Foreign Aid -- Katrina-Related
 

Reportedly 90 or more countries have offered aid to the U.S. in the wake of Katrina. A few countries apparently are complaining that U. S. red tape is slowing their response:

http://www.registerguard.com/news/20...n=nation_world


Honestly now! U. S. citizens have died and are dying; thousands are homeless, without medical care, and so on. Plus there's a Supreme Court funeral to go to. Officials are busy! I'm sure the U.S. government will, as soon as it sees fit, get started on the paperwork and approvals necessary to allow some of this stuff from overseas to enter the country. In the meantime the supplies, water purification plants, nurses, doctors, and other things that have been offered are just going to have to wait, I guess. I mean, there must been room in Europe, South America, and Asia for the goods and people to sit and wait, right?

I love Bill O'Reilly's response to certain countries:

"Japan's only giving 1 million? if I were Bush I'd basically just tell them to keep it."

Haha.

Dude, Jay-Z and P-Diddy alone are giving a million dollars.

Jay-Z > Japan.

That's becausw O'Reilly's an idiot - if he took the time out from massaging/masturbating his ego on TV he might have noticed that Japan made this pledge with Tyhpoon Nabi about to hit it (again)...

It's too bad O'Reilly's "journalistic" scope is so US-centric it blinds him to the fact that stuff does happen in the rest of the world. :rolleyes:

Iran's pledge of relief supplies was turned down flat by the U.S. government - it came with strings attached, such as the lifting of trade sanctions in place since 1980.

Cuba wil probably be given the diplomatic equivalent of The Finger.

I also heard UNICEF is getting involved...getting pretty serious...

You mean the same Cuba that has refused aid from the US repeatedly through the years for disaster relief?

Again, what is it that the US is so short on that we need outside assistance? Should we just open the borders to everyone to come and provide aid? Who will supervise this huge international effort? Perhaps the UN? It's great to get free things but nothing in this world is free and comes with strings attached.

Edited to add: I have heard reports of domestic aid being rejected. That I can't possibly understand. I'm not sure how true it is but I've heard of trucks full of water, fuel, and food being turned back.

-Rudey