Reply #235: Update: Video Shows Bush Being Warned on Katrina (Wash Post page A1!)

[Up2Late]

(I think that means it's on the Washington Post's FRONT PAGE today! It has links to Mayor Ray Nagin's reaction video too!)

Video Shows Bush Being Warned on Katrina

Officials Detailed a Dire Threat to New Orleans

By Spencer S. Hsu and Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 2, 2006; Page A01

A newly leaked video recording of high-level government deliberations the day before Hurricane Katrina hit shows disaster officials emphatically warning President Bush that the storm posed a catastrophic threat to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and a grim-faced Bush personally assuring state leaders that his administration was "fully prepared" to help.

The footage, taken of a videoconference of federal and state officials on Aug. 28, offered an unusually vivid glimpse of real-time decision making by an administration that has vigorously guarded its internal deliberations.

Reactions to the tape, which was obtained by the Associated Press, varied widely -- reflecting the intense debate that has brewed for six months about who should be held accountable for an initially flaccid government response to the catastrophe. Democrats said the tape shows Bush being warned in urgent terms of the potential magnitude of the storm, making it less defensible that the administration did not act with more dispatch to be ready.

White House officials said the footage reinforces what they have said to critics: that the president, at his Texas vacation home, was fully engaged from the opening hours of the emergency, while leaving operational decisions to the agencies in charge. Bush was dialed into the conference Sunday at noon Eastern time from a meeting room at his ranch in Crawford, with Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin at his side.

(more at link below)

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030101731.html?nav=rss_nation>