hrc, thank you for your vote of confidence in the Dutch - I'm Dutch and happy to hear that our reputation in this field is this good.
I think the people over here who know most about this would be delighted to help out of they are asked. We'd even send over our Crown Prince to help out - his specialty is Water Management, and he actually seems to know rather a lot about it, certainly knows all the right people to contact.
From what I've seen, the damage really doesn't look that insurmountable - and I mean the breaches, obviously not the flooding damage afterwards. The 17th street breach even looked pathetically small to my (admittedly untrained) eyes. The levees may be shot now because of all the water on both sides undermining them, but I really don't think the problem is such that the government shouldn't come up with a plan to be implemented quickly.
If the will is there, of course. And I see no evidence of that yet.
On USA not accepting foreign help: John Bolton turned down Jan Egelund of the UN's offer of help. The article also mentions ten to twelve countries who have offered help but have been told "we're good, thanks".
I'm from Holland, and I expect Dutch assistance with remedying the levee situation would come in handy, we're rather good at this water management thing (well, some people are, I'm not). I haven't heard actual news items about this, but I imagine that president Bush could expect lots of support from Dutch organisations and experts if he asked for it.
Is it really a law that they can't ask for that help???
Marilee, Terry Karney, thank you for the information on loyalty oaths. The mind boggles. On to multiple loyalty oaths several times a day! And anthem singing! Oh, wait, I guess that one may be happening already.
Marilee, very much upthread you mentioned that there was a rumour of loyalty oaths being signed at the Republican Convention. Was that a joke? Or was it a real rumour? Or perhaps it even happened? Because random people from Catch-22 have been turning up in my head while I watched what little coverage we get here (Holland) from the convention, and loyalty oaths... Oh boy.
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| 2007 | 1 |
| 2005 | 2 |
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