When will the state dept. tell the truth about the missing Americans?

[jdj]

Yesterday the official # I heard was 3700. This was a state dept rep on the Lehrer news hour. She said they had garnered this number from the calls of family and friends looking for these people. However I am sure they eliminated double and triple calls...today another rep said that this was merely the # of calls itself from the family and friends of the missing. This is utter and complete bullshit, since they have been saying since the tsunami happened they have been getting 400 calls an hour, in that case they would have gotten well over 3700 calls within 12 hours.

This is infuriating, I feel like they are protecting Bush. Sweden, a nation of 9 million people, has projected they had as many as 20,000 citizens vacationing in the area when this happened, I beleive there are still around 1200 missing from there, and it is on the news 24 hours a day over there, it is just like 9/11 for them.

So what the hell is going on? They won't even call these people officially missing, it's like they don't exist. This is disgusting if they are protecting Bush, not wanting to make it obvious just how badly he has screwed up this time. This admin is so seedy and digusting it is unexpressable.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

1. What do you want them to tell you?

We, uh, don't know where they are. We don't really even know how many are missing, but 3700 sounds like a reasonable number, given the size of the catastrophe. A lot of them are probably alive, in places where communications haven't been established yet. A lot of them are probably dead. A lot of them may yet die from disease. There's simply no way of differentiating one from the other at this point, because the situation is so chaotic.

>today another rep said that this was merely the # of calls itself from
>the family and friends of the missing.

Well, that sounds like a mistake. Obviously it has to be more than that (as stated in the first graf of your post)

>This is infuriating, I feel like they are protecting Bush.

I guess I don't understand how this could be designed to protect Bush. How does he have anything to do with the number of Americans missing in Asia?

>Sweden, a nation of 9 million people, has projected they had as many
>as 20,000 citizens vacationing in the area when this happened, I >beleive there are still around 1200 missing from there, and it is on
>the news 24 hours a day over there, it is just like 9/11 for them.

It is their 9/11, so to speak. That part of the world is a *huge* destination for Sandanavians. For us, it would be the same as a tsunami hitting the Caribbean or Hawaii.

[jdj]

3. Exactly what the other countries have had the fucking decency

to tell their citizens.

That there are 3700 people MISSING.

Thay they can't find.

That may be DEAD.

Why don't you tell me why they don't say this? Why not say it???

36 confirmed dead.

WHAT ABOUT THE MISSING?

Why make these families suffer a personal hell without giving the numbers any national attention? Where is our national moment of silence? Is that too much to ask?

edit: I just read your post again, and I'm even pisseder.

They won't even call them "missing"...does that not offend you??? I think it is goddamn unforgivable.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. I thought they did say it.

I thought you were quoting public statements by State department officials. Maybe I'm confused.

[jdj]

8. no, they have yet to use the word "missing".

in fact they further back-tracked today from Colin Powell's estimate and said he misspoke, that that was just the # of calls that they had received (which I debunked in the OP). One reporter confronted one rep yesterday and said "why not just bite the bullet and say 'missing'" and you should have seen this guy dance around that, it was like a hoe-down. Same jig the rep on the Lehrer hour did, "we are saying that these are people whose whereabouts can't be determined who have been inquired about by family members or friends as having been in the area at the time blah fucking blah". Anytime they won't use a commonly accepted two syllable word like "missing" or "torture" or "treason" then experience should dictate to anyone here that there is major repuke bullshit going on.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

10. Understandable.

Since missing will probably be interpereted as "dead" by family members.

[jdj]

12. Um, excuse me, but the families are the ones that reported them

"missing" to the state dept. in the first place.

To the tune of 3700 people.

Where is your reading comprehension? Oh, sorry, it's "unnaccounted for and hasn't been contacted at this point by the interested parties" or something.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

13. Heh heh.

That's the best laugh I've had all night. Thanks. :)

I still don't see why it's necessary to quibble over whatever bureaucratese State is using to describe these people. The number is the same either way.

[jdj]

15. No it isn't. Because the media is not covering it because

the brutal fact is that 36 people dead isn't much of a story, and the real story is being suppressed because our fucking imbecile of a leader will look like the stooge he is for failing to respond quicker to this many deaths.

I have to go to bed now. I am tired of restating the obvious. I'll take your retort as a final kick for this thread and then I'll await all the bitching and moaning to come in about a month or so when people wake up from their MSM induced cluelessness and wonder why the media totally missed the story of this many missing americans. Can't wait.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

17. Yet you continually cite MSM sources for your numbers. n/t

[MotR]

2. Protecting Bush from what?

*

[NJCher]

4. bush's whole thing in office is the 3000 dead Americans in WTC

If more than 3000 die in the tsunami, this is a tragedy equal to or worse than WTC.

But nothing like that ever stops republicans. He'll still be out pumping "terr."


Cher

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

20. Not 3000 dead.

3000 murdered

Bush is always lost when he doesn't have someone to retaliate against.

[jdj]

5. The fact that he took 4 days to respond to a crisis that may

have taken more American lives than 9/11.

See, these questions demonstrate exactly what the media blackout about this has done.

What if he had taken 4 days to respond to 9/11?

Couldn't they have gotten a sound estimate about how many U.S. nationals were over there before 4 days had passed?

Sweden's foreign minister is being raked over the coals because she went to the movies the night of the tsunami. We didn't know the scope of the tragedy when it happened, but now we know, and the state dept. needs to come clean. It is insulting to the American public to withold this information to soften the blow to this admin of just how inept they will be perceived when the real #'s come out.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. Not really, no.

It's difficult to tell how many people might have been in the destroyed area, as it's so widespread (many countries) and locally idiosyncratic (particular neighborhoods, beaches getting hit while others aren't.)

[jdj]

9. are you kidding me?

well, all the cabinent positions haven't yet been filled, so you might have a shot at one with all this spin you've got going on.

edit: here's a little clue. Bush should have immediately gotten it together by going well, the main area of impact was Sri Lanka to Sumatra, Thailand affected, coast Africa affected. Call and get some #'s together, and start working backwards, crossing off names that show up. This should have happened on, um, Sunday at the latest, because by then they knew the scope of it was going to be bad. Then they could have had an estimate out of how many were over there. But NOTHING happened for 4 days, and now here it is 13 days later, and still zero declaration of missing citizens. But I guess it's good to know someone here is willing to defend Bush.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. Bush

Bush's idiocy in the matter of the relief effort is well-documented. I'm not defending that imbecile. You're putting words in my mouth. All I'm saying is that I don't see the point of your argument. You want the American press and State department to actually be more provincial? Personally, I find the Swedes' obsession with their own dead to be rather disgusting, in light of the hundreds of thousands of asians who've been killed, same as I find the US media's obsession with dead US soldiers to be disgusting in the face of the hundred thousand or so dead Iraqi civilians.. Just because I take issue with your characterisation of the State rep's remarks doesn't mean I'm supporting Bush, but I guess you can take it that way if you must.

[jdj]

14. The "point" is very easy to comprehend.

I'll go very slowly.

There
is
no
reason
other
than
a
political
one
to
not
call
these
people
missing
at
this
point.

It is not an argument.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

16. Yes there is.

The state department's first priority is not to satisfy your morbid curiosity. Their first priority is to the families of those 3700 people. If I were in their position, I would certainly want to watch my language, lest I unnecessarily cause great worry for those families. These are human beings with families, not statistics.

[tkmorris]

18. This has already been addressed.

The families are in fact the ones who reported the people missing in the first place. It's not like they don't know they are missing. Being clear about how many are missing would not "worry the families" any more than they are already.

I agree with jdj. The reason they are being less than forthcoming is political, nothing else. In fact this is so obvious to me that the biggest surprise is needing to discuss it in the first place.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

19. They were not reported missing. Re-read the above.

They were reported as being in the general area (i.e. in one of the countries) where the disaster occured - not even specifically in coastal areas. That, at least to me, does not qualify as "missing" in the sense that a person who was known to be in a building that collapsed could be described as "missing." That might seem like a trivial distinction, unless it's one of your family members who's unaccounted for. Anyway, I still don't see any political benefit to our fair chimp from this rather trivial argument over linguistic semantics. If it turns out that there are a large number of American dead, Bush will be in hot water anyway, regardless of whatever bullshit Colin and various peons at State are spewing at this particular moment.