mohammed.)
This AP story is simply a venue for a new strategy: zeroing in on one word uttered by the President, and then building a flimsy case to prove that the word was uttered in error. Then they will try to hold him "accountable" for making those grievous errors. And I'll bet that sooner or later, one of those misstatements will be turned into an impeachable offense.
In their story, the AP sets up Bush by noting that after New Orleans flooded, he remarked "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Then the AP goes into great pains to discuss how many times the New Orleans levee system was discussed in the pre-landfall briefings. Trouble is, the aspect of levee failure that was discussed was overspill, or "topping," not disintegration, or "breaching." Over at Captain's Quarters blog, Ed Morrisey pored through pages of transcripts available through the New York Times and found the word "breach" appearing only one time.
In the normal course of human events, misstatements are routinely made, usually due to confusion or ambiguity with respect to factual circumstances. Perfect case in point: today the AP released video of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco assuring the President and his staff that preliminary reports indicated that there were no levee breaches.
There is a vast gulf of difference between misinformation and disinformation, whose only purpose is deliberate deception. Disinformation is usually a crime; misinformation, even when it is damaging, usually isn't. And we will all be much better off if we don't try to change that.
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