Lately, there has been inaccurate and misleading reporting by local and national media about the history, status, and capabilities of the temporary pumps. In its continuing effort to remain open and transparent, the Corps offers accurate information regarding these vital elements of the Hurricane and Storm Damage Reduction System.

The memo was written by Maria Garzino, a Corps mechanical engineer overseeing quality assurance at an MWI test site in Florida. The Corps confirmed the authenticity of the 72-page memo, which details many of the mechanical problems and criticizes the testing procedures used.

In her memo, Garzino told corps officials that the equipment being installed was defective. She warned that the pumps would break down ``should they be tasked to run, under normal use, as would be required in the event of a hurricane.''

The pumps failed less-strenuous testing than the original contract called for, according to the memo. Originally, each of the 34 pumps was to be ``load tested'' _ made to pump water _ but that requirement for all the pumps was dropped, the memo said.

Of eight pumps that were load tested, one was turned on for a few minutes and another was run at one-third of operating pressure, the memo said. Three of the other load-tested pumps ``experienced catastrophic failure,'' Garzino wrote.

[Walter] Baumy [chief engineer of the corps' New Orleans district.] said the document will include 170 or so plates detailing assumptions, methodologies, and data behind multiple seepage, pump and soils tests performed on all reaches of the canal, but it won't be handed off to local elected officials until specialists in the corps' Rock Island district and at corps division headquarters in Vicksburg, Miss., finish reviewing the work.

And that, in and of itself, is a big problem, said [Dr. Robert] Bea, a member of the Independent Levee Investigation Team financed by the National Science Foundation to study failures in the region's hurricane protection system.

The corps is reviewing its own work when experts independent of the agency should scrutinize it instead, said Bea, a former chief engineer for Shell Oil in New Orleans who began his career with the corps.

Bea and his colleagues, along with members of the state-fielded Team Louisiana investigators, have said the corps must open itself to true outside collaboration and review -- not just talk about doing so.

"When are these guys going to learn? This is like running into the gang of bullies who beat you up yesterday and having them say, 'Trust us today,' " Bea said. "Nineteen months after Katrina, they're still checking their own work. They should be inviting peer review and welcoming collaboration as a way of showing that they really want to move forward together."

The hairdresser is a single mother. She received threats by phone and in writing. She was told to close her salon, judged as unacceptable by Muslim extremists. In 2005, a man in a black hood entered her shop, beat her, pulled the crucifix off her neck and raped her. A week later, her son was kidnapped and the same man called; she recognized his voice. He demanded $10,000. She gathered $7,000 and paid the ransom. Her son was returned, and she fled the country with him.

At issue here is whether the rapist/kidnapper is a member of a U.S. government-documented terrorist group. Even ransom can constitute "material support" of terrorists. But if money is given "under duress" to a group that is not on either of the two State Department lists of foreign terrorist groups, the "material support" restriction can be waived.

Mercury News

"We're Tired....Waugh, Waugh, Waugh!"

I just heard a leftist who claimed to be the wife of a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq on C-SPAN. I doubt that she was really connected to any service-member...but...

She said, "We're tired."

[Snip]

Our troops are tired of war...it's only natural. Our people are tired of the war as well. But that does not mean we should just lay down and hand murderous islamist thugs a victory.