Levees Fail. Stuff Happens.

If the state's leading political figures treat the Corps' "catastrophic failure"--Corps' own words--as an unmentionable, it leaves people around America still thinking this was a natural disaster.
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EDINBURGH--It's as if people at NASA discussed space shuttle disasters without ever mentioning how or why those disasters occurred. The latest example: Sen. Mary Landrieu on This Week, emphasizing the role of the failure of the levees in the devastation of New Orleans, but failing utterly to mention how or why the levees failed. (Of course, she had her hands full deflecting criticism of the $250 billion goodie bag she and Sen. Vitter first requested from Congress last fall) But if the state's leading political figures treat the Corps' "catastrophic failure"--Corps' own words--as an unmentionable, it leaves people around America still thinking this was a natural disaster, and it leaves a vacuum in which conspiracy theories proliferate.
Say it, Mary: the levees failed because of "design and construction flaws" on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency.

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