You are wrong. The hurricane lost just enough strength (down to a low Cat 3 by the time it was even with NO) and wnet just enough east, that the storm surge south off of Lake Pontchartrain was only about 15' instead of the predicted 20', which would have overtopped most of those levees. Instead only one area (so far) was reported to have an overtop from the lake, apparently in the northeast bowl. (There are actually 3 levee created bowls north of the river, not one.) The levee bowl that is most of the city wasn't overtopped but it was close. The reports of deaths and 40,000+ flooded homes are in the southeast(Ariabi) bowl where the Miss. River overtopped a levee, flooding that bowl to 8-12'. So that worst case scenario did take place to an extent in some of the city, just not in the one with the Superdome, French Quarter, and all the TV cameras.
Bastardi was saying that even a strike 30 miles east of NO, would push the lake over the levee. of course, in retrospect, now that we know which facts occurred - we can make excuses for these models and forecasts. hey, don't get me wrong, I am glad it went down this way. but it doesn't mean there should be no review of the pre-hurricane events.