Radley Balko has been collecting claims from the ususal suspects that no offers of foreign assistance have been forthcoming. From Radley, some outrageous claims and evidence to refute them: Neil Cavuto just telling out-and-out falsehoods, James Lileks (French-bashing, which is particularly absurd given the French emotional attachment to NO, which they tend to think of as partially "theirs" -- at least Lileks had the good grace to post a retraction and admit he hadn't bothered to even check Google because he was feeling grumpy). Also, what the State Department is now saying about welcoming offers of assistance.
And then there's everybody's favorite whipping-boy, the UN, which has of course offered help -- and they actually know a lot about how to deliver humanitarian assistance in the wake of disasters. Jan Egeland, the UN relief official the wingnuts love to hate:
"The United Nations stands ready to help with any kind of disaster expertise that might be required ... in full recognition that the United States is the country in the world that possesses the greatest civilian and military search and rescue and recovery assets themselves," Egeland told Reuters in an interview.
He said U.S. officials had thanked the U.N. for its offer, but had not requested any assistance so far.
Egeland called Katrina one of "the largest, most destructive natural disasters ever."
majikthise has been following the story of the expert Vancouver's Urban Search and Rescue Team, whose help was initially rejected. When it was finally allowed to go to NO, unfortunately, by the time they got to NO the security situation was too far gone for them to be able to jump directly in to help. But undoubtedly their assistance will be extremely useful in the days to come.
Brain's right -- it's time to stop these lies from continuing to spread. Hopefully, Bush will speak on this fairly soon to stop them in their tracks.
The first afoe European weblog awards