National security doesn't cover natural events

After acknowledging that three of its six tsunami-detecting buoys have been broken for months, the U.S. government promised Friday to build a new detection system that covers the whole Pacific basin -- including the B.C. coast -- as well as the Caribbean and part of the Atlantic Ocean.

[...]

Officials said there was no danger of an undetected tsunami hitting the North American coast, since the three functional buoys and older networks of tide gauges and land-based sensors would have picked up the wave.

But without data from all six buoys, it would have been harder for scientists to calculate where the waves were headed, how big they would be when they hit the coast and at what point tsunami warnings could safely be cancelled, Paul Whitmore, chief scientist for the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning System in Palmer, Alaska, told the Seattle Times newspaper.

"We are still a fully functional warning system, even without the buoys," Whitmore said.

"The impact of those buoys being out is that we have less data upon which to cancel or expand warnings."

Hm. Isn't that what would be needed?

No, national security doesn't cover natural events, but it does cover gay subversion.

Anyway, this is actually a good news story about efforts to build a more comprehensive tsunami warning system.

And here's another story about using U.S. troops for humanitarian purposes in the tsunami-devastated region of the Indian Ocean. I don't think U.S. military troops are the proper organization for that, and I feel it's more of a PR ploy to try to bolster our military's and our country's image as a helpful member of the global community, to cover up and counter all the bad publicity we're getting for what we are doing otherwise.

But, then, that's me, you know. I hate America, huh?