Cyclone death toll tops 22,000 in Myanmar
Bush offers help as worst Asian storm since 1991 leaves 1 million homeless.

YANGON, Myanmar - The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 on Tuesday and more than 41,000 others were missing as the international community prepared to rush in aid after Asia's deadliest storm since 1991, state radio reported.
Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.
Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.

Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.
"From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.
Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 11,600-square mile area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines — less than 5 percent of the country.
But the affected region is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.

Bush offers assistance
President Bush urged Myanmar's military rulers on Tuesday to accept U.S. disaster response teams that so far have been kept out and said the United States stood ready to "do a lot more" to help.
"The military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country," Bush told reporters. He said he was prepared to make U.S. naval assets available to help in search and rescue efforts.
Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, told NBC's Today show that the cyclone had knocked huge trees in the country's largest city.
"And it blew down a significant portion of them, some of these are six, eight, 10 stories tall — huge trees, 6 feet, 5 feet in diameter. So they came down on roofs," she said.

Storm surge
The cyclone triggered a massive storm surge that swept inland and left victims with nowhere to run, killing at least 10,000 people in one town alone.
"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the devastated former capital, Yangon, where food and water supplies are running low.
"The wave was up to 12 feet high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," he said. "They did not have anywhere to flee."

Story continued at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24478247?GT1=43001


Truly sad.

It is probably the fault of George W. Bush and Karl Rove. Because of the global warming over the last 7 1/2 years.

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ABoyNamedSue - Speaking of Crestwoods posts - And then there'll be some link to some page, written in hindu or something, talking about sherpas and A&W root beer, and how George Bush is to blame for some Jewish neo-nazi death camp, run by Elvis Presley, on the far side of the moon that's been busted for killing kittens or something

It really was inevitable. Taking care of the environment is the responsibility of every country in this world. George W. Bush is just one of many. Besides, when nature strikes, time is everything.

I was joking Global Warming is a farce. George W has no problem with myanmar because their national religion is buddhism.

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ABoyNamedSue - Speaking of Crestwoods posts - And then there'll be some link to some page, written in hindu or something, talking about sherpas and A&W root beer, and how George Bush is to blame for some Jewish neo-nazi death camp, run by Elvis Presley, on the far side of the moon that's been busted for killing kittens or something

This cyclone and all the death it caused are as a direct result of W's democratics and his failure to shoot missles at global warming. I guess he was too busy with Iraq and Afghanistan to hook up with Capt. Planet and avoid such tradgedies.

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You are quite funny, yet same results to your opinion.

At least 22,000 dead, 41,000 missing, 1 million homeless in Myanmar.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24478247

Why the heck wont they just give it up and accept international aid!?!

Because they are probably very Conservative and have planned for such an emergency. I applaud their independence.

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ABoyNamedSue - Speaking of Crestwoods posts - And then there'll be some link to some page, written in hindu or something, talking about sherpas and A&W root beer, and how George Bush is to blame for some Jewish neo-nazi death camp, run by Elvis Presley, on the far side of the moon that's been busted for killing kittens or something

Oh, they sure have planned...its a mess. This is truly devastating. Are they too proud to accept help?

They refused France's aid.

Burma, a resource-rich country, suffers from pervasive government controls, inefficient economic policies, and rural poverty. The junta took steps in the early 1990s to liberalize the economy after decades of failure under the "Burmese Way to Socialism," but those efforts stalled, and some of the liberalization measures were rescinded. Despite Burma's increasing oil and gas revenue, socio-economic conditions have deteriorated due to the regime's mismanagement of the economy. Lacking monetary or fiscal stability, the economy suffers from serious macroeconomic imbalances - including rising inflation, fiscal deficits, multiple official exchange rates that overvalue the Burmese kyat, a distorted interest rate regime, unreliable statistics, and an inability to reconcile national accounts to determine a realistic GDP figure
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/bm.html
I think the people here need to rise up and take over!!

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Aint but three things in this world thats worth a solitary dime,
But old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
Tom T. Hall
http://www.obamatruth.org/