With circulation trending ever downward, the competition for attention-grabbing newspaper headlines is tougher than ever. One would think that fresh news would usually be better than old news, but the media disagrees. It seems that while President Bush is visiting Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, the press has nothing better to do than resurrect discredited scandals in their ongoing attempt to control his poll numbers. The current favorite among "retread scandals" is blaming Bush for Hurricane Katrina. Again.

The "mainstream" media utterly savaged former FEMA director Michael Brown over the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. Brown was portrayed as history's most incompetent boob, unqualified to head FEMA, more concerned with his wardrobe and meals than the monster hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast. Brown became, in the media's view, the perfect access point through which to attack President Bush. The worse they could make him look, the worse the President could be made to look for appointing him, then supporting him. Eventually, the Left settled on their own version of history, and the word "Katrina" became another meme for Liberals to throw out in the standard "shotgun" method of Left-wing debate. (Toss out as many talking points as you can, so your opponent gets bogged down trying to explain each one.)

Suddenly, the mainstream media once again began buzzing with fresh blame for Bush over Katrina. A newly released video from before the hurricane featured Michael Brown expressing concern for the levees and other aspects of the disaster. Another video showed one of the briefings President Bush received just a day before the hurricane hit land. "Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina," the headline blared.

Immediately, the Democrats (and even some Republicans) attacked. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) said the video "makes it perfectly clear once again that this disaster was not out of the blue or unforeseeable. It was not only predictable, it was actually predicted. That's what made the failures in response -- at the local, state and federal level -- all the more outrageous." At least Vitter held all levels of government accountable. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) said that Bush administration officials have "systematically misled the American people," but that's Reid's knee-jerk response to everything. Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said that "the truth about what the President knew and when he knew it has come to light."

The Associated Press began their major "news" story thus: "In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage of the briefings." The story recounts how the media was shown in "excruciating detail" how Federal government officials were "fatally slow" to realise that they hadn't put enough resources in close proximity to New Orleans. How they were supposed to predict the exact path of a hurricane days in advance, or move supplies to thousands through the its aftermath, AP writers Margaret Ebrahim and John Solomon did not say.

Was Bush warned about how devastating Hurricane Katrina could possibly be to New Orleans? Of course he was. The coming devastation was all the media could talk about for days before the storm made landfall. I was warned. You were warned. Everyone in the Gulf Coast was warned. People living in survival shacks in the Montana badlands were warned. Every rational person is still wondering why Mayor Ray Nagin left fleets of schoolbuses to flood, instead of using them to take the people eventually stuck in the Superdome to safety. And why, afterwards, Governor Kathleen Blanco ordered the LA National Guard to keep the Red Cross out of the city.

The writers went on to ridicule Bush's "bravado," contrasting it with the "dire warnings" heard in what was obviously a worst-case scenario briefing. The pièce de résistance was a reference to Bush's statement five days post-Katrina that he didn't "think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." The story ends, "But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility -- and Bush was worried too." Problem is, that wasn't the warning President Bush and Michael Chertoff received. The briefing spoke about the danger of the levees overflowing -- not breaching. An overflow could have been easily pumped right back into Lake Ponchartrain, as long as there was power for the pumps.

As soon as it started, the furor began to die again as a third video made its appearance. The new video was dated the day after the hurricane struck. In it, Governor Blanco was heard reassuring Bush administration officials that the levees had not been breached, after all. "In the hectic, confused hours after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast, Louisiana's governor hesitantly but mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans' protective levees were intact," a second AP story began. No amount of spin can disguise the fact that the levees were believed to have held the day after Katrina made landfall, and that the Governor herself made that assertion.

Oh, well. Nothing for the mainstream media to do but return to printing negative stories about Iraq, breathlessly anticipating imminent civil war as they have for three years.

4 Mar 06 UPDATE: On Friday night, not an hour after this post was published, the AP issued a "correction" to their smear story:

Fri Mar 03 2006 19:48:29 ET
Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

It is hard to imagine how a story deliberately written to "expose" President Bush receiving advance warning that the storm was likely to breach the levees could have "made clear" that he was not, in fact, warned of any such possibility. This quiet, unheralded "correction" will do nothing to prevent Liberals from spreading the original story's false premise, however.