Hey Dayuhan,

Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post

I'd be curious to know how much has actually been spent on humanitarian aid, and how it stacks up against, say, the cost of keeping a substantial number of American troops deployed in one of these places. I've never thought the US aid budget was exactly overwhelming.
Ill have to look for the figures in some very old files, but I can give you an idea as to just what the USG did with not only humanitarian support, but also simultaneously providing deployed troops.

We flew fire trucks (to pump and purify water from a dead lake) from California on C5s, deployed and housed troops from Italy, and flew in aid on C130s all in less than two weeks. I rented several acres of land (coupla million) and had to bulldoze the bodies and other undesirable things off it first. I'd have to say in the course of that week alone I blew 50 million using my telephone

Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
One of the problems in these scenarios is that playing by Jungle Rules is politically unacceptable in the US and the EU... and there are all too many people just waiting to hit the media with any evidence that we're playing by those rules. If our domestic audiences won't allow us to play by the rules that prevail on the ground, we're better off not playing at all.
I couldn't agree with you more (then and now). It's not at all PC, but it is reality.

Regards, Stan