Q: When is a fact not a fact?
A: When it appears on a White House "Fact Sheet."
WaPo's Dan Froomkin caught a story that slipped through while the media radar focused on Dubai. The AP's Tom Raum, Froomkin writes, "caught the White House in a lie."
Froomkin quotes from Raum's
story:
"In a document it called `Setting the Record Straight' the White House said Bush's Aug. 28 videoconference 'was open to the press and the full transcript of this videoconference was released to Congress and the public in the fall of 2005.'
"However, only the opening portion of the conference, where Bush made brief remarks, was witnessed by a small news media pool. And full transcripts of that and other sessions were not released by either the administration or Congress."
During the videoconference on Aug. 28, the day before Katrina hit land, Bush heard "dire warnings of a gigantic storm that could overflow [top] the levees." But on September 1, Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
Raum clarifies the breached-topped issue:
The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun, or water flowing over the top.
But civil engineers understand that once a levee is "topped," floodwaters can rapidly erode the structural base of the levee and nearly always result in a breach, according to AP interviews with officials from the Corps of Engineers and others.
Froomkin rightfully praises Raum for the clarification.
I'm glad Raum weighed in on the breaching vs. topping issue. The argument that Bush's statement about not anticipating the breaching of levees was legitimate because the word "breach" never came up in the Aug. 28 videoconference is so laughable -- and so reminiscent of Clintonian parsing -- that even the White House has refused to make it. Nevertheless, it's been banging around the blogosphere, fueled by volunteer presidential apologists.
All of this makes me think: For a guy who's supposed to be deeply religious, Bush sure lies a lot.