Hollow apologies are meaningless

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

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Why do I take the above to be read as "response to floods and storms is a state responsibility, and to the extent that we were too slow in recognizing how incompetant the state and the city were, I take responsibility; which is to say that I take no responsibility at all."

[adding to my original post]

Why do I take the president's statement in that way? Well, how many times in the last couple of weeks have we heard the administration's officials talking about how they weren't called in by the state or the city, or other attempts to shift blame to those bodies? That's why. Because if you're shifting that blame saying "it's not our responsibility", then it's pretty damned hollow for you to come forth and say that you are responsible, for as far as you believe that the mistakes made were your fault. Considering they've been saying for the last two weeks that it wasn't their fault, that it wasn't their purview, it's pretty obvious that the president doesn't feel that the failures were the fault of the federal government. So it's really easily to apologize for mistakes that were made by the federal government and take responsibility for them when you don't believe that there were mistakes to be responsible for.

And yet the "liberal" media are falling all over themselves today talking about how Bush has finally taken responsibility and said he made a mistake about something. No, he did not, you fools. Read between the lines. Take into account the words and the actions administration in the last two weeks. He made the "admission" because he doesn't believe there's any blame to be shouldering. It wasn't a noble admission, finally, that he's capable of making mistakes.