German Aid Sent Back

[highlight]Edited by Fly Navy.[/highlight] (comments removed by snizo)

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9280872/

Damn red tape. Incredible...

No wonder the President's approval rating is at an all time low.

(Some comments removed)

Bunk - because at least the way I see it, the President is responsible to the people much like a CO is for his command. The Dept of Homeland Security/FAA/whoever it was that held back the clearances for this international aid screwed up. The President takes the heat for his administration and the bureaucracy. It wasn't just about the mad cow report, and that doesn't hold much weight if we said future flights were permitted...

I have been chastized on this forum for posting the entire article... Required Reading article on Airwarriors, and told to only post certain things. Can we please get all the moderators on the same page with this?

As far as the President being like the CO of a unit...well a CO of a unit doesn't have a board of trustees to deal with (ie Congress) that lay down some of the red tape that limits things. Furthermore, if it is possible that the rations were contaminated with mad cow disease I hardly think that we should just let it in regardless...concern for the health of the public has to be a top priority...

Jam - then why would we allow future shipments? And if it were just for health issues, why would other donors be complaining about this, too?

I'm not trying to say the the President is a ****berg ... just pointing out another occurence that shows the incredible mishandling of all this.

Actually, my "selective quotes" are just the rest of the article. I didn't change the meaning of anything nor did I try to spin anything. YOU DID THAT yourself by posting a partial article. Unfortunately, I also made a mistake and didn't scroll down to see the rest of the article because I didn't see the "scroll down for more". So if you please, add the rest of it, or I can.

I don't doubt that there are mishandlings, the government is natorious for its inefficiencies. One reason that they could be looking at future shipments would be if they are planning on doing inspections or some sort of testing...

I think it could be a problem where everyone wants to help and they are just having problems matching donations with needs...There is a ton of food down there now, and they could use money for example...does that analogy make sense?

Jam - yea. My questions were somewhat rhetorical, I guess. Thinking out loud that things are still f'ed up down there without a doubt.

Fly Navy - I didn't spin anything. I posted the first two paragraphs just as we are told to do in order to give people an idea of what the article was about. See what Steve Wilkins posted in the thread jam linked in his first post. So should I follow your request, or Steve's?

Yeah, and if food shipments ended up in NO, did have Mad Cow (or any other disease), and caused refugees to get sick... you'd have a million people crying about 'another example of how badly the President handled the disaster'.

If Reagan was the Teflon President, Bush is the Velcro President...

Ok Snizo, I get what you're saying now. That was posted when I was going through the hurricane and its after-effects, so I never got that "memo". Follow Steve's guidance, he's the Super-Mod. That being said, got to be careful what you quote, because spin is accomplished just the same by selective quoting (this isn't just directed at you). Go right ahead and edit your thread to the original form, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Ok, chastized might have been the wrong word...corrected would be better maybe, surely I didn't assume any ill intent and you had a very valid point. By certain things I meant only parts of the article and not the entire thing, not certain topics...

A booming economy has nothing to do with the President, either ... yet he still gets credit (or blamed, as appropriate)

This blaming/crediting the President thing isn't specific to Bush.

That is stupid bureacracy, but the Presidential blame only extends as far as him choosing bad administrators.

The REAL blame, that has been put undeservedly on the President (IMO), has been the incredible ineptitude of the city, district, and state government. Utterly pathetic.

It is not the federal government's fault that the state/local governments are inadequate.

That's awesome!

IMHO, never in American history (with the exception, perhaps, of Ulysses Grant) has the nation gone so far downhill so fast and in so many ways and the President gets re-elected as with the first term of G.W. Bush. True, not everything that went wrong was his fault or could have necessarily been avoided by his making better decisions. But much of it could have. His re-election probably had to do with the fact that he was running against a corpse for his opponent (reminds me that John Ashcroft, former attorney-general, literally did lose an election to a corpse), but don't even complain for one second that the President has been accountable for anything. This is the guy who couldn't even think of something he'd done wrong during the election (third debate, towards the end). There are always going to be people who want to blame everything on him unjustly, but that doesn't mean that they're actually right part of the time. And then it blows my mind that guys like George Tenet (JUNK intel) and Tommy Franks (either completely incompetent or guilty of dereliction of duty) were awarded Medals of Freedom.

As far as the current crisis, there's an article on Newsweek.com that details the President's involvement in the current crisis. Judge for yourselves whether he could have done anything better.

As far as the original topic of the thread, the U.S. has been so d@mned proud in not accepting foreign aid, including substantial offers of oil from Iran and Venezuela. Don't think that if someone at the top of the food chain wants aid from Germany to get in, it gets in. There's something bigger, something political going on her. It smells like we're trying to punish others by hurting ourselves.

Easy...Nobody is talking about cover-ups or conspiracies. But do you think that the Germans would just load tons of supplies onto however many planes and send them over without talking to someone here first? Germans usually get their ducks in a row...And after that they get sent back anyway? Is it so far-fetched that the U.S. wants to try to save face by not accepting foreign aid as though we're a country that can't take care of its own problems? I know that there are rules and regulations that need to be followed. I also know that there are ways to get things done, and rules and regulations are rarely an excuse for inaction. As you pointed out, you finally got a Col. to clear things up...And there was no one with a higher paygrade than Colonel around to clear this up? Maybe, um, like an ambassador? Undersecretary of State? Director of Customs? Look, when screw-ups like this happen, there's a reason. And I, for one, find it hard to believe that that reason is simply because Americans are such dumb@sses that "temporary technical and logistical problems that have accompanied recovery operations in the devastated region" would make us turn back a fully-loaded military transport. Maybe I have too much faith in the intelligence of the personnel working in the upper echelons of the gov't.

Should you be worried? Most probably...Very worried, in fact...

About Tommy Franks...
Either a) he honestly believed that 135,000 troops were enough to secure the whole freakin' country, or b) he agreed to send only that many because that's what the SecDef wanted and his job was more important to him than speaking truth to power.
a= incompetence
b= dereliction of duty

I don't think that we should make light of the sheer magnitude of the recovery opersations in that area, I mean we aren't talking about a little bit of disturbance. You are talking about millions of people relocated, thousands more unaccounted for, hundreds dead and billions of dollars worth of damage. The government has already shipped tons of food to the region and (at least it appears to me) that they are more focused on collecting money for the recovery effort than more food which there is no longer a desperate need for. Regardless of how intelligent people are mistakes will happen and you have to remember that hindsight is always easy but seeing the future much more difficult.

That kind of simplifies things a bit far. There is a problem with oversimplifying these things. There were hundreds of factors that led them to believe that 135,000 troops were enough for the expected situation. You must remember that they were planning on standing up what remained of the Iraqi army immediately afterward under new leadership. They also were expecting some of our allies to provide humanitarian support after the invasion. Don't simplify things down so far and maybe you shouldn't give those in power as much credit as you seem to give them...not all mistakes are the result of a= incompetence or b= dereliction of duty...sometimes mistakes are just honest mistakes...

:sleep_125 How fun is this?? You know what, Bunk? I appreciate the experience that you've accumulated throughout your career and readily acknowledge that you might be right...But this forum would get really boring very quickly if everyone always agreed with each other. It'd be like one of President Bush's cabinet meetings...

Also, for the record, although I readily admit my dislike and distrust of this administration, I don't think that the "accidental" bombing of the Chinese embassy several years ago was very accidental--so my distrust isn't limited to only this administration. It's true, though...The U.S. might just be able to commit such major screw-ups. If that's the case, then do you understand why it grates on the whole rest of the world's nerves to always have to listen to our pontificating on what they should be doing better?

True, I don't know very much at all about the situation with this plane. No more than you, the next guy, or really anyone else not involved. Like I said, though, I know that there are ways to get things done. Having no other choice than to send a fully-loaded cargo plane back to Germany just doesn't ring well with me. Sorry. Could have at least have offloaded the cargo, put it in a bonded warehouse, etc. Curious...Do you usually fly cargo into foreign countries without the proper paperwork? Is it your experience that Germans usually do?

As far as General Franks, no, that's not a Monday morning QB call. It's actually more like when you're actually watching the game and you see 8 guys lined up in the box and you're screaming at the TV for a pass play, but the coaches keep deciding to run it up the middle. A general's job is to plan for the worst-case scenario, not the best. Heck, I could be a four-star general if the best-case scenarios always played out. There were people, some insignificant (like myself) and some important (like the former Chief of Staff of the Army) who saw the mess coming a long way away.

Let's run down the laundry list of veiled epithets now...College student? Supposed to be insulting but not. It's true, I am in school, but thank goodness for not much longer. Dreamer? Active imagination? I try. Finding out what's "really going on" in the world (what I do for a living) requires a good deal of both. I've been around enough to appreciate the experience and insight of others while reserving the right to respectfully disagree and argue my points.

And, for the record, I'm an NFO wannabe...

You know - it has always amazed me how much a group whose purpose is supposed to be defending freedom (such as ... say the freedom of speech?) opposes those who use it so much.

Couldn't agree more - but it is even more boring when those in the majority refuse to even consider the opposition just because they are in the majority.

And because you might be more experienced than IRfly on this subject, you know what is going on? I think that I would be more concerned about someone who doesn't even consider alternative explanations being in positions of power than I would an idealist "college student." You can't say that the US did the right thing when you have no more an idea that your theory was correct than IR's.

IRfly,
A General's job is not to plan for the worst-case scenario. They plan for the realistic scenario while maintaining flexibility in their plans. That's my take anyway. Remember, the goal is to use the minimum force required to complete the objective (this goes back well before Iraq was ever an issue).
In regards to your lack of knowledge on the issue of the German plane... do not discredit the experience of those doing simliar missions (ie, logistical support/humanitarian) and the problems associated with such. It is incredibly naive to believe that a complex operation such as this can get done without following procedures (your "red tape") or that difficulties in conducting these operations are resolved in near-instantaneous time.
Answering your "do you usually fly cargo into foreign countries without proper paperwork"... yes, it happens. Why? Because not every country follows the same guidelines and procedures. Did you know that Yemen does not take DD1801s? Or that proper clearance into the UAE does not always get sent correctly (via message) to ALL of the governing bodies that have to allow the clearance? (We had a bird have to declare a fuel emergency just to land there since they kept them orbitting overhead). Or that even our USAF brethren have different weather minimums posted for the approach and for landing in Kuwait (although their aircraft have looser restrictions)? Singapore...that's a whole 'nother story in itself. My point is that there are a TON of different things that can go wrong... i's not dotted, t's not crossed...etc.