Foreign Aid Offers and the Bush Administration

This shit is getting weird, people.

The Post, here, has a story about how Condi stated:"no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused," Okay, cool. I can't imagine why we'd be refusing an offer to help, but at least we've got official recognition of the fact that we wont mind some help, right?

Wrong, bitches! In the very next paragraph we are told:However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid

Okay, so that's weird, no? Especially since we've previously heard how Canadian rescue groups are ready to help, but are being prevented from entering the country by the Feds.

Now, even at this point, I'd have to explain this as the sheer incompetence typically practiced by the current administration. Hell, "incompetence" almost doesn't capture the situation...it's more like "strategic anti-competence", as near as I can tell.

But getting back to the original WaPo article (here, to save you some scrolling effort) we learn:

Offers have been received from Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, Jamaica, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, NATO and the Organization of American States, the spokesman said.

Hell, the whole article is about all the different offers we've been receiving from foreign nations. So what did Bush have to say about this outpouring of help from foreign nations?

Still, Bush told ABC-TV: "I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it."


"You know," he said, "we would love help, but we're going to take care of our own business as well, and there's no doubt in my mind we'll succeed. And there's no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city."

Ahem. NOT IF IT TAKES DAYS TO GET FOOD, WATER, SUPPLIES AND SOME NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS OUT THERE, AND WE'RE REFUSING ASSISTANCE, ASSH@LE!! Sorry...I really needed to let that out.

Now, seriously, I hate to start aping the standard wingnut talking point of "liberals hate America", but...dude!! Even if I give Chimpy the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's so insulated and out of touch and uninformed that he's saying these things out of pure ignorance, that's still freaking scary! Shouldn't the Preznit know that we have all these offers of assistance from other countries, and that we appear to be blowing them off? At the very least, before he goes on air for a big interview?

It's getting really hard to not at least consider the idea that these people are intentionally trying to manipulate the public perception of things, to make us 'mericans believe that the rest of the world is basically telling us "tough shit", when in fact there's some serious attempts to offer aid, but we're giving them the big ol' middle finger.