Laura Bush caused me to blow a socket this weekend by attempting to shift a good deal of the post-Katrina disaster from her husband and towards bad reporting. She cited the media for bad reporting by reminding us of their initial estimates that 10,000 might have died. Darn, she is right: only 1,195 died in the city of New Orleans and surrounding 'burbs while her hubby played golf and went to a cake cutting ceremony with John McCain.

Chris Wallace: Let me ask you about another event, Hurricane Katrina, seeing a major American city drown and having a lot of people blame your husband, not for the hurricane but for the response.

Laura Bush: Well, you know, I feel terrible about Hurricane Katrina, and I'm sad that the response wasn't faster than it was, although it's — I think the — in hindsight, the rescue of so many people by the U.S. Coast Guard off their roofs or in boats is unprecedented, and I don't think the Coast Guard gets the credit that they should for that. And that was really, really wonderful.

The other thing that happened right after — it was really not true reporting. There was a — the reporting was — ended up being not really factual, but many, many people heard the first reporting, and that's what they think happened, that 10,000 people died or, you know, whatever the things were that were not true.

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blameing bush for katrina deths is as stupid as walking into a abs after reading several heads up post about it they knew it was coming had the means to get ppl out of there via all the busses that we had to replace cause they let them set there and get flooded

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Actually a judge ruled just today that the Federal government, in the form of the Army Corp of Engineers, was responsible for Katrina. It was not because of a storm or a bus that would not work. It was because for years the corps had mismanaged the flood control structure that was built to protect the Gulf Coast.

Having said that, as a former resident of New Orleans and someone who could have lost everything, your sympathy and understanding is duly noted.

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and as aformer resident you probaly had a oppratunity to vote for the levee board that has taken fedrel dollars for the levee's and spent it on pet projects instead of fixing the levee's and i/m sure if you had still been there and had the 5 day notice that they all had you would have been smart enough to leave yourself

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