Posted on 06/15/2007 1:35:18 PM PDT by devane617
The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort will be sailing off Florida waters on Sunday en route to Latin America and the Caribbean -- and The Miami Herald will be on board for a first report on the mission.
President Bush has ordered the ship, with a mixed 500-plus military and civilian crew and staff, to spend three months on a 12-nation tour as a goodwill gesture.
The Baltimore-based ship left port in Norfolk, Va., on Friday morning in what the Pentagon's U.S. Southern Command is calling ``its first-ever, large-scale humanitarian assistance deployment to Central America, South America and the Caribbean.''
Southcom estimates that during the tour, which coincides with the Atlantic hurricane season, medical and dental teams on board the ship will collaborate with foreign medical staff to ``provide medical care to an estimated 85,000 patients from communities with limited healthcare access.''
Comfort is a former tanker as lengthy as three football fields, equipped with a helicopter landing pad and the ability to take on patients from the sea as well. On this mission, it is equipped with two operating rooms, a 50-bed hospital ward and a host of scanning, laboratory and analysis equipment.
Stops will include Belize, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.
A Miami Herald team anticipates posting a news update and web-video at www.miamiherald.com Sunday evening -- following up with a full news report in Monday morning's newspaper.
Meantime, to read more about Comfort, see http://www.comfort.navy.mil
Just sneak out of the country and then back in and declare yourself an illegal alien. Our wonderful giving bureaucracy will be falling all over themselves to help you.
Before you leave tho’, give all of your stuff to a family member you trust. And when you come back, have one of those stupid comic books with you.
No I think it’s an attempt to counteract Hugo Chavez’s largess in Latin America
“El Presidente appears to believe he is called to be the world’s savior.”
and yet, liberals, Clymers, still hate him....go figure.
I don’t think so. As far as I know, a foreign national giving birth in a US embassy does not thereby acquire US citizenship for the child.
No! There are maritime cases on the subject.
Don’t you know the third world is more important than our own country and citizens? /s I give up on all of them. Every single one. I’m no longer a republican. After the bill passes it wont matter anyway.
They may hate him, but they would never impeach him.
He’s their secret weapon in 2008 - ticking away for the next 18 months or so.
Meanwhile, my insurance premium increased (without warning) by 19% this month. Ugh.
My step-daughter is in the Navy band on that ship.... :-(
I agree — the Dims are relishing every moment our bonehead President is in office. He is the weapon they needed to take ove the country completely. And this time, they will keep it...
Plus they are mighty generous — with OUR money.
While the ship is in port, it is subject to the laws of that nation. So, no. This is also how we get around the detainees at Gitmo claiming Refugee status. They aren’t really on US soil.
Some of you guys/gals here are aiding and abetting the enemy. Keep it up! Islamofascist terrorists and the Dumbocrats are lovin’ every minute of it!
Idiots.
He could have sent it to Galveston where UTMB lost $80 million last year on indigent care.
The Mercy and Comfort have been going on goodwill cruises since they were comissioned. They do have to get underway every once in a while and the ship’s medical systems do need to be exercized.
A byproduct is a very positive message to the folks, villages and countries that they visit.
One reason they're being used for this humanitarian aid is they're unecessary for our military.
You can't get near Afghanistan in one, and the facilities in Iraq and ones that soldiers are rapidly flown to out of Iraq are superior to what is on USNS Comfort and Mercy.
The sole military use of these ships would be if the Marines were conducting a Brigade-Scale opposed amphibious assault somewhere - and they haven't done that since 1950.
This is *not* a bad thing it will help the readiness of those crews, give people one less reason to come to the us and will build good will...
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