Will Impeachment of Obama Come Soon Enough to Save Haiti from Second Catastrophe?

Every day without initiating the kind of U.S. Army Corps of Engineering, FDR-style mobilization to help Haiti demanded by Lyndon LaRouche and rejected by President Obama, brings another wave of mass death closer—and everyone involved knows it. Yet, instead of action, resources are being pulled out.

The USNS Comfort hospital ship discharged its last patient over the weekend, and signs point to it being sent home, a decision doctors on the ground in Haiti say would be "catastrophic," the Baltimore Sun reported on Wednesday.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in its latest Situation Report, that the World Food Program, which has provided food for 4.3 million Haitians nationwide, intends to gradually replace general food distribution, for food-for-work and cash-for-work programs targeting only 1.1 million people.

The OCHA also reports that the suspected malaria cases coming in from sentinel reporting centers have increased, for the moment only "slightly."

Malaria, like dengue and other diseases, spreads rapidly in the rainy season. The rains started early this year, killing 13 people, destroying farm crops, livestock and homes, and leaving people without food in Les Cayes on Feb. 27-28, an area "outside" the earthquake zone proper. Ten-days worth of rations were sent from the Port-au-Prince area on March 2 for emergency distribution.

Likewise, the OCHA warns that the main land corridor to the Dominican Republic — which served as the primary supply route in the first days after the earthquake— is at risk of flooding during the rainy season.

The New England Journal of Medicine posted a note today from Dr. Marjorie Curran, serving on the Comfort, who wrote: "The first phase of Haiti's earthquake disaster is nearly over. The hundreds of patients who were cared for on the Comfort and required amputations and orthopedic repair of terrible fractures have mostly left the ship. Those hundreds are but a drop in the bucket compared with the number of injured remaining on shore. The vast majority of the hospitals that used to function in Port-au-Prince were destroyed. Large segments of the population are living in the streets and in makeshift tents that will not be waterproof in the coming rainy season. Although there are many charitable and U.S. government organizations working in Port-au-Prince, the problems of sanitation, clean water, and food distribution are far from solved.

"Before the earthquake, Haiti had one of the highest child mortality rates in the Western Hemisphere. Many of the patients brought to the ship were undernourished and anemic as well as injured. When the rains come, this vulnerable population will be exposed to dysentery and malaria as well as starvation.

"Over the coming months, a concerted effort must be made to develop safe housing and food and water supplies as well as to ensure adequate orthopedic follow-up and access to prosthetics for the thousands of amputees. Somehow, order must emerge from the chaos of the current relief efforts. If not, the second phase of the earthquake disaster may be worse than the first, and being pulled from the rubble will prove to have been but a temporary reprieve."

There need not be a "second phase of the earthquake disaster." Under the Nuremberg principle of "knew or should have known" applied in the trials of the Nazi principals, those who continue to tolerate President Obama and his obstruction of the required action are responsible for those Haitian lives needlessly lost.