That's just immortal.
Kudos.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 01/15/2010 6:23:42 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
ARLINGTON, Va. — Top defense officials have ruled out airdropping food, water and medical supplies over Haiti, fearing that chaos would be the unintended result.
“It seems to me that without having any structure on the ground, in terms of distribution, that an airdrop is simply going to lead to riots as people try and go after that stuff,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday.
On Thursday, an Air Force official said that a lack of fuel and equipment was slowing air operations at the Port-au-Prince airport.
The first of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson’s 19 helicopters have since arrived in the Haitian capital, and they will be critical to distributing relief supplies, Gates said.
A force of between 9,000 and 10,000 U.S. servicemembers is on its way to Haiti, said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A large portion of those troops will remain on ships off the island’s coast, but the Defense Department is “poised” to send more ground forces if the head of U.S. Southern Command and the commander on the ground feel it’s necessary, Mullen said.
U.S. troops’ primary mission will be to deliver relief supplies, not provide security, Gates said.
Right now, the security situation in Haiti “remains OK,” he said.
“The key is to get the food and the water in there as quickly as possible, so that people don’t in their desperation turn to violence,” he said.
The 2,000 Marines headed to Haiti are capable of conducting a variety of missions ranging from humanitarian relief to combat operations, said Capt. Clark Carpenter, a spokesman for the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.
“We’ll be able to support any number of things that come at us,” Carpenter said Friday. “We’re able to support more than just the relief effort, if that’s necessary.”
The Marines are expected to arrive off Haiti next week.
When asked if the U.S. response to the Haitian earthquake is moving quickly enough, Gates said he did not see how it could have been faster.
“There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things,” he said. “The collapse of the infrastructure in Haiti, the small size of the airport, the time it takes a ship to get from Point A to Point B — those are all just facts of life,” he said.
The first object of attention should be how the Haitian people previously ran their water works.
It either comes from well water, surface water, or desalinization.
In any of these cases, all they need is a generator to provide electrical power for a pump, a reservoir or even temp tanks, and some pipe to a distribution point.
Where it connects up to existing distribution systems, and slowly brought back on line, great.
If it means they simply supply water at each utility district on the island, great.
If there are multiple cisterns holding fresh water, then great, it is more distributed, and perhaps they have to use a rope and bucket, instead of a gas or diesel powered pump.
The people will not die of starvation or dehydration.
In the shantytowns, the people are probably more adept at surviving the lack of public utilities than those accustomed to living in subdivisions.
Sending over pallets of bottled water is like sending Marines into WWII pacific beach landings using water wings and canoes from the California coastline. It’s off by several to five orders of magnitude in the volume of daily replenishment required in a population this size.
It is much better to get the ports back into operation and use the existing culture to bring their workforce back on line.
At this point in time, the larger risk are a bunch of international do-gooders attempting to fight a forest fire with a garden hose, and concurrently encouraging all Haitians that they are victims who must depend upon others.
That's just immortal.
Kudos.
I always thought that appointing Bill Clinton to be Ambassador to Haiti would be the perfect assignment for that man. Maybe he could actually improve things there.
Thousands of little parachutes, 10lb payload.
Bypass all of it. Tell the populace we'll deliver supplies to the beach, Haiti has plenty of those and they still work just fine. Unload directly from the ships onto the beach, using landing craft and LCAC's, out in the open and under the guns of our warships.
Tell the Haitians "get to the beach if you can, and we'll give you what we can. "But", you say, what about those who can't get there? That's a job for the Haitian gov't, the UN, and private charities. Bring them or supply them yourselves.
There should be no US troops inland, except those evacuating US Citizens.
Well, he certainly would change the gene pool.
Which is exactly what they should do - does Gates think there won't be/is chaos now?
People can wait for food - but water, they need NOW...
What's his plan. Wait until they can get people in there on the ground? They will no longer need water - just body bags.
In the meantime, my sil flies C 130's for the Coast Guard out of Florida - they are flying nonstop - on return, don't even turn off the engines, just reload and go..
Yeah...just look how well he did with Arkansas.
The Canadian DART team being deployed has a mobile water purification plant, which they used successfully after the Boxing Day tsunami. AFAIK the advance party is on the ground and a C17 with the water plant should be on the way soon.
Yeah its far better to let them die of thirst.
With lots of ammo.
That should be easy. Aren't we supposed to have a brigade of Army Rangers on call?
It’s only going to get worse. It’s going to get real worse.
How many rescue workers will die before they pull them all out of there?
You heard it here first.
Exactly. I mean, we think air dropping stimulus checks in America is going to do us so much good after all...
(sarc off)
And who should pay for this?
Dr. Bill Wattenburg, nuclear physicist and commentator on KGO radio, San Francisco, figured out how to do this almost 2 decades ago.
http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=365348&PT=PERSONALITIES
You air drop small packages of food and water without parachutes. The packages survive fine and the locals pick up the widely distributed packages without having to ask the local war lord / gang boss for permission.
US military is well aware of this procedure. Why isn’t Obama?
Barry Soetoro will ensure this operation is FUBAR.
I think that is what Gates is worried about, they'll see the pallets and parachutes and run underneath them.
they'd tear each other to pieces...
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