Only The Best

The high standards of the Bush administration can be seen in everything they do. From New Orleans:

Gathering around a newly constructed portion of the 15-foot Harvey Canal flood wall, representatives with the Army Corps of Engineers staged a press event Friday on the West Bank to clarify their techniques for preventing floodwater from seeping through openings in the walls.

After a recent media report of joints between a New Orleans floodwall being stuffed with newspaper instead of the usual rubber material, corps officials said the work was a temporary solution in 2006 that is not being repeated elsewhere in area levee systems.

"You had a lot of work being done to get things up to snuff after Hurricane Katrina," said Maj. Timothy Kurgan, chief public affairs officer for the Corps' New Orleans district. "I don't want people thinking there's just a bunch of newspaper inside this wall, and that's the only thing keeping water out."

No, that's not the only thing. There's rubber, too, on top. But while it's not the only thing, it is, they admit, one thing. As a graduate of the Corps of Engineers Public Affairs course on understatement, Kurgan did offer this:

"It's not the preferred technique," he said.

Meanwhile, over there:

BAGHDAD (AP) — The new U.S. Embassy complex does not have enough fortified living quarters for hundreds of diplomats and other workers, who must remain temporarily in trailers without special rooftop protection against mortars and rockets, government officials have told The Associated Press.

Sorting out the housing crunch and funding could further delay moving all personnel into the compound until next year and exposes shortcomings in the planning for America's more than $700 million diplomatic hub in Iraq.

Well, if it's good enough for Katrina victims, why not some diplomats? What's the worst that could happen, formaldehyde?

Oh, wait. War zone. Right.

The issue of "hardened" housing in the U.S.-protected Green Zone has gained renewed prominence since Shiite militias resumed steady attacks on the enclave in late March as part of backlash to an Iraqi-led crackdown.

More than a dozen people have been killed in the Green Zone in the latest waves of attacks, including a U.S. civilian government worker whose housing trailer was hit.

At one point — during the heaviest barrages early this month — the State Department ordered all its Baghdad employees to wear body armor and other protective gear while outside buildings in the Green Zone, which also contains the British Embassy, key Iraqi government offices and other international compounds.

Staffers also were ordered not to sleep in their trailers, and hundreds of cots were placed inside the current embassy — a former Saddam Hussein palace.

Apparently, it's the closest thing they have to a SuperDome?

Sleeping in shelters on makeshift cots: does that sound like we're "winning" to you?