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Notes -
But it's not as simple as sending money - that's my whole point. Money alone won't haul a tree out of a roadway or repair a washed out bridge; you need road crews and equipment for that. Money will help you acquire those things, but unless you already know where to go to put them together and how to get them quickly to the places where they're needed, you're SOL. FEMA don't appear to be logistically-competent to put together that kind of a response, so they're left waving money around in the air with nothing to show for it.
It's at least two weeks from the eastern Mediterranean back to the U.S., and longer from the Persian Gulf or Red Sea - even if we ordered them back as soon as the hurricane hit, they'd still be at sea.
This is a more valid complaint; I'm not sure what, if anything, holding up the 82nd Airborne and other rapid reaction forces on domestic bases from deploying. But that's a matter of will and organization (notably we have a President who is clearly suffering from advanced dementia, works like two hours per day, and spends the rest on the beach, while his VP is notably vacuous, scared of her own shadow, and busy campaigning. Not promising) not funding.
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