Breach of the Brain

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
-President George W. Bush, 9/1/05

No one will ever know if the levees protecting New Orleans would've held had funds to strengthen them not been cut to the bone, but most sentient American adults knew the levees could be breached by a major storm. Ten-year-olds watching the Discovery Channel knew that.

Bush uttered the above sentence in a carefully staged softball interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, so it's not like he was button-holed or speaking off the cuff. Even if he's foolish enough to think that, isn't there someone being paid to keep him from actually saying it on national television?

While any president would be overwhelmed by the challenge of an entire American city indefinitely displaced by high water, Bush's incompetence and his advisors' fundamental hostility to most government functions will undoubtedly prolong the misery for Katrina's victims.