Wild Conspiracy Theories

10 February, 2006. 394 words.

I found the following text on Americablog (about as liberal of a blog as you can possibly get without being Michael Moore’s own blog), referring to today’s news that Homeland Security knew about the levee breaks in New Orleans a day before the Bush administration said they did:

The president of the United State is a liar. And the Republicans used to tell us that Bill Clinton’s one lie about oral sex was going to send all American children to hell, yet now we have a White House and a president who do nothing but lie about everything. Everything.

See White House knew the New Orleans levees failed even though a day later they denied it. Folks, they lied again. Sheesh. Can you get any more childish?

Let’s set aside the inane “liar, liar, pants on fire” chant for a moment and examine the facts as reported in the AP story. Somebody “sent an e-mail at 9:27 p.m. on Monday, August 29” to Homeland Security that conditions “are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting.” (No mention of the levees, btw.) The White House folks then said they didn’t know until Tuesday that the levees failed. Oh yeah, that’s a huge discrepancy all right. Those few hours would have made all the difference in the world. I’m definitely convinced now… impeach that evil lying scoundrel! He purposefully destroyed New Orleans all by himself!!

Immaturity aside, does this Americablog guy really think the president was sitting poised over his computer waiting for emails from New Orleans all day and night? Those emails probably went to an assistant, which then went to the assistant’s boss, which then went into a daily status meeting, which then might get over to a White House assistant, which then might get to the White House assistant’s boss, which then might get into another daily status meeting with the president’s advisers, which then might actually get to the president in a scheduled teleconference in between speaking engagements (Bush was on the road during the hurricane, if I remember right). Now raise your hand if you think that whole process can be done in less than a day-outside of normal working hours. (If you raised your hand, you have never worked among government employees.)

These are exactly the sort of wild conspiracy-theory accusations that give well-meaning Democrats a bad reputation.

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