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Even More US Troops To Be Sent To Haiti



Jan 18, 2010 18 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

NEWS-US-QUAKE-HAITI

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Troops, doctors and aid workers flowed into Haiti on Monday even while victims of a quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people still struggled to find a cup of water or a handful of food.

European nations pledged more than a half-billion dollars in emergency and long-term aid, on top of at least $100 million promised earlier by the U.S.

But help was still not reaching many victims of Tuesday’s quake—choked back by transportation bottlenecks, bureaucratic confusion, fear of attacks on aid convoys, the collapse of local authority and the sheer scale of the need.

Looting spread to more parts of downtown Port-au-Prince as hundreds of young men and boys clambered up broken walls to break into shops and take whatever they can find. Especially prized was toothpaste, which people smear under their noses to fend off the stench of decaying bodies.

At one place, youths fought over a stock of rum with broken bottles, machetes and razors and police fired shots into the air to break up the crowd.

“I am drinking as much as I can. It gives courage,” said Jean-Pierre Junior, wielding a broken wooden plank with nails to protect his bottle of rum.

Even so, the U.S. Army’s on-the-ground commander, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, said the city is seeing less violence than before the earthquake. “Is there gang violence? Yes. Was there gang violence before the earthquake? Absolutely.”‘

Keen said some 2,000 Marines were set to join 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Monday he wants 1,500 more U.N. police and 2,000 more troops to join the existing 7,000 military peacekeepers and 2,100 international police in Haiti.

While aid workers tried to make their way into Haiti, many people tried to leave. Hundreds of U.S. citizens, or people claiming to be, waved IDs as they formed a long line outside the U.S. Embassy in hopes of arranging a flight out of the country.

Roughly 200,000 people may have been killed in the magnitude-7.0 quake, the European Union said, quoting Haitian officials who also said about 70,000 bodies have been recovered so far.

EU officials estimated that about 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million were homeless.

Even many people whose houses survived are living outside for fear unstable buildings could collapse in aftershocks.

So many people have lost homes that the World Food Program is planning a tent camp for 100,000 people—an instant city the size of Burbank, California—on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, according to the agency’s country director, Myrta Kaulard.

On the streets, people were still dying, pregnant women were giving birth and the injured were showing up in wheelbarrows and on people’s backs at hurriedly erected field hospitals.

Water began to reach more people around the capital and while fights broke out elsewhere, people formed lines to get supplies handed out by soldiers at a golf course. Still, with a blocked city port and relief groups claiming the U.S.-run airport is being poorly managed, food and medicine are scarce. Anger mounted hourly over the slow pace of the assistance.

“White guys, get the hell out!” some survivors shouted in the city’s Bel-Air slum, apparently frustrated at the sight of foreigners who were not delivering help.

Six days after the quake, dozens of rescue crews were still trying to rescue victims trapped under piles of concrete and debris.

“There are still people living” in collapsed buildings, U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told The Associated Press. “Hope continues.”

She said some might might survive until Monday—and a few special cases could make it further: Rescuers pulled a 30-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman from a ruined supermarket on Sunday. Officials said they had had survived for so long by eating food where they were trapped.

Stunned by images of the disaster, the European Union Commission said it would contribute euro330 million ($474 million) in emergency and long-term aid to Haiti.

EU member states also poured euro92 million ($132 million) in emergency aid, including 20 million pounds ($32.7 million) from Britain and euro10 million ($14.4 million) from France, which also said it was willing for forgive Haiti’s euro40 million ($55.7 million) debt.

“The impact of this earthquake is magnified because it has hit a country that was already desperately poor and historically volatile,” said British Development Secretary Douglas Alexander.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, responded to criticism that they have given priority to military and rescue flights at the single-runway airport, which has room to park only a few planes at a time.

The U.N. World Food Program said American officials have agreed to a system giving humanitarian flights priority in landings.

French and Brazilian officials, as well as the Geneva-based aid group Doctors Without Borders, have complained that critical aid flights were not given permission to land.

With U.S. forces taking a major part in the relief effort, French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said he wants the American role clarified.

“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” Joyandet said.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, however, urged governments not to squabble over the problem, telling France-Info radio that “people always want it to be their plane … that lands.”

Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, was scheduled to visit the country and meet with President Rene Preval.


  • http://HBCIndy.com Dr. Jerry

    You know…I know that the disaster in Haiti is ginormous and I understand that this Country, the greatest Nation on the face of this terra firma must respond with tremendous assistance to those in such dire need. But…within an hour POTUS, DOD, DHS, and the State Department had authorized Unites States Military personnel, some of them combat action troops and combat cargo aircraft, to ship immediately to Haiti. However…it took 6 months to decide to reinforce out troops on the ground in Afghanistan. With troop death tolls rising and Generals calling for reinforcements, Obama and his administration were frozen. When it comes to using our military to kill the enemy they balk…but when it comes to using our troops as servants of the third world they move with lightning speed. Very, very curious to me.

    • http://n/a MaelstromOfAnonymity

      Because image is more important to that Marxist whore in the white house than anything else.

      - I don’t dare begrudge the poor people of Haiti the aid and relief that they need. But I do know why O’Dumbo is concerned, and it simply isn’t genuine.

  • Reloader449

    There’s always room and need to criticize the U.S., isn’t there? Go to w’s strategypage.com and type in this image address: /military_photos/20100117213023.aspx

    The U.S.S. Carl Vinson, off the coast of Haiti.

    How did that official put it, responding to the Frog complaint that W sent a carrier to the tsunami victims?

    umpteen million gallons of fresh water, tons of food, advanced hospitals, hundreds of “qualified emergency workers,” and miles of cable meant to be run ashore to provide electrical power for a large city from the carrier’s nuclear reactor system.

    We have 12 of these ships, sir; How many do you have?

    • LechWalesa
    • LechWalesa

      Mr Kouchner warned governments and aid groups not to squabble as they try to get their aid into Haiti.

      “People always want it to be their plane … that lands,” Mr Kouchner said on Monday. “(But) what’s important is the fate of the Haitians.”

      In another weekend incident, some 250 Americans were flown to New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force Base on three military planes from Haiti. US forces initially blocked French and Canadians nationals from boarding the planes, but the cordon was lifted after protests from French and Canadian officials.

      The US military controls the Port-au-Prince airport where only one runway is functioning and has been effectively running aid operations. However, the United Nations has stepped forward to take the lead in the critical task of co-ordinating aid.

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7020093/Haiti-earthquake-France-criticises-US-occupation.html

    • LechWalesa

      15/01

      on TV, I saw a french woman pilot that was forbidden to land on Port au Prince airport (by the Americans, cuz there is a concurrence of “helps” now)forcing the deny and managing to land (uh, say, french women have some strong character)

    • Lone Wolf

      Being poor and uneducated is the natural state of man. The idea that capitalist countries ‘steal’ the wealth of poor countries is laughable: the real problem is that they don’t create any wealth to steal. P.J. O’Rourke wrote a good book about this:
      http://www.conservativebookstore.com/rorourke.shtml

      Bill Whittle debunks this meme as well:
      http://forthegrandchildren.blogspot.com/2006/11/seeing-unseen-part-1-by-bill-whittle.html

      “There are millions of people – actually, probably billions now – who genuinely believe that the wealth of the US was stolen from third world countries. This is one of the great perks of living a life free of the ability to think critically and do a little research. I have heard this slander repeated so many times I decided to look into some actual numbers to see if there is anything to this charge. This is a perfect example of how critical thinking allows you to see the unseen. That attitude, Google and ten minutes is all you need to shoot lies like this down in flames.

      Okay. The US Per capita income is $41,300. That of a poor, third world country –Djibouti, say — is $2,070.

      Now it gets interesting. The US gross domestic product – the value of everything we produce in a year — was last measured as $12 trillion, 277 billion dollars (hundreds of millions of dollars being too insignificant to count in this economy).
      The GDP of Djibouti is 1 billion, 641 million US dollars.

      A little basic arithmetic shows me that US has a GDP 7,481 times greater than Djibouti. A 365 day year, composed of 24 hours in a day, yields 8760 hours per year. Hang on to that for a sec.

      Now, let’s suppose the U.S. went into Djibouti with the Marines, and stole every single thing that’s produced there in a year…just grant the premise and say we stole every damn thing they make. If we hauled away all of Djibouti’s annual wealth, how long would it run the U.S. Economy, which is 7,481 times greater?

      Well, 8,760 hours divided by 7,481 gives you an answer of 1.17 hours. In other words, it takes the U.S. 1.17 hours to produce what Djibouti produces in a year. If the US really did go in and steal everything that the bottom thirty countries in the world produce, it might power the US economy for two or three days.

      Conversely, the billions and billions of dollars the US spends annually in aid, rent, etc. – plus uncounted billions more from private American charities – would supply the entire GDP of Djibouti for hundreds of years.

      Where’s your Imperialism argument now?”

      So – how much is all of the help we’ve sent to Haiti worth? A hell of a lot more that we could ever get back from them. Haiti is in fact a net destroyer of wealth, not a place that we could steal from – even if we wanted to.

    • LechWalesa

      Lone wolf,

      are you replying to me or to the angrywoman ?

      cuz I put her link only to reply to the argument of the article (and to Reloader) : the french complaint, that that wasn’t only a french complaint !

      Djibouti ain’t any sort of like Haiti, it’s a muslim country first, where population is pragmatic, also a place with military french and american bases

    • Lone Wolf

      You’re right – the French complaint isn’t limited to the French: it’s echoed by libtards and leftists everywhere. Theangryblackwoman certainly fits in that category, and Bill Whittle shows why only morons could believe that crap. Like U.S. troops would actually be there to ‘occupy’ Haiti – ha!

    • LechWalesa

      check that

      http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-troops-bring-food-and-hope-to-shattered-nation-1871974.html

      “So members of the 82nd Airborne Division, who are among the 1,700 US soldiers now on the ground in Haiti, revealed their new rules of engagement. They hope to win the hearts and minds of the shattered people they have travelled here to help. Gone are angry scowls and wrap-around sunglasses; instead, they are all smiles. And rather than waving machine guns at people, they have been ordered to discreetly carry their weapons on their backs. A total of 10,000 soldiers will be here by tomorrow, and if Uncle Sam is not handing out the Hershey bars quite yet, they’re certainly in the post. ”

      so you talk out of your mouth

      now you can even see Clinton uploading bottles of water and giving food on all the TV

      so Ms angry had it right

    • Lone Wolf

      Ms Angry has *what* right? This?

      “And not ONE of the assholes has mentioned that the United States and the French were and are a main cause of the poverty, and dictatorship and blood shed.”

      So the Haitians themselves don’t bear any responsibility for the state of their country?

    • LechWalesa

      no, about the medias occupation

    • Lone Wolf

      Ah – well, if you are just complaining about the media’s preoccupation with US aid efforts you certainly could have been clearer than just linking to a moonbat’s homepage – like actually stating it instead of leaving us to figure out what the link meant.

      Frankly, I don’t find it extraordinary that the narcissistic and leftist US MSM would focus on themselves and US aid efforts, just as I wouldn’t be surprised to see the French media spending most of their time talking about French relief efforts (particularly if this was a case where the French provided most of the aid). However, it would be strange (but not impossible) to see the US media focused on French aid efforts if the French only provided 10% of the aid. I say ‘not impossible’ because most journalists here wouldn’t recognize the US doing anything good in the world and would rather find stories that better fit the leftist narrative of Ms. Angry. So if the French aid effort was more ‘politically correct’ than that of the US military, we could see exactly that scenario.

  • Pingback: Aid Slow in Getting to Haitians

  • richwill

    Leave it to governments and the bureaucrats of said governments to screw around with policy while people starve to death.

  • http://www.dirtydozensbunker.com Sanders

    “White guys, get the hell out!” some survivors shouted in the city’s Bel-Air slum, apparently frustrated at the sight of foreigners who were not delivering help.

    —————————————————-

    Okay…bye.

    • CPLViper

      Thought the same thing. I remember the old saying, “Beggers cannot be choosers.” … I guess that is not understood in some places.

  • rightangle

    In all of this relief effort, I would hope that even 1/2 of 1% the relief money is set aside for the future investment of rebar. As yet I’ve heard of no incidents of rebellious youths wielding easily salvageable bar as a weapon.