Guantanamo To The Rescue
The base has two airfields, a state-of-the-art communication system and brand-new water and sewage lines that could accommodate as many as 45,000 refugees. And the base is large enough to stage an aid effort without impinging on prison operations.
The other truth is that the only entity on the planet with the capacity to bring help to Haiti on the scale needed is the U.S. military. The United Nations will find it impolitic to admit this; the big international relief groups, proud of their noncombatant status, will shy from acknowledging it. But it is the reality
Frictions Between Nations Rise Over Struggle Of Getting Aid To Haiti
But there were growing tensions over which country's planes were allowed to land here first, with each nation insisting its aid flight was a priority, according to an official involved in the relief operation.
France, Brazil and Italy were said to be upset, and the Red Cross said one of its planes was diverted to Santo Domingo, the capital of neighboring Dominican Republic.
Le Bret said that the Port-au-Prince airport has become “not an airport for the international community. It is an annex of Washington.”
Phi Beta Iots: Haiti is an Information Operations (IO) challenge. Obviously the Pentagon is not addressing it as such, so they will continue to have log-jams because they are not pushing the “information perimeter” out to the take-off and loading points. A needs matrix should be in place, and the stuff should be coming in via four landing masters (Air Wheels, Air Drop, Beach, Road) with an intelligence-driven load and deliver flow plan. This is not rocket science. It just takes the right mind-set and a global C4I grid that DoD does not have at the same time that it refuses to use the obivous existing public networks.
See also: Journal: Haiti Rolling Update (Chronology with Links)
