Powell is an idiot IMHO
Thanks for your support guys but bad news on the Naturelink mission as US Secretary of State decided in his infinite wisdom that because of the scale of the disaster in Indonesia only the US military can handle it and all US civvies will get no funding.
Aside from the fact that they told us 15 minutes after the 8.5 hour loading process had been completed, this monumentally stupid decision is compounded by an apparent attitude from the Indonesian government that as Summatra are a bunch of rebels they don't deserve any help.
We are standing by 48 hours in the hope that sanity prevails as the US military are perhaps the worst tool to apply here and the colossal arrogance to force out experts at the job must be undermined.
In the mean time we are going to raise our own funds - need US$1m in 48 hours - and go anyway. It's a tall order but why not ?