Bush: Operation 'Blame the other folks' is launched

More news on the White House effort to avoid politicising Katrina which, for whatever reason, apparently should not suffer the politicisation that Bush gave 9/11.

NEW YORK In its Sunday edition, the Washington Post quoted a "senior Bush official" that "as of Saturday [Louisiana Governor]Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency." This, of course, was meant to make the governor look foolish and spread the blame around for the disastrous response to the disaster, though it was hard to imagine on what grounds the newspaper would quote an unnamed source in this case.Several hours of blogosphere howling ensued. Later in the day, the Post ran this correction, or rather, 180-degree turn: "A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26."

Source: Editor & Publisher

The Swift-boating of LA's democratic governor was on. This came out apparenlty on Saturday, to make the Sunday edition. It followed on the meme that the propaganda wing of the GOP, FauxNews, had used earlier in the week, when Vibrator Bill edited and spliced Mayor Nagin's comments, which was actually directed at the Federal government, to make it sound like the criticism was directed at the Governor. [The media has been silent on this, in stark contrast to their howling over 'Rathergate'].

Ok, here is what Nagin really said:

NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.
I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?
NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.

But, O'Reilly cut it so that his viewers were completely misinformed. Vibrator Bill's website does not have the transcript of what he fabricated [for obvious reasons], but this is what he played on his show:

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?
NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. get their asses moving to New Orleans."

Bush ran with Rove's meme yesterday:

Yet, despite their best efforts, the magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities. The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable.

This despite the Bush Executive Order of Saturday 27 August, putting FEMA and its clueless horse-wrangler in charge of the rescue operations.