pudge's Journal: Shut Up, Tim Russert

The other day Michael Chertoff said he was surprised that the levees broke when they did, because they thought that after the levees made it through the initial blast from the hurricane, they would be OK. Tim Russert didn't understand this, though.

MR. RUSSERT: I want to stay on this because this is very important. You said you were surprised by the levee being broken. ... [delete rambling about how everyone knew that the levees could break in a storm like this.] ...

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: No, Tim, I have to tell you, that's not what I said. You have to listen to what I said. What I said was not that we didn't anticipate that there's a possibility the levees will break. What I said is in this storm, what happened is the storm passed and passed without the levees breaking on Monday. Tuesday morning, I opened newspapers and saw headlines that said "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet," which surprised people. What surprised them was that the levee broke overnight and the next day and, in fact, collapsed. That was a surprise.

That seems reasonable to me, but even if it doesn't seem reasonable to you, at least it's obvious that Chertoff is saying what he meant is different from what Russert is saying. Yet later in that same broadcast, Russert asks a scientific expert:

MR. RUSSERT: So when the president and Secretary Chertoff say, "We were surprised that the levees were breached," were you surprised?

When Russert intentionally misrepresents quotes, are YOU surprised?

Cut the excuses

[sulli]

Come on pudge, you're better than this. Chertoff and Brown, along with Bush, as well as local officials, were completely unprepared for a disaster that everyone knowledgable had been predicting for years, and for which there was four days' notice. Then FEMA head Brown didn't even watch CNN and so didn't know for over a day that 20,000 people were in the convention center.

There is no goddamn excuse for what happened [nola.com], particularly at the federal level. None. The fact that Chertoff and Brown have not yet

Re:Cut the excuses

[pudge]

Sorry, you must have misposted this, since it has nothing to do with what I actually wrote. I simply noted the *fact* that what Chertoff said is that he was surprised that they broke *when they did,* and that Russert willfully ignored this and kept giving viewers the false impression that Chertoff said he was surprised that they broke at all.

Re:Cut the excuses

[sulli]

So do you agree that he should be fired?

Re:Cut the excuses

[pudge]

Of course not. I don't have enough information to make such a determination. And I don't think you do, either: I think we need to know exactly what happened, the timeline of events during those days, to make that call.

However, even if you disagree (which it seems you do), as should be evidenced by the above, I am open to the idea.

I never implied or said any person or agency didn't do anything wrong, or should not be fired. I said (in my previous post) two things: first, that we don't know enough to yet a