The Blown Levee

Granted, by its very nature, New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. BUT the odd thing is no one seems to know exactly HOW the levee broke. The NY Times says it wasn't "water from the sky" and I can't find mention of a large storm surge that knocked over the levee. There is this quote:

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," Mayor Ray Nagin said in ordering the mandatory evacuation for his city of 485,000 people, surrounded by suburbs of a million more. "The storm surge will most likely topple our levee system."

But if you are really conspiratorially minded, check this out:

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."

"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."

Was the levee blown on purpose?

The odd thing is this huge disaster comes almost exactly on the fourth anniversary of 9/11, is guaranteed to take people's minds off 9/11, and comes at a very similar spot in Bush's second term as 9/11 was in Bush's first term. And both 9/11 and Katrina come at a time when Bush's approval rating is dropping.

Unlike 9/11 though, I don't think Bush's numbers are going to go up after Katrina. But if this levee break was some sort of sick covert op, I don't think this one was meant to help Bush.

p.s. Here is a neat graphic showing the levee system around New Orleans.