Saturday, January 01, 2005
today's papersCruel and Unusual KittycatBy Andrew RicePosted Saturday, Jan. 1, 2005, at 1:55 AM PT
Everyone leads with President Bush's announcement that the United States will donate $350 million to assist the victims of last weekend's Indian Ocean tsunami. He called it an "epic disaster." The aid package is 10 times the $35 million the U.S. had previously committed. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the estimated death toll climbed to 140,000 yesterday, as relief workers finally reached the hardest-hit areas of Indonesia's Aceh Province. "Meulaboh is gone, destroyed," an Indonesian army officer told the paper, referring to a town of 120,000 near the epicenter of last Sunday's quake.
The Los Angeles Times has the best analysis of the president's largess, saying that it "marked the fourth consecutive day in which the Bush administration dramatically widened its response to the Asian catastrophe" after being criticized for its initial relief efforts, which, in the (quickly retracted) words of one United Nations official, were "stingy." Critics have also tweaked Bush for lying low at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. The NYT notes that in contrast to years past, Bush did not make a public appearance at a Crawford coffee shop this New Year's Eve or take questions from reporters.
Feature stories pile on the harrowing detail. The Washington Post fronts a dispatch from the devastated city of Banda Aceh, where "bloated corpses, their limbs akimbo and their skin gray with mud and silt, dotted the streets," and emergency aid was arriving slowly. Inside, it has an account of a man's barefoot 100-mile journey along Aceh's western coast in search of his family. He said that over the course of five days he did not see a single survivor. The LAT goes searching for cadavers with a team of young Sri Lankan men who earn about $1 or $2 a day for their work. The NYT goes inside with a piece on the disaster's reverberations in Europe. Thousands of vacationing Europeans, mostly Scandinavians, were swept away when the wave hit beach resorts. In Denmark, where hundreds of citizens are missing, the prime minister warned of "an incomprehensible tragedy of national proportions."
The NYT follows the WP and the Wall Street Journal in reporting that the Justice Department has issued new guidelines on torture, defining the term broadly and calling it "abhorrent." This reverses a notorious August 2002 memo that appeared to wink at the practice. Inside, the paper runs an extensive investigation revealing more details about the allegedly unpleasant methods used to interrogate terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. One detainee, a suspected accomplice of the 9/11 hijackers, is said to have been tranquilized, blindfolded, and put on a plane in order to fool him into thinking he had been transferred into the custody of the Egyptian secret police. Other alleged tactics include giving prisoners forced enemas, blasting them with rap and heavy metal, and making them listen to a looped tape of the Meow Mix cat food jingle for hours on end. (How long could you take it? Click here.)
The LAT fronts and the other papers go inside with Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist's annual year-end report on the federal courts, which will likely be his last. Rehnquist used the opportunity to inveigh against recent efforts by congressional Republicans to sanction or even impeach judges whose rulings they find disagreeable. The chief justice, who is suffering from thyroid cancer, gave no indication of his own plans for 2005. Inside, the NYT reports that powerful evangelist James Dobson is pushing for a "strict constructionist" to fill any vacancy and vowing to put vulnerable Senate Democrats "in the 'bull's-eye'" if they resist.
Everyone stuffs news that the Sudanese government signed a peace agreement with rebels in the country's south. "Africa begins the year 2005 on a very good footing," said South African President Thabo Mbeki, who helped broker the deal, "Let's party!" The war, which pitted the Muslim government against southern Christians and animists in a fight for power, territory, and oil, had raged on and off since 1956. An estimated 2 million people died. The agreement will have no immediate effect on a separate, and so far less deadly, conflict in the western region of Darfur.
The WP fronts an apparent exclusive on the coming air war over Social Security. Conservative groups are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising boosting President Bush's private investment plan. The AARP is countering with a $5 million campaign against it.
A front-page piece in the LAT details changes in California's domestic partnership laws which go into effect today. Gay couples cannot marry, but if they split, they have to go through divorce proceedings just like straight people do, with the same laws on joint property and child custody applying. The paper points out that gay couples affected by the change in California's law "vastly outnumber" those who have married in Vermont or Massachusetts.
Bats Hit … Clean, quiet, non-carcinogenic, nothing's more earth-friendly than a good ol' fashioned windmill. Right? Well, think again, bat killer! That's right, according to a front page story in today's WP, wind farms in the Appalachian Mountains have become a killing field for flying vermin, which soar headlong into spinning windmill blades. No one knows why they can't avoid the massive turbines, which one biologist calls "bat Veg-o-matics." A study found between 1,500 and 4,000 dead bats, a seemingly small number, but one that could translate to "very large, probably unsustainable kill rates" if, as expected, 700 more windmills are built in the area, according to an expert from Bat Conservation International, an advocacy group based in bat-happy Austin, Texas.Andrew Rice is a writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111707/
Everyone leads with President Bush's announcement that the United States will donate $350 million to assist the victims of last weekend's Indian Ocean tsunami. He called it an "epic disaster." The aid package is 10 times the $35 million the U.S. had previously committed. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the estimated death toll climbed to 140,000 yesterday, as relief workers finally reached the hardest-hit areas of Indonesia's Aceh Province. "Meulaboh is gone, destroyed," an Indonesian army officer told the paper, referring to a town of 120,000 near the epicenter of last Sunday's quake.
The Los Angeles Times has the best analysis of the president's largess, saying that it "marked the fourth consecutive day in which the Bush administration dramatically widened its response to the Asian catastrophe" after being criticized for its initial relief efforts, which, in the (quickly retracted) words of one United Nations official, were "stingy." Critics have also tweaked Bush for lying low at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. The NYT notes that in contrast to years past, Bush did not make a public appearance at a Crawford coffee shop this New Year's Eve or take questions from reporters.
Feature stories pile on the harrowing detail. The Washington Post fronts a dispatch from the devastated city of Banda Aceh, where "bloated corpses, their limbs akimbo and their skin gray with mud and silt, dotted the streets," and emergency aid was arriving slowly. Inside, it has an account of a man's barefoot 100-mile journey along Aceh's western coast in search of his family. He said that over the course of five days he did not see a single survivor. The LAT goes searching for cadavers with a team of young Sri Lankan men who earn about $1 or $2 a day for their work. The NYT goes inside with a piece on the disaster's reverberations in Europe. Thousands of vacationing Europeans, mostly Scandinavians, were swept away when the wave hit beach resorts. In Denmark, where hundreds of citizens are missing, the prime minister warned of "an incomprehensible tragedy of national proportions."
The NYT follows the WP and the Wall Street Journal in reporting that the Justice Department has issued new guidelines on torture, defining the term broadly and calling it "abhorrent." This reverses a notorious August 2002 memo that appeared to wink at the practice. Inside, the paper runs an extensive investigation revealing more details about the allegedly unpleasant methods used to interrogate terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. One detainee, a suspected accomplice of the 9/11 hijackers, is said to have been tranquilized, blindfolded, and put on a plane in order to fool him into thinking he had been transferred into the custody of the Egyptian secret police. Other alleged tactics include giving prisoners forced enemas, blasting them with rap and heavy metal, and making them listen to a looped tape of the Meow Mix cat food jingle for hours on end. (How long could you take it? Click here.)
The LAT fronts and the other papers go inside with Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist's annual year-end report on the federal courts, which will likely be his last. Rehnquist used the opportunity to inveigh against recent efforts by congressional Republicans to sanction or even impeach judges whose rulings they find disagreeable. The chief justice, who is suffering from thyroid cancer, gave no indication of his own plans for 2005. Inside, the NYT reports that powerful evangelist James Dobson is pushing for a "strict constructionist" to fill any vacancy and vowing to put vulnerable Senate Democrats "in the 'bull's-eye'" if they resist.
Everyone stuffs news that the Sudanese government signed a peace agreement with rebels in the country's south. "Africa begins the year 2005 on a very good footing," said South African President Thabo Mbeki, who helped broker the deal, "Let's party!" The war, which pitted the Muslim government against southern Christians and animists in a fight for power, territory, and oil, had raged on and off since 1956. An estimated 2 million people died. The agreement will have no immediate effect on a separate, and so far less deadly, conflict in the western region of Darfur.
The WP fronts an apparent exclusive on the coming air war over Social Security. Conservative groups are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising boosting President Bush's private investment plan. The AARP is countering with a $5 million campaign against it.
A front-page piece in the LAT details changes in California's domestic partnership laws which go into effect today. Gay couples cannot marry, but if they split, they have to go through divorce proceedings just like straight people do, with the same laws on joint property and child custody applying. The paper points out that gay couples affected by the change in California's law "vastly outnumber" those who have married in Vermont or Massachusetts.
Bats Hit … Clean, quiet, non-carcinogenic, nothing's more earth-friendly than a good ol' fashioned windmill. Right? Well, think again, bat killer! That's right, according to a front page story in today's WP, wind farms in the Appalachian Mountains have become a killing field for flying vermin, which soar headlong into spinning windmill blades. No one knows why they can't avoid the massive turbines, which one biologist calls "bat Veg-o-matics." A study found between 1,500 and 4,000 dead bats, a seemingly small number, but one that could translate to "very large, probably unsustainable kill rates" if, as expected, 700 more windmills are built in the area, according to an expert from Bat Conservation International, an advocacy group based in bat-happy Austin, Texas.Andrew Rice is a writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111707/
January 1, 2005DIPLOMACY
U.S. Vows Big Increase in Aid for Victims of Asian DisasterBy DAVID E. SANGER and WARREN HOGE
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 31 - President Bush announced Friday that he would increase emergency aid to stricken areas of Asia to $350 million from $35 million, and said the United States would probably add more resources as the scope of what he called an "epic disaster" became clearer.
At the United Nations, Jan Egeland, the emergency aid coordinator, said the new American money had increased the overall amount donated to nearly $1.2 billion from 40 nations, with new pledges continuing to come in hourly. "I've never, ever seen such an outpouring of international assistance in any international disaster, ever," he said.
Mr. Bush's ninefold increase in the amount of aid was the second time this week that the United States had committed more money to the effort, and it came after criticism that the president, who has stayed on his 1,600-acre ranch all week and spoken publicly about the disaster once, had reacted too slowly.
President Bush reacted angrily on Wednesday to a suggestion from Mr. Egeland that the leading economies of the world had been stingy in providing foreign aid generally, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent much of the week defending the speed with which the United States was responding to the calamity.
In a written statement on Friday, Mr. Bush said he decided on the increase after Mr. Powell and the director of the Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, told him that "initial findings of American assessment teams on the ground indicate that the need for financial and other assistance will steadily increase in the days and weeks ahead."
As recently as Thursday, a senior State Department official deeply involved in the rescue efforts said Washington had not received any word from any assessment team asking for more money. But the official added that when such requests came in, he was certain the money would be available.
Mr. Powell was visibly annoyed later on Thursday when asked about other nations, with far smaller economies, which had initially committed more funds than the United States. "I don't know yet what the United States' contribution will be," he said on ABC's "Nightline," "and what we have to do is make a needs assessment and not just grasp at numbers or think we're in some kind of an auction house where every day somebody has to top someone else."
Asked about the new, higher figure at the United Nations on Friday after he met with Secretary General Kofi Annan, Mr. Powell said he had received information in the morning from Mr. Natsios that justified the rise. "What I wanted to do is to make sure that I had a basis to go to the president and make the recommendation that he commit this amount of money, and not just that each day everybody was trying to play, 'Can you top this ?' " he said.
With the newly announced commitment, the United States moves from the middle of the pack of countries that have announced aid to the region to the top. The $350 million is more than three times the amount committed by Britain, and it is $100 million more than the World Bank's contribution so far.
A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said that the $350 million would come "from existing accounts," but that the administration might have to ask Congress next month to replenish emergency funds. But he dismissed suggestions by Democrats, including Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, that the United States could draw on some of the $16 billion authorized for Iraq reconstruction that has not been spent.
"It's not coming from Iraq money, if that's what you are asking," Mr. Duffy told reporters.
White House officials are clearly sensitive about the charge that they responded too slowly, and Mr. Bush listed Friday a series of actions the United States had already taken. They included the dispatch of an aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and an amphibious ship carrying a Marine expeditionary unit. But the ships are not in position, and several officials said the distance they have to travel would cost precious time.
The United States surrendered its bases in the Philippines more than a decade ago, and one senior American diplomat in Asia noted Thursday that "we're all paying the price for that a bit" because those bases would have put American forces closer to the destruction at the tip of Sumatra.
In his statement, Mr. Bush noted that the United States had created a coordination "core group" with Australia, India and Japan.
"I am confident many more nations will join this core group in short order," Mr. Bush said in his statement. "Reports of strong charitable donations are also very encouraging and reflect the true generosity and compassion of the American people."
Mr. Powell sought to allay suspicions at the United Nations that in setting up the core group, the United States was competing for leadership of the relief effort with the world organization, with which the administration has had strained relations.
"We created the core group earlier in the week because we saw a need for a coordination mechanism to be created rather quickly and rested on countries that were nearby in the region with assets, experience and capability that could be brought to bear right away," he said. Its ultimate purpose, he added, was to bring international organizations "into play under the overall supervision and leadership of the United Nations."
Mr. Powell plans to leave for Indonesia and Sri Lanka on Sunday along with the president's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida. Mr. Bush said he was sending his brother because the series of hurricanes that hit Florida had given him a particular expertise in disaster relief. There was also symbolism in sending a member of his family who has instant access to the president.
Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that he thought the visit by Mr. Powell would help to free up needed resources but said that it was a mistake not to include a high-level United Nations representative. "We see in places like Aceh that they are still without any sort of relief presence yet and it may involve opening airports, bulldozing new airstrips and bringing in other help, and those are the kinds of problems that Powell can begin to solve with a phone call that would take the normal machinery days to turn around," he said.
"But I also think it is imperative to take a very senior member of the U.N. along," he added, "so that the U.N. leadership of the relief system remains intact and indeed enhanced."
Traditionally, Mr. Bush appears around New Year's at the one coffee shop in this single-stoplight town a few miles from his ranch, sometimes holding an impromptu news conference by the gas pumps outside. But Mr. Bush never left the ranch on Friday. His spokesman said he was entertaining friends.
The question about donation levels also sparked a new spat with France. The French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, wrote a letter to Mr. Natsios saying he was "surprised to learn of the shocking and uncalled for comments you thought fit to make during an interview" on Wednesday on Fox news.
Mr. Natsios had observed that France was not a major donor to other nations, saying "they do not tend to be dominant figures in aid." He praised Britain, Japan, the European Union, Canada and Australia.
Mr. Levitte disputed that assessment, saying that France, with an economy a fraction of the size of the United States', had already given about $28 million for tsunami relief, or only $7 million less than the United States until its announcement on Friday. "I would be interested in learning your reasons for misguidedly impugning France this way," he wrote.
David E. Sanger reported from Crawford, Tex., for this article and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.
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U.S. Vows Big Increase in Aid for Victims of Asian DisasterBy DAVID E. SANGER and WARREN HOGE
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 31 - President Bush announced Friday that he would increase emergency aid to stricken areas of Asia to $350 million from $35 million, and said the United States would probably add more resources as the scope of what he called an "epic disaster" became clearer.
At the United Nations, Jan Egeland, the emergency aid coordinator, said the new American money had increased the overall amount donated to nearly $1.2 billion from 40 nations, with new pledges continuing to come in hourly. "I've never, ever seen such an outpouring of international assistance in any international disaster, ever," he said.
Mr. Bush's ninefold increase in the amount of aid was the second time this week that the United States had committed more money to the effort, and it came after criticism that the president, who has stayed on his 1,600-acre ranch all week and spoken publicly about the disaster once, had reacted too slowly.
President Bush reacted angrily on Wednesday to a suggestion from Mr. Egeland that the leading economies of the world had been stingy in providing foreign aid generally, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent much of the week defending the speed with which the United States was responding to the calamity.
In a written statement on Friday, Mr. Bush said he decided on the increase after Mr. Powell and the director of the Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, told him that "initial findings of American assessment teams on the ground indicate that the need for financial and other assistance will steadily increase in the days and weeks ahead."
As recently as Thursday, a senior State Department official deeply involved in the rescue efforts said Washington had not received any word from any assessment team asking for more money. But the official added that when such requests came in, he was certain the money would be available.
Mr. Powell was visibly annoyed later on Thursday when asked about other nations, with far smaller economies, which had initially committed more funds than the United States. "I don't know yet what the United States' contribution will be," he said on ABC's "Nightline," "and what we have to do is make a needs assessment and not just grasp at numbers or think we're in some kind of an auction house where every day somebody has to top someone else."
Asked about the new, higher figure at the United Nations on Friday after he met with Secretary General Kofi Annan, Mr. Powell said he had received information in the morning from Mr. Natsios that justified the rise. "What I wanted to do is to make sure that I had a basis to go to the president and make the recommendation that he commit this amount of money, and not just that each day everybody was trying to play, 'Can you top this ?' " he said.
With the newly announced commitment, the United States moves from the middle of the pack of countries that have announced aid to the region to the top. The $350 million is more than three times the amount committed by Britain, and it is $100 million more than the World Bank's contribution so far.
A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said that the $350 million would come "from existing accounts," but that the administration might have to ask Congress next month to replenish emergency funds. But he dismissed suggestions by Democrats, including Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, that the United States could draw on some of the $16 billion authorized for Iraq reconstruction that has not been spent.
"It's not coming from Iraq money, if that's what you are asking," Mr. Duffy told reporters.
White House officials are clearly sensitive about the charge that they responded too slowly, and Mr. Bush listed Friday a series of actions the United States had already taken. They included the dispatch of an aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and an amphibious ship carrying a Marine expeditionary unit. But the ships are not in position, and several officials said the distance they have to travel would cost precious time.
The United States surrendered its bases in the Philippines more than a decade ago, and one senior American diplomat in Asia noted Thursday that "we're all paying the price for that a bit" because those bases would have put American forces closer to the destruction at the tip of Sumatra.
In his statement, Mr. Bush noted that the United States had created a coordination "core group" with Australia, India and Japan.
"I am confident many more nations will join this core group in short order," Mr. Bush said in his statement. "Reports of strong charitable donations are also very encouraging and reflect the true generosity and compassion of the American people."
Mr. Powell sought to allay suspicions at the United Nations that in setting up the core group, the United States was competing for leadership of the relief effort with the world organization, with which the administration has had strained relations.
"We created the core group earlier in the week because we saw a need for a coordination mechanism to be created rather quickly and rested on countries that were nearby in the region with assets, experience and capability that could be brought to bear right away," he said. Its ultimate purpose, he added, was to bring international organizations "into play under the overall supervision and leadership of the United Nations."
Mr. Powell plans to leave for Indonesia and Sri Lanka on Sunday along with the president's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida. Mr. Bush said he was sending his brother because the series of hurricanes that hit Florida had given him a particular expertise in disaster relief. There was also symbolism in sending a member of his family who has instant access to the president.
Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that he thought the visit by Mr. Powell would help to free up needed resources but said that it was a mistake not to include a high-level United Nations representative. "We see in places like Aceh that they are still without any sort of relief presence yet and it may involve opening airports, bulldozing new airstrips and bringing in other help, and those are the kinds of problems that Powell can begin to solve with a phone call that would take the normal machinery days to turn around," he said.
"But I also think it is imperative to take a very senior member of the U.N. along," he added, "so that the U.N. leadership of the relief system remains intact and indeed enhanced."
Traditionally, Mr. Bush appears around New Year's at the one coffee shop in this single-stoplight town a few miles from his ranch, sometimes holding an impromptu news conference by the gas pumps outside. But Mr. Bush never left the ranch on Friday. His spokesman said he was entertaining friends.
The question about donation levels also sparked a new spat with France. The French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, wrote a letter to Mr. Natsios saying he was "surprised to learn of the shocking and uncalled for comments you thought fit to make during an interview" on Wednesday on Fox news.
Mr. Natsios had observed that France was not a major donor to other nations, saying "they do not tend to be dominant figures in aid." He praised Britain, Japan, the European Union, Canada and Australia.
Mr. Levitte disputed that assessment, saying that France, with an economy a fraction of the size of the United States', had already given about $28 million for tsunami relief, or only $7 million less than the United States until its announcement on Friday. "I would be interested in learning your reasons for misguidedly impugning France this way," he wrote.
David E. Sanger reported from Crawford, Tex., for this article and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.
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January 2, 2005THE RELIEF
From Heart of Indonesia's Disaster, a Cry for HelpBy JANE PERLEZ
MEULABOH, Indonesia, Jan. 1 - A dozen towns that once thrived near here are gone. Some 10,000 people have been buried, local officials say, and the effort to collect bodies cannot keep up.
For seven days, the scale of the natural disaster that swallowed coastlines in southern Asia last Sunday has slowly unfolded, with death tolls doubling almost daily. But Meulaboh, just 90 miles from the earthquake's epicenter, remained almost beyond description since no one could get here and the destruction could be only imagined.
On Saturday, the president of Indonesia flew in briefly and the examination finally began. It is a picture of grief and devastation beyond that of any other in the dozen countries hit. Apart from a few sturdy mosques and buildings, there is simply nothing left under the mountains of black mud and debris. The people the president met wept as they spoke.
One man, Roosli, 52, sat near the entrance of one of the town's remaining buildings, nursing his naked 2-year-old son Bendi, who was the sole surviving child of eight children in the family. "When the water came I got out of my house and I ran in panic," said Mr. Roosli, a street trader. "I have zero left. I lost seven children. What do I need? Everything. Help us, please." Proffering a red plastic cup, he said a cup of rice was issued to all the homeless each day.
After his convoy snaked through streets of crumpled buildings, the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, admitted that assistance was slow in coming to Meulaboh and other areas in tremendous need, and asked the world for help. In Indonesia alone, at least 100,000 people have died, most here in Aceh Province, the government estimates, making Indonesia the worst sufferer from the quake and tsunamis.
"I appeal to the world community to contribute to the reconstruction of Indonesia that has been hit by disaster and we welcome those contributions as a manifestation of global unity," Mr. Yudhoyono said at a news conference in the modest but unscathed military headquarters here.
He acknowledged that his government had been slow in organizing and dispatching aid. Bloated bodies remain uncollected in the city of Banda Aceh, and there was no sign of any ability to clear the huge amounts of debris and black mud in this isolated town.
"I know there are problems on the ground, and I know we have had some shortcomings," he said. He promised that the government would try to improve. Decomposed bodies still lie amid wet rubble on the streets of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital that is 125 miles away from Meulaboh, at the northern tip of Sumatra island. The lieutenant governor of Aceh Province, Abu Bakar, said Saturday that 10,000 people had been buried so far, but that it would be another month before all the bodies could be cleared away.
Here in Meulaboh, the shock of last Sunday was still so strong that the military commander, a Colonel Geerhan, wept as he showed Mr. Yudhoyono a video of the townspeople as they ran from the tidal wave to higher ground.
In the video, groups of people were seen walking, then running away from the shore. In one frame a man and his small children grabbed the back door of an ambulance, opened it and clamored inside to get a ride away from the water. One of Colonel Geerhan's soldiers explained Saturday that the ambulance was missing and presumed to have been dragged out to sea.
In describing the hours of hell last Sunday, Colonel Geerhan said he was preparing to exercise at about 7:45 a.m. when he felt an earthquake. He said he checked on his men at the military headquarters and then went to help dig people out of collapsed buildings. He said the first wave of water came about 15 minutes later, although others said the first wave of water came later, about half an hour to 45 minutes after the earthquake.
"We used ambulances with sirens to mobilize people to go to higher ground," Colonel Geerhan said. "That's when the second wave came, and I found myself next to a 16-foot-by-6-foot fishing boat that had been swept in by the sea. That's when I felt a little bit afraid."
Each wave was about 15 minutes apart, he said. Within three hours after the last wave, he said, the military had collected nearly 40 bodies. By Saturday, they had buried 4,000, he said.
The first American military helicopters pledged by the Bush administration as a key part of the American aid package arrived at the Banda Aceh airport on Saturday and made some deliveries, said Alwi Shihab, the minister for social services. American pledges of aid have risen sharply this week, in the face of local criticism that Washington had done too little to help.
Many Indonesians compare the earthquake disaster to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, but note that the death toll here is far greater. Other nations, including Singapore and Australia to the south, got helicopters and medical assistance into Indonesia earlier than the United States.
A combination of shock, reluctance by the government to come to grips with the extent of the calamity, and the nature of the disaster appear to have delayed the efforts to help those devastated by the earthquake.
A decision was made Friday that the bodies could not be burned because it would violate the tenets of Islam, Mr. Shihab said. "We don't want to offend the deeply held beliefs of the Acehenese," he said. Instead, religious leaders have said bodies could be buried where they were found rather than being taken to a designated grave, which is the custom for Muslims.
The biggest challenge in Meulaboh appeared to be the removal of mountains of rubble and the reconstruction of destroyed homes and shops. But Maj. Gen. Judi Jusuf said Saturday that the military was stymied on how best to go about it.
Five Indonesian naval vessels arrived Saturday and were anchored offshore with 600 soldiers and some heavy equipment to begin clearing the mess. But the ships could not unload the equipment because the beaches in town had been washed away, the general said. It would also be difficult to bring heavy earth-moving equipment over land because the only existing road into the town was from the south and was too narrow and mountainous. The road to the north connecting Meulaboh to Banda Aceh had hugged the coast and was totally washed away, he said.
Along that coast from Meulaboh, 12 towns were washed away by the waves. On Saturday, as Mr. Yudhoyono flew over in a helicopter, there was no sign of life, not even of debris. The sea had apparently washed over the land with such ferocity and then fallen back with such pull that it swept everything with it.
Those few who had survived walked out to Banda Aceh. On Thursday, a correspondent for Netherlands Television, Step Vaessen, said she drove for an hour out of Banda Aceh and met a family who had walked since Sunday. "They were completely exhausted, they had had nothing to drink," she said. "Others said they had walked for three days."
In Banda Aceh, morale was low because earthquake tremors frightened survivors, said Azwar Hassan, who works in Jakarta as a community development specialist and came back to his home to find his family. Much of his family was intact, except for two missing cousins.
"Everybody wants to run away," he said. "They are just praying and praying and praying."
But most disturbing, he said, was the feeling among the survivors of not knowing what to do. "The military is just looking after the dead bodies," he said. Instead, Mr. Hassan said, more should be done for the living. "It's very hard for people to find help," he said.
He tried to get his family rice, the favored food here. He was disappointed, he said, that when he found an open store, stockpiles of rice from the military storehouse were being sold for the equivalent of $6 a bag, a huge markup on the usual price.
Mr. Shihab, like the president, acknowledged that there were huge problems.
"Government is almost dysfunctional, administration is almost in a void," he said of what remains in the province of Aceh. "Even if there are personnel, they are dispirited. We don't have air transportation to move in replacements. Most people are depressed. People say, 'Where is the army? Where are the police?' They are depressed. They can't be replaced in one or two days."
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