Anyone watching Al Jazeera's coverage of Haiti?

in 2004 i was sent to Port-au-Prince for 5 months first to quell down riots and then as part of a relief aid. its a pretty crazy place. they pretty much would ingore us in our humvee's and just run around killing each other over bags of rice. i watched a guy hand a bag of rice to anouther, shake his hand and then pull out a pistol and shoot him in the head pick up the rice and run. i saw handicapped in wheel chairs just being shot killed and over turned in the streets into the burn piles. people running around with home made weapons wacking each other. the ones with guns would pretend to be police, steal the uniforms and such, until we would leave the area and then they would just kill everyone around and loot whatever they could. so we then had to just start taking all the weapons from them since no one could be trusted.

Port-au-Prince was split up into a couple different sections there was the airport which we controled and a business/industrial area surrounding it. there was the ports, which was surrounded by hand made shacks, usually constisting of piece of porta-jon's, tin, anytype of solid plastic's, and various trees. they trapped rain water in buckets and bathed in the front yard. everyone new what time to patrol the ports so they could see women showering in the yards.

from the ports you were lead into the goverment section, which was made up of a palace, and us embassy , lots of office type buildings but most were empty and had people living in them. then up in the hills are where the people with money lived. you went from dirt poor then a couple blocks away people in limo's.

everywhere was a garbage pit

and usually these pits were on fire. i'll never forget the smells of trash and burn bodies.
hundreds of dogs eating the bodies, along with other animals like giant pigs eating whatever they could, at first we just let them eat the bodies, then we given orders to kill them to try and contain some of the diease.

we constantly had to worry about getting malayiare and took lots of fucking pills to prevent it. any type of rash that developed had to be watched.

some of the haitians would try to get us to shoot them, just so they didnt have to kill themselves. the coastal beachs were mostly covered with trash, and medical waste it was not un common to see children playing among it. i traveled about 75 miles down the coast to a town i believe was named Jac'mel it was much cleanier then port au prince, but also alot less populated.

in port au prince it was just rivers of sewage no one wanted to get out of the humvee's cause you never knew how deep it was. they need alot of help. nothing we did really made a difference. i have lots of pictures if anyone wants to see

The US has a much better chance of helping to rebuild Haiti, than it has to fixing Afghanistan

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson suggested the annexation of the whole island of Hispaniola - present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic - to secure a US presence in the Caribbean.

His suggestion was not followed, but American warships were active in Haitian waters 17 times between 1862 - when the US finally recognised Haiti's independence - and 1915, when it occupied the country.

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson took control of the Haitian National Bank by sending in marines, who removed $500,000 of its reserves "for safe-keeping" in New York.

Faced with increasing chaos just south of its shores and an ever-growing stream of refugees arriving on - and often sinking off - Florida's shores, President Bill Clinton sent a US-led intervention force to Haiti in 1994.

The Clinton Administration intervened to restore President Aristide to power
A last-minute deal brokered by former President Jimmy Carter allowed the troops to go ashore unopposed by the Haitian military and police.