Outrage of the hour: Tribune reporting Navy ship underused, USS Bataan!

[wndycty]

Navy ship nearby underused
Craft with food, water, doctors needed orders

By Stephen J. Hedges
Tribune national correspondent
Published September 4, 2005

ON THE USS BATAAN -- While federal and state emergency planners scramble to get more military relief to Gulf Coast communities stricken by Hurricane Katrina, a massive naval goodwill station has been cruising offshore, underused and waiting for a larger role in the effort.

The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore.

The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents.
But now the Bataan's hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven't been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the ship.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509040369sep04,1,4144825.story?coll=chi-news-hed

[freedomfries]

1. KICK

[wndycty]

2. Thanks for the kick and back at ya!

:kick:

[Tatiana]

3. I'm really going to be sick now.

This is not just a question of incompetence. Combined with the accoutn from the president of Jefferson Parish -- how FEMA cut their emergency communication lines and the local sherriff had to physically reconnect it and post armored guards, how Walmart had 3 trucks full of bottled water and FEMA told them it wasn't needed, how the Coast Guard brought in 1000 gallons of diesel fuel and when they came with trucks to pick it up, the Coast Guard had been told by FEMA not to give it to them.... Now we find the USS Bataan has been there all along, could have helped those poor people at Christy Hospital -- the doctors who were begging for medical assistance, asking the reporters where the Red Cross was...

This $hit was deliberate.