Was the New Orleans Levee Blown?

An aquaintance speculates:

I smell a rat.

Sure, the hurricane dumped water. But, we've had "40 days and 40 nights" of rain throughout the midwest... that all drains down to New Orleans (and will suddenly peak, based on ground conditions). They have a ton of safety backups for diverting.

I don't buy it! We even heard it was going to break BEFORE the hurricane even hit!

and

They have a response checklist they do. e.g. "Storm coming, drain the pond and divert water to x, y, and z." Seriously, they have folks hired to monitor this stuff all along the Mississippi. I remember the weeks and weeks of rain they had in Iowa and all around the midwest several years ago. All up and down the Mississippi, there was flooding. You may remember when they deliberately broke a levee to dump the water out onto a corn field, in order to help the flood problem downstream.

There have been many hurricanes in the "neighborhood" of New Orleans, enough to give them a lot of water in a short amount of time. They've had hurricanes (or weather systems) that just stall out there and keep dumping rain. This current storm came and went in 24 hours. Compare that to a slow-moving water dump lasting over a week. You could even argue that the back-to-back hurricanes in Florida, last year, could have dumped more water on New Orleans.

1) So, they have the ability to divert Mississippi river water -- away from Lake Ponchatrain.
2) I'm sure they have the ability to lower Lake Ponchatrain (after diverting Mississippi river flow)
3) They've had much more Mississippi river volume in the past.
4) They've had more rain dumped on New Orleans over shorter and longer durations in the past.

+++ Here's where it gets weird +++

5) Before the storm hit, they knew the levee was going to break.

6) What monitoring procedures weren't followed?
(deja vu - "incompetence theory")

7) If they knew it was going to be really bad and they couldn't control it, why didn't they haul all the people out of there to safety? Why didn't they tell people their predictions?

It appears that it was presented as "just another hurricane" that may be a worse than usual.

These folks know what kind of volume of water to expect from a storm. The wind part of it is probably out of their control, as well as the exact path of the center. But, the water volume is something they should be able to anticipate well in advance! If it looks really bad, you divert the big river and drain the pond. Heck, I didn't even see sandbags going up (by the levee). The only sandbags I saw were in front of buildings, on an individual basis (i.e. NOTHING large scale).

This acquaintance does have a background in civil engineering, so he is not totally talking out of his ass.

I'm not saying I buy this idea, but I guess the idea is that someone had some sort of PsyOps disaster plan in mind-- as a distraction? Or to get the masses used to large disasters?

Alternatively, how do we know the levee didn't break from REAL terrorists (i.e. the muslim kind)?