Posted on 06/15/2007 1:35:18 PM PDT by devane617
The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort will be sailing off Florida waters on Sunday en route to Latin America and the Caribbean -- and The Miami Herald will be on board for a first report on the mission.
President Bush has ordered the ship, with a mixed 500-plus military and civilian crew and staff, to spend three months on a 12-nation tour as a goodwill gesture.
The Baltimore-based ship left port in Norfolk, Va., on Friday morning in what the Pentagon's U.S. Southern Command is calling ``its first-ever, large-scale humanitarian assistance deployment to Central America, South America and the Caribbean.''
Southcom estimates that during the tour, which coincides with the Atlantic hurricane season, medical and dental teams on board the ship will collaborate with foreign medical staff to ``provide medical care to an estimated 85,000 patients from communities with limited healthcare access.''
Comfort is a former tanker as lengthy as three football fields, equipped with a helicopter landing pad and the ability to take on patients from the sea as well. On this mission, it is equipped with two operating rooms, a 50-bed hospital ward and a host of scanning, laboratory and analysis equipment.
Stops will include Belize, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.
A Miami Herald team anticipates posting a news update and web-video at www.miamiherald.com Sunday evening -- following up with a full news report in Monday morning's newspaper.
Meantime, to read more about Comfort, see http://www.comfort.navy.mil
You would think amnesty would be enough goodwill. Bush is the gift that keeps on giving.
I agree, this is just way over compassion—it is more like IN YOUR FACE.
Talk about MISUSE of military assets, this one takes the cake!
And in our house we’re spending time and effort to figure out how we’ll be able to pay for medical care during retirement. I guess we don’t count, though; we’re Americans. Our tax money is better spent healing the people who’ll come back to attack us in a few years. Nothing makes sense any more.
...and sending the Navy at taxpayers expense.
I have never seen a situation so completely out of control as our country is at this moment.
I don’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity or cry and rage.
So if someone gives birth on this ship, is the baby a U.S. citizen?
Bush needs to read up on Kipling’s work.
I would think the answer is yes. The child would be a US citizen.
So now we’re bringing healthcare directly to turd world nations?
Americans have traditionally been a kind, generous and caring people. We send everything from Peace Corps workers to missionaries to secular humanitarian volunteers all over the world. We do not have to bring the world here save for very exceptional cases where the technology or expertise cannot practically travel.
El Presidente appears to believe he is called to be the world’s savior.
I no longer support the president, but I do favor and support this mission.
After the Third World countries experience our great medical facilities, expect even more of their citizens to break through the non-existant “fence”.
I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at this.
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