One mistake Secretary Gates made the other day is his scepticism on air dropping in supplies. Air drops are not simply deposited in a vacuum. They are stringently controlled by inserted ground forces with enough strength to define and protect a drop zone. In other words the air drop operation is simply one leg of a distribution system beginning at the origination airfield and ultimately delivered through a coordinated and defended pathway to the end benefiter.
The drop zones should be well outside any air-land (runway) operation so that the deliveries, air-land and DZ, can be executed in parallel. It does require an inserted CCT (combat control team) and defensive force to insure the pipeline.
In addition there are mobile aeromedical staging facilities (MASF's) distributed worldwide in various militaries that can operate as temporary hospitals. It may take a week or two, but someone in the real world out here will catch on.
It is certainly true that the Haiti situation is a long term issue, given failed infrastructure, water, sewage, cholera, etc. Given that we all pay to some degree in a sense, aid should be efficient, pointed, and immune to journalistic intrusion. (Incidentally in Desert Storm Schwarzenegger/Powell did not stand for ANY journalistic intrusion -"they", the journalists, hated it).
One no-nonsense guy that straightened out the Katrina situation was an army General Honore?
Seems kinda silly to me to let several thousand die because dropping supplies would get several hundred killed.