US troops deliver food, supplies to devastated Puerto Rico during round-the-clock operations

[AtheistCrusader]

62. No, that's how you insisted on reading it.

Because you cannot see through any bias whatsoever. I didn't say he can't. I said "the president doesn't activate the national guard in this manner." and then when you questioned it, I gave examples why. I re-iterate;

"When you federalize the NG troops in a given situation, the rules change, and what they are allowed to do changes. See fallout from the 1992 Rodney King riots in LA."

There are LAWS about when, how, and in what manner they are called out. There are laws about what the NG can do, depending on who called them out.

You're not saying anything new or revelatory when you say Trump sucks or he's racist or anything else. We're all on the same page here.

I said the comfort wasn't worth sending because it's not worth STAFFING it and LOADING IT with materials until IT CAN DOCK.
This is not rocket science. I gave you throughput examples between Hurricane Katrina, and a similar disaster in Costa Rica, where it had to stand offshore, versus being able to dock. Staffing the ship, and loading it with supplies means those staff and supplies are no longer available to be moved in other ways. Supplies are finite. Medical staff are finite. They're not sitting in a warehouse waiting to be loaded into the Comfort. They were moved in other ways. (Mostly by aircraft)

There is no circumstance under which you would consider the Comfort treating (not 'saving', I said TREATING) 1000 people over 12 days as adequate or even meaningfully helpful compared to the demand upon the entire response to the disaster. You would not be singing Trump's praises if he'd loaded the ship himself at the first sign of a storm, and lashed himself to the prow, directing it straight into the storm. We're only now getting to the point where that ship can be meaningfully utilized, because the work on clearing the ports, specifically the port of San Juan which is the only one that is useful for this ship, is progressing.


The time you spend loading that ship, and the resources expended to send it, with staff and materials, wasn't useful before. It will be useful later.

The time you spent arguing with me, from your comfortable dry room, with food to eat and resources to spare, you could have spent educating yourself on the public laws governing the use of the National Guard, and how/why it is important. You could have used that time to educate yourself on how logistics work, and why anyone versed in Six Sigma or Lean or any other supply chain management methodology, or even someone versed in actual real world disaster response would laugh at you for tapping that specific resource in this specific scenario.

If you activate external NG and send them in, where do you put them? If you send them before the hurricane, where do you shelter them? If you send them after, what do you feed them? Where do they shit and piss? Where do they sleep? You can actually make these situations worse by sending in bodies before the logistical chain to support it is in place. You actually put MORE strain on the meager resources the victims have, if you do it wrong. We've done it wrong before. Plenty of case studies and post mortems. You can actually provoke trump into making a big show of trying to help, and you know what will happen? FUCKING DISASTER. The playbooks are set and being followed. The materials are already moving. The people are moving according to plans that trump never approved, and will never read. The last goddamn thing you want him to do is to belly in there and decide he's going to make a big public political spectacle out of HELPING, because it will only, at best, LOOK like help. The man couldn't even make a trip to a grocery store and stock his own fridge if his life depended on it. This isn't about trump, and shouldn't become about trump. We need to focus on what is being done, so we know what actually needs to be done.

Have you even given a thought to what a first responder rotating out of Puerto Rico, and finally being able to read the news, read DU would think? Are you CERTAIN your outrage matches the reality on the ground? Granted, there are some areas of Puerto Rico that haven't even been surveyed yet, let alone reached by responders. But generally speaking. How many people have come out of Puerto Rico that are doing the work, will agree entirely with your perception of the situation?

Edit: The USS Wasp is on-site now, doubling the logistical power of the Kearsarge. The re-loaded it and it departed nearby pier to the Comfort two days ago, and it's already working. It took half the time Comfort will need to transit, and it's already working. With the Wasp and Kearsarge in place, that's double the OR's and beds the Comfort is slowly bringing.

Hopefully the port is ready when Comfort finally arrives.