Compare and Contrast

If this is true...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Shortly after 9/11, al Qaeda began planning to use shoe bombers to hijack a commercial airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles, California, President Bush said Thursday.

The details were the first from the administration about the West Coast airliner plot, which was thwarted in 2002 and initially disclosed by the White House last year.

...then good for them. But it might not be true. And it doesn't prove they need to break the wiretapping law to prevent terrorism.

...and whether it's true or not, it begs the question: how come we can stop guys with shoe bombs, but we can't predict that a Category 4 hurricane is going to flood New Orleans, or respond effectively when it does?

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

Obviously, the NSA isn't conducting enough electronic surveillance on the National Weather Service.

Brown says he's been made Katrina scapegoat

Brown said the government's response would have been different if terrorism had been the cause of the levee failures in New Orleans.

"But because this was a natural disaster, that has become the stepchild within the Department of Homeland Security," he said.

Homeland Security officials have told the committee they did not know the extent of the disaster until a day after Brown did. But the former FEMA director called those assertions "disingenuous" and "baloney."