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
Bingo! We think we have problems now. China and Chavez are wooing Central America. Nicaragua has already placed Ortega back in power and he made a visit to Iran. If Central America goes more anti-America, or allies itself with China, or Iran, we WILL have an "enemy" (in the real sense of the word) on our border.
Oh for crying out loud is there no end to this idiocy???
How many working legal American citizens in this country cannot afford or have to pay through the nose for medical insurance. ALL BECAUSE OF THE RISE IN ILLEGALS flooding hospitals. Medical costs have skyrocketed, in some cases in some poorer areas there are no more hospitals all because of these same reasons. If you go to the emergency room be prepared to feel like you’re in a third world country - full of people there for the free care since they can’t turn anyone away.
Float that boat to our ports mr president and treat the children of Americans who are working two and three jobs to get by. Sheesh, what an idiot!!! All of them, I hate politicians.
That’s all I can say, it’s all become more than one can bear.
How many has Bushie ordered to be brought back?
WE don’t have any wars or other actions going on - so the ship obviously wasn’t in need elsewhere...
Not only that, but this is a long-overdue effort by BUsh to counter China’s growing influence in Central and South America.
I’m against illegal immigration totally, but I think this is a good idea, a helping hand to the people who DIDN’T violate our borders.
It is not a U.S. Navy Ship. It is the U.S.N.S Comfort.
It owned and operated by the Military Sealift Command, a civilian company that operated auxilary ships FOR the Navy.
The medical personnel on board will be military but the ships crew are civilians.
I know as I used to sail for them, only on W E S P A C..
I understand the “goodwill” gesture but we have more pressing needs for something like this here at home.
Of course it’s not stopping in Cuba, because they already have the world’s best healthcare..
Of course it’s not stopping in Cuba, because they already have the world’s best healthcare..
When they return, I’ve ordered them to pack the decks with 10,000 more illegals.
What is the latest explanation of the lesion?
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.
How do you explain the matches in the maps?
and the fact that cases appearing are in illegal aliens?
like to most of his good works mindset, Kipling is a racist
Angie....dissent with Bush and Congress is not aiding the enemy.
The ragheads know if not PC folks like us get power we will nuke them if we can.
Bush gets amnesty we might as well pull all our troops home and get them ready for when our new hispanic majority wants to flex it’s muscles
Why doesn’t it visit Amertican ports and tend to all those American children without health insurance?
“Some of you guys/gals here are aiding and abetting the enemy. Keep it up! Islamofascist terrorists and the Dumbocrats are lovin’ every minute of it!”
Are you talking about our President, or are you talking about us unpatriotic bigots? I’m unclear at this point to whom you were referring.
I would think not if the ship was in another country's territorial waters.
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