[OESY]

MORE EXCERPTS:


In its Aug. 29 online edition, the New Orleans Times-Picayune first reported a breach in the 17th Street Canal levee at 2 p.m., citing City Hall officials. No other major news outlets picked up that report....

No major newspaper printed a headline that literally said New Orleans "dodged a bullet," as Mr. Chertoff claimed. But some did say the city had escaped a direct hit -- which was true, but misleading -- while others focused on the levees along the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, it was the levees along canals extending south from Lake Pontchartrain that gave way.

"But the city managed to avoid the worst of the worst," read a front-page Washington Post article on Tuesday. "The Mississippi River did not breach New Orleans's famed levees to any serious degree, at least in part because Katrina veered 15 miles eastward of its predicted track just before landfall."...

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COMMENT: Note that the journalists who wrote this article are playing word games. They claim newspapers did not say New Orleans "dodged a bullet." Instead, they said New Orleans "avoided the worst of the worst" or as the New York Times claimed August 30, 2005, "Katrina Misses New Orleans, Heavily Damages Mississippi." Washington Post, CBS News, NBC, NPR and many others in the omniscient establishment press also reported New Orleans had been "spared."

In other words, Chertoff was more honest in recounting the known facts in the immediate aftermath of Katrina than Russert and the rest of the MSM.

[norton]

"They claim newspapers did not say New Orleans "dodged a bullet."

Dodged the bullet probably came from TV coverage - as mind numbing as that was - the term was repeated on at least two cable outlets. [Fox for one]

[Brilliant]

They were also only looking the newspapers, apparently, when they said that. I distinctly remember commentators on Fox stating that NO had "dodged a bullet".

[BurbankKarl]

No, but Brian Williams said those exact words on an NBC Special Report that morning...I was watching getting ready to head to work...and wondered if he knew the winds were pushing Lake Pontchartrain into the city as predicted...

>>No major newspaper printed a headline that literally said New Orleans "dodged a bullet," as Mr. Chertoff claimed. But some did say the city had escaped a direct hit -- which was true, but misleading -- while others focused on the levees along the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, it was the levees along canals extending south from Lake Pontchartrain that gave way.