The best and worst of 2004

[xoxoxoBruce]

Uh, hand me the red flag. Now stand back.
TW, we have to wait for aid requests. We just can't barge into soverign nations.

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Try, "Fuck you, America! Your economy is worth 10 trillion, you spend billions each year to wage war to kill hundreds of thousands of people, but when millions of lives are in danger you spend only a fraction of that."

As a country we are, and always have been, much more interested in destroying than preserving. And that goes for more than humanity.

To be fair though, it's not like we have to give anyone anything.

[Kitsune]

To be fair though, it's not like we have to give anyone anything.

You are correct, we do not have to give anyone anything. We don't have to go out of our way to save anyone but ourselves. But we do it and we do it often. And we spend more to wage war to do it than we could without the loss of life. The problem is that we're constantly taking away in the name of giving and when we puff up our chest and declare ourselves the police of the world, the world expects us to step in when others are in trouble. The problem here is that with all of the resources at our disposal, we seem much more intent on spending more money to kill than to save.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by glatt

Do you recall any Diego Garcia news stories in the last decade?

displaced natives

[tw]

Originally Posted by lookout123

Silence!!! you dare to question the statement of the infallible tw??? simpleton. sit back and allow him to bestow his infathomable knowledge upon you.

Thank you for filling the air with your wisdom. Oh. That's air pollution.

[tw]

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

Since when was Diego Garcia secret?

You just want to misquote? Sounds like a double standard. Diego Garcia is not secret. What is in and occurs at that Diego Garcia base is secret. The exact statement was "Diego Garcia is a rather secret American base." My would you misquote if you did not want to argue?

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

TW, we have to wait for aid requests. We just can't barge into soverign nations.

Now tell me how so many organizations from the Red Cross, Unicef, and other nations are currently providing aid - if no one has been invited?

Not only is India providing aid to its own people. India is also providing aid to Sri Lanka.

Its been 5 days. If dispatched a day after the disaster, the USS Kitty Hawk and its task force would already be there. Where are they? C5A and C17s would be landing for at least the second time with badly needed food, medicines, etc. This need not even come from the US government. The NGOs need that transportation desperately. Five days later we finally realize that something like 5 million people (including many of our own people) are in desperate need of help. Why? Because the international community shamed George Jr into paying attention to what has happened. Again look at the satellite photographs that George Jr has access to last Sunday. Then you tell me why he did not realize the scope of this disaster:
Asia's Deadly Waves . Click on the first row "Photos: Impact" . Click on the second row "Before and After".

[lookout123]

Now tell me how so many organizations from the Red Cross, Unicef, and other nations are currently providing aid - if no one has been invited?

notice how none of those are US gov't organizations? If US military planes just started landing uninvited on foreign soil with supplies, wouldn't you be among the first complaining about US intrusion upon foreign soil?

Not only is India providing aid to its own people. India is also providing aid to Sri Lanka.

and that has what to do with the price of beans in china?

the USS Kitty Hawk and its task force would already be there. Where are they?

that's right they were just sitting there, doing nothing, waiting for a disaster relief mission. it's not like they were involved with any other areas of the world.

C5A and C17s would be landing for at least the second time with badly needed food, medicines, etc.

again, not without a formal request through the embassies which didn't occur until yesterday i believe.

Five days later we finally realize that something like 5 million people (including many of our own people) are in desperate need of help. Why?

you're right, noone was paying attention at all. or perhaps they were analyzing the situation and how best to provide real relief, rather than just start throwing everything at it and hoping that what was needed was somewhere in the mix.

do you realize that parts of thailand (phuket, patong) that we are seeing in news clips had people sitting on the beach sucking down margaritas the very next morning? if we had just immediately put planes in the air, they might not have taken supplies to the most appropriate locations.

GWB screws up enough that there is plenty to pick on, but to turn every stinking event in the world into a bush bash is just downright pathetic. what happened to you tw? did someone with a shiny new MBA kick sand in your face or steal your girlfriend once? why the blind hatred?

[tw]

Originally Posted by lookout123

notice how none of those are US gov't organizations? If US military planes just started landing uninvited on foreign soil with supplies, wouldn't you be among the first complaining about US intrusion upon foreign soil?

Again explain what all those other nations and NGOs are doing in country. How come the Red Cross and Unicef already have ongoing aid programs when no one was invited. NGOs do not ask for government assistance. Government assistance is offered to them. The NGO are desperate to find aid for what they estimate are 5 million homeless and unfed people. But don't worry. The tourists are "sitting on the beach sucking down margaritas". Therefore there is not problem. I guess those up to 5 million people are also sucking down margaritas. I guess the NGOs are lying. Lookout123 says so?

Its quite likely that the final number is not as high as 5 million. It may only be 2 million. But don't worry. Lookout123 says tourists still have their margaritas. Sound like George Jr reasoning to me. I guess those satellite pictures don't mean anything if margaritas are available.

No wonder religious extremists always make bad leaders. Margaritas prove that people are not at risk.

[lookout123]

Margaritas prove that people are not at risk.

yep. that's exactly what i was saying. or i may have been suggesting that if we had in a knee jerk reaction sent planeloads of supplies and aid to the places seen on tv, we may have been sending it to the wrong places. there were people on the beaches the very next day. my sister's hotel was on the beach. she saw them sunbathing. she walked the beach the very next day. i don't care if you believe me or not, although you could verify some of this by looking in the news, as there have been some reports of this.

and back to the red cross and NGO aid flowing in... do you seriously not understand that government regulations require that even after funds and support had been pledged, formal requests had to be made from the governments in need before the US government could do anything? the red cross and other NGO's can go and do as they please - they are after all Non-Governmental Organizations. international politics has a set of rules that are to be followed. We gripe when they aren't followed, we can't rightly gripe when they are.

[Kitsune]

Of course everything is okay.

-----
Tragedy? We're here for the bar girls and beer
December 31, 2004

Stefan Johansson, a 41-year-old air force officer from Sweden, is hoping tonight is the night. He is not concerned about aftershocks hitting the beach less than a kilometre from here, or about the haphazard rescue operation under way in southern Thailand.

Nor is he worried by the deaths of several hundred compatriots. Mr Johansson is anxious that the bar girl he has his eye on is going to keep holding out on him. "I'm having a good holiday," he said. "I went for a walk along the sand this morning, did a bit of swimming. Now I'm off drinking, and then we'll see."

Mr Johansson is not alone. Four days after the tsunami hit, normal life has returned to much of Phuket and surrounding resorts such as Patong. The girlie bars are reopening, the bazaars selling fake Rolex watches are busy, the tourists are streaming off flights and onto the beach. Here the request by the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, for the country to wear black and forgo New Year festivities seems likely to fall on deaf ears.

"I heard what was going on with the wave and so on, and I just thought it was a bit of an exaggeration," said Peter Anstiss, 48, from Sydney, as he shared a beer with his brother in a bar off Patong Beach's main drag. "I didn't think too much about it."

At Phuket's airport, Pornthip Sucharitcharan was preparing to welcome 200 new arrivals on behalf of the Phuket Hilton. Yesterday, 200 guests were due to fly in to stay at the hotel.

The only problem, as far as Mr Sucharitcharan was concerned, were delays to commercial flights by the unprecedented number of aircraft landing at the airport. The congestion was caused by aid flights coming in and planes bearing the dead, injured and badly shaken, going out.

Thousands of Thais are thought to have been killed when their flimsy bamboo homes were destroyed.

Many remote fishing villages are yet to be reached, though reports indicate severe damage. There is also little hard information on the effect of the tsunami on islands to the south of Phuket.

Yet the luxury Royal Lighthouse Villas is booked up for the rest of the season, and has had no cancellations following the disaster. And the sprawling Diamond Cliff Resort, set on a bluff directly above Phuket's debris-strewn Patong beach, welcomed 136 new guests.

One new arrival at the Diamond Cliff, who flew in with her family from Moscow on Tuesday, relaxed by the pool. "We are here on holiday, not to be sad," she said. "I know bad things have happened, but it's nothing to do with us."

Back in Patong, Elliot Reid, from Melbourne, was finishing his gin and tonic. "I heard the warning from the Government not to go to Phuket and just thought, f--- 'em," he said. "If your number's up, your number's up. By the time the next one happens in a hundred years, I'll be dead."
-----

[tw]

Originally Posted by lookout123

and back to the red cross and NGO aid flowing in... do you seriously not understand that government regulations require that even after funds and support had been pledged, formal requests had to be made from the governments in need before the US government could do anything? the red cross and other NGO's can go and do as they please - they are after all Non-Governmental Organizations. international politics has a set of rules that are to be followed. We gripe when they aren't followed, we can't rightly gripe when they are.

So we keep the ships in Japan waiting for the phone lines to be restore to the Maldives? Or we put the standard first response equipment on the nearest ships and get those ships moving. Nine countries and not one requested help? You are dreaming. No you are inventing for the sake of argument. You saw the satellite photos. Do you wait for your neighbor to finally learn his house is on fire before you prepare to help him save his house? Ten days is too late for any help. And yet Lookout123 says the USS Kitty Hawk should stay in Japan. Do nothing. Be happy. It was only 100,000 lives. Too few to expedite any help.

This is a direct question of George Jr as a leader. He had those satellite pictures. Lookout123 says he must wait to be invited, then take days to get ships to the scene. This is the moral response. This is what a world leader does? Or this is what a leader does when in denial.

[tw]

This is Friday - six days after the Tsunami. Today the US Navy is finally sending two battlegroups with supplies headed for the disaster. So they waited to load what was needed? No. Today a Marine General has finally been dispatched to determine what is required. Today - six days later. Let us look back at what those who support the 'moral' president said. Ships cannot leave until they know what to bring? So why are the ships leaving without information from that Marine General? The ships are leaving today because the 'moral' president finally decided yesterday to respond to the disaster. The navy could have been moving in but hours. It took days for the brain in a 'moral' president to make a decision.

This is not just a discussion about the American response to a disaster. The pathetic $35 million pledged by this mental midget president when even small France pledged $57milllion. Small Britian pledged $97 million. Tiny Sweden pledged something well in excess of $100 million. And yet the moral president raised his pathetic $15million offer to $35million when shamed by international reaction to his MBA cost control mentality. Wow. What a man! What a leader! Not an emotional expression. These are facts stated with mockery that this president has earned.

This is also a post in the face of Lookout123 who would have been responsible if he kept his religious extremist mouth shut. No. His president was rightly criticized. Morality as defined by extremist religous rhetoric was under attack. So the 'moral' Lookout123 had to post insults at anyone who would expose George Jr for the crappy leader he is. Lookout123. A better response would be to keep quite and hope we forget how pathetic a leader Goerge Jr has again proven himself.

Again, one is encouraged to look at the satellite photos that George Jr would have seen in his Presidential Daily Briefing on Sunday. Asia's Deadly Waves . Click on the first row "Photos: Impact" . Click on the second row "Before and After".

A PDB warning of the WTC attack that George Jr could not bother to read. By now, you would think the mental midget president had learned to read his memos. Learned what a leader is suppose to do. It would have been easy. No text. Just pictures. Will he now say there was nothing actionable in those photos?

George Jr could not even bother to respond to the Tsunami disaster until yesterday. Today the navy is finally leaving with supplies that could have already been there (and were deperately needed) two days ago.

Pragmatic leaders would never be so anti-American. Responsible leaders would have taken the lead last Sunday. But Goerge Jr is the type of leader that religous extremists love - such as another 'moral' president - Richard Nixon. At least Richard Nixon was enough of a 'moral' man to take the leadership role. Take charge and start moving before everyone else. George Jr finally decided on Thursday that a disaster had occured only after shamed into it by international condemnation.

Go ahead Lookout123. Defend this world standard of crappy leader. This is god's chosen president. Last night Powell got on Nightline to "try to defend" this president's response. He could not because this crap president still had no physical response to a disaster five days ago. Powell was left to hang as George Stephanopolouis showed country after country whose response exceeded the American response. The only thing Powell could say was that the American response would increase. So what? The most critical time that aid is required was many days ago - in the first hours and first days. The American president could not even be bothered to view satellite photos? Ahhh but he is a 'moral' man. Fine. He prays while people were dying. This is a man that Lookout123 respects.

ABC News showed a six year old boy who was probably going to die. Just as things looked grim, foreign medical aid arrived to save the boy's life. That was days ago. Today, the American response finally got started? Good thing that six year old did not need 'morality' to save his life. Yes, a 'moral' president needs time to find those satellite photos on his crowded desk. Go ahead Lookout123. Use that too as an excuse. Defend this 'moral' president.

[wolf]

Is the $350 million that the US is now sending enough, TW?

[Undertoad]

Did they mention the C130s with stuff, tw?