Lou Dolinar has the story of how the media missed the most successful search and rescue operation in history:

Neither Maj. Bush nor Dressler saw TV until the end of the week. They were aghast. Apart from sporadic mentions, the most significant note taken of this gigantic operation was widespread reporting of the rumor that a sniper had fired on a helicopter. What were termed evacuations in some cases, rescue operations in others, were said to have been halted as a result. “I never knew how badly we were being killed in the media,” Maj. Ed Bush says. In reality, the only shots fired at the Guard were purely metaphorical and originated with the media. Rescues continued 24/7 at a furious pace. In the end, the media timeline was exactly backwards. The bulk of all rescues took place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and began tapering off on Thursday, officials say. Their account is buttressed by a Washington Post poll of survivors, which indicates that 75 percent of the survivors who had been trapped and rescued were picked by Thursday, and virtually all were picked up by the end of the week. In other words, by the time the clichéd “long-awaited help” arrived, in the form of a visually-stimulating cigar being chomped by a cussing Lt. General Russel L. Honore, the worst was over. The majority of trapped survivors were out of the direst straits and awaiting evacuation.

Dolinar’s been covering this story since it happened — including this article for National Review in which he first reported that rescue operations saved up to 50,000 lives. In his latest article, Dolinar reports that “the numbers have since been confirmed by Congress, the White House, Louisiana state officials and the relevant agencies themselves.”

“The truth about the National Guard’s role in Hurricane Katrina is gradually emerging,” Dolinar writes. But the national media “isn’t about to acknowledge it” until the administration challenges them to weave this tale of extraordinary success into their narrative of government failure.