A Day Late, A Leader Short

The skeletons are starting to fall out of the closet, or to be more precise, the attic. The New York Times has revealed that the White House was informed of the breached levees in New Orleans a day prior to what they had previously admitted. From the Times:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.

Now, it did take way to long for DHS to get the information to the White House, they received it close to midnight, but once the White House had the pertinent information they didn't understand the gravity of the situation. Also from the Times:

But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush, on vacation in Texas, was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.

The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found.

Cue up that video of Bush reading My Pet Goat on 9/11. He's totally useless in a crisis.