Mayor Nagin should be thanking George Bush for pressuring him to halt his plans to bring people back into New Orleans and order the evacuation again – Bush was right to be cautious:

Hurricane Rita’s steady rains sent water pouring through breaches in a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city’s lowest-lying neighborhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans’ flooding nightmare.

“Our worst fears came true,” said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.

“We have three significant breaches in the levy and the water is rising rapidly,” he said. “At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they’ve grown larger.”

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast. Guidry said water was rising about three inches a minute.

Will the media also recognize Bush was right again to put pressure on a state and city prone to making terrible decisions? Decisions driven sometimes more by political considerations than reality.