I started seeing a very strange untruth being pushed in a number of blogs: that everyone thought that New Orleans was going to be fine until late Tuesday night. I originally spotted the reference over at Maggi Katzen's blog while looking for a cat picture she had posted. That led me to find that statement repeated at Scribal Terror, and the incorrect timeline posted at the much more famous Captain's Quarters.

Okay, an error is just an error (even if it rather undermines the blameshifting going on in those entries), but I knew this could not be correct, as I had posted early Tuesday afternoon (well before the Tuesday night that is claimed as the time when this disaster was actually discovered) about the flooding that had been announced Monday night. I went back to look for the quote from the original source and discovered something much more disturbing.

It had been removed without comment or any indication that it was ever there.

This sort of thing is the reason why I started keeping a private repository of news clippings for any articles that I used or was interested in, and I am now very sorry that I got out of the habit. Fortunately, I did quote Mayor Nagin precisely, and was able to use that quote to find out from Google that no, I am not insane, and it *was* in that CNN article originally:

(Click on the image to see it full size.)

The quote can still be found in a number of places, and is even specifically linked to his Monday night interview at KSBITV, and the actual video is still posted at WWLTV, where you can listen to him describing the devastation, including the levee break.

I'm not sure why it was removed, but I'm a little disturbed by the sudden attempt to rewrite history that has followed it, and this doesn't make me feel any better.

Update: The Army Corps of Engineers discovered that the levee broke early Monday morning.

As a related side note for those claiming that the Federal government was delayed because it could not act without a relief request from Blanco, she made that request on Sunday, August 28.