Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint
One side says the boat was sent early--in advance, the other side says the boat is sitting around collecting dust. And none of us are eye witnesses, none of us are in administrative positions to know which is true. !
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USNS Comfort is now at 35.307 N / 75.039 W which put it about 40 some kilometers off Hatteras Island NC. IOW it finally put to sea about 10 days after it was desperately needed. There is no mystery about this response for same reasons why there was no mystery about who screwed up recovery after Katrina.
Texas and Florida did not have this problem. Road were available so that many resources, that did not have to wait for presidential approval, were immediately deployed. Puerto Rico can only be accessed by plane or ship. Airports needed immediately military assistance to open. So only the National Guard could do anything useful. Ports needed many impediments such as the Jones Act removed immediately. It took Trump seven days to even do that.
Assistance in TX and FL did not need presidential approval. Assistance most desperately needed in Puerto Rico did.
No dispute. The USNS Comfort sat exactly where honest news sources said it was. Only propaganda outfits, masking as if news, would have lied about what has been deployed.
After Irma, a cruise ship Norwegian Sky was sent (don't know by who) to the Virgin Islands to evacuate stranded tourists. They did not need presidential approval. Cruise ships took to sea without passengers to hide out in Cozumel.
BTW, the US Navy base was Roosevelt Road on the mainland of Puerto Rico. Vieques was a separate base on a different island. Used by the Navy for calibrating guns before deployment. Roosevelt Road and its airfield had been closed as a military base maybe in 2004; is only a National Guard facility and a small plane airport. Without target practice on Vieques, it had no purpose and was closed.