Earthquakes

[Barbara]

Cont'd...

Virtually nothing of substance has been done to build a credible infrastructure in Haiti since the military govt of Gen. Raul Cedras was overthrown by the Clinton administration military invasion in 1994.
   More that 20,000 US troops participated in the 1994 naval and air campaign.
The US forced Cedras to flee the country, but since, Haiti has seen its "elected" govt's vacillate between Jean Betrand Aristide and his political nemesis Rene Preval, resulting in a near political paralysis.
  Preval saw his presidential palace collapse last week, fled to the Port au Prince airport (where he now resides) and has only made some carefully orchestrated "trips" into the city.
Preval, it was pointed out by US officials, is president of a government that does not exist.
  Coincidentally, CNN showed video on Friday of a collapsed and deserted Haitian parliament building.
Of more immediate concern is the expected influx of Haitian refugees into the US.
  "Months and years" of continuous US aid to Haiti was mentioned by Obama at the White House on Saturday. Obama announced that former president George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will lead US fundraising efforts to aid displaced Haitians. For Pres. Bush, it was his first return to the White House since leaving office a year ago.
  "They (Bush and Clinton) will send an unmistakable message to the Haitian people", Obama explained.
"We ae in it for the "long haul"", Biden  added. "It is going to take years."

[Soldier4Christ]

The U.S. control only extends to that for earthquake relief. Local police forces have regathered and working to maintain control of the population, enforcing some semblance of peace.

There was a hospital unit from the IDF in Israel that were on site and set up for operation within 24 hrs. Within less than 1 and a half days later they had already taken care of well over 1,000 injured and sick people. The hospital was only designed to handle 500 max per day. The IDF hospital was the first to set up and be in operation way ahead of even the U.S.

[nChrist]

I've watched and tried to keep up with the news in Haiti. I must say that the U.N. doesn't appear to be worth much to these suffering people. What the IDF was able to accomplish in such a short period of time is amazing. I realize much of this expertise is because of being under fire and siege for over 50 years, but we could learn much from them. I have no doubt that we will do much of the heavy lifting, and we shouldn't hold our breath waiting for a lot of help from the U.N.

[Soldier4Christ]

The UN isn't worth much to anyone except for the purposes of evil.

The IDF does have the expertise. They also have more concern for people that are suffering than they do for their own comforts. When I went to Desert Storm I was with a unit that set up a 500 bed hospital tent unit. We set it up in record breaking time and it still took us 6 days to do it. Of course there was time spent on putting in concrete slabs under the tents for sanitation and a lot of comfort items for us. Even with that I was amazed at the 8 hr set up time the IDF had. (16 hrs of that 24 hr period was travel time to get there)