If you take a look at the latest news - you can see some of the factors I mentioned playing out. Lack of coordination of relief efforts.

Let's take a look:

1. The Belgian team had to pull out because of security concerns - they are afraid for the safety of their doctors and nurses. I can't fault them, although the decision is tragic. But they must keep their people safe. It can be very hard to deal with security concerns in the third world.

2. U.S. Special forces arrive and start doing some good work, but not without organizational challenges.

Now let's imagine a different variation to this scenario. Let's suppose the US forces had been assigned the mission of establishing a "Green Zone" in Port au Prince, where they create a safe compound ringed by barbed wire and sentries. Inside the wire, they establish a temp hospital and a station for preparing large supplies of fresh water and relief supplies. That's an excellent objective for special forces, and it would have allowed the Belgians to withdraw to the safety of a camp with a secure perimeter. This would have allowed all personnel to be most effective at what they were trained to do - the doc's and nurses could treat injured people and the soldiers could guard the encampment. However, what we've got right now is a free-for-all with no overall coordination.

I'd like to hope that someone will figure this stuff out sooner or later, and get things more coordinated. But it takes time ... and sometimes doesn't happen at all.

Dropping supplies off helo's is not a great solution because the looters and bandits wind up taking control of a lot of the stuff.

And here's a comment from the IDF team on the ground, taken from an article published at www.debka.com ...

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IDF field hospital at full stretch in Haiti

The only facility in Haiti with a fully-functioning operating theater, the large Israeli field hospital treated many hundreds of patients in its first four days and helped at least one woman give birth. Another jumbo jet loaded with supplies and equipment is due to set out to replenish the facility's dwindling stocks. Medical aid and other basic necessities are still reaching the millions of distressed Haitians in Port-au-Prince and its outskirts too slowly to save lives.

The estimate of 200,000 dead may never be confirmed as at least 80,000 corpses have so far been dumped into mass graves to ward off epidemics. Two men pulled out of the rubble - one a Danish UN officer and a Haitian by the Israeli rescue team working for eight hours to extricate him - may be among the last to have survived more than five days in their concrete traps.
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other Pete