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
There is more to being a Republican that the name.
How about these rich guys spending their own billions and giving us taxpayers a break?
Civilians run the ship. The navy owns it. The only military presence on board are a few of the MD’s. I sailed one trip as 2nd Mate on her right after the conversion. She was only medium-sized for a tanker, so the whole ‘almost 3 football fields long’ thing is relative.
I’m going to disagree here with the majority of the board. The vast majority of the patients seen are kids, and the goodwill generated from the presence of the ship is seriously cheap PR that is incredibly badly needed down south. The US is doing what their own governments refuse to do: care for their kids beyond simple palliative medicine.
That’s the kind of stuff we used to do all over the world, all the time.
For the naysayers, I’ll say this, too. When the COMFORT enters a port-of-call, it blackens the eye of every public figure in the area who couldn’t provide any help to their own people.
It goes beyond the fact of being tied up at the pier of a nation. There are instances where a U.S. flagged naval vessel is a tub of sovereign U.S. territory; example, a warship. Even though the hospital ship is crewed and otherwise belongs to the Navy, it generally is considered as participating in the international law of the sea for all but a very few purposes. The aid to foreign nationals is not one of those purposes.
Agree, it is *not* a bad mission. But, a mission that could be conducted in NY, LA, Houston, Kansas City, or Dallas with much netter results.
So what you’re saying is we don’t really need to be paying for this ship?
Fine, mothball it.
CALL! CALL! CALL! CALL! AND KEEP CALLING TILL THE LINES FRY!
WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! TILL YOU RUN OUT OF INK IN YOUR PEN!
Bombard the Democrats as well, especially the ones that ran on an anti illegal immigration plank and the ones in marginal districts who could be vulnerable. keep pounding on them. This is a bipartisan issue not a Conservative or Liberal issue BUT AN AMERICAN issue.
The other thing is the military providing foreign humanitarian aid is hardly new - what I find amusing is people thinking this is some sort of nefarious invention of the Bush Administration.
USNS Mercy is sailing to Southeast Asia on a similar mission later in the year.
US Army Special Forces all over the world routinely conduct humanitarian and medical aid operations - they consider it as important as their “door-kicking” and military training missions - they get a lot of goodwill, people giving them tips on where to find the bad guys or terrorists, etc. from it.
You mean welfare, free education, allowing illegal immigrants to abscond on paying for health care thereby bankrupting hospital systems in the U.S. is not enough?
How much more does the American taxpayer have to tolerate?
I agree with you, beyond amazed. Is this the purpose of the American military?
You are absolutely right. Everybody is so enraged and angry over amnesty (including me) that it’s so easy to overlook basic goodwill. Although I detest Bush and the administration in general, I’m trying my best not to lose sight of my humanity. It’s far too easy to do.
I think it is great and something we need to do more of in Latin American countries.
What would you rather happen an American ship giving Good Will in the form of needed medical help or Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro sending Communist indoctrinated doctors?
Right now we need all the goodwill we can muster in Central and South America.
In case some of you forget the Colombians sent troops to fight along side of the Americans in Korea.
This has nothing to do with whether or not our Southern border is insecure as a virgin in the Taliban militia and illegals are flooding and taking over some cities.
I strongly recommend you pick up the book "Imperial Grunts" by Robert Kaplan.
It's just amazing how "compassionate" politicians are with other people's money.
“Is this the purpose of the American military?”
From a readiness standpoint, yes, this type of mission prepares the ship, its crew and medical staff training to do the job they are assigned. The ship is a medical ship and it needs to be exercized like any other military organization. The benefit is the ship deploys, the ship’s crew gets training, the medical staff gets to practice medicine on people in the shipboard environment.
A byproduct of the exercize is good will.
You know, our military medical folks are stressed to the limit by our wartime activities. Sending them on this type of deployment is just wrong. I am willing to give up my retiree privileges at the Key West Naval Medical Center because of the war; but for this?
I think the navy faces a much smaller chance of malpractice lawsuit in latin america.
Hell if they tried to land in NYC there would be 50 people looking to get treated and 250 John Edwards clones with cameras..
“Talk about MISUSE of military assets, this one takes the cake!”
How many of our boys sitting in hospitals could use that aid themselves?
What is abetting the enemy is denying COMFORT to Americans
who are being plagued by hepatitis, tuberculosis,
Morgellons disease, typhoid, measles, syphillis, mumps,
leprosy, dengue fever, cholera, plague, and polio.
Do you realize these were not previously a problem?
1) Morgellon’s doesn’t exist.
2) Plague is endemic to animals in the US Southwest, has never really been a “problem” in the US and isn’t really more of one now, and has nothing to do with immigration.
3) For much of the rest it’s really more an issue of world travel than illegal immigration - if you want to ban all international travel, good luck.
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