More like "Ron Brown funeral" tears, if you ask me. "Better put some ice on that..."
Cheers, RAH ------- <http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050219/2005-02-19T150310Z_01_L19240981_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-QUAKE-CLINTON-DC.html> My Way News Clinton, Bush Close to Tears in Tsunami Aid Tour Feb 19, 10:03 AM (ET) By Mark Bendeich BAN NAMKHEM, Thailand (Reuters) - Former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush came close to tears on their tour of tsunami-wrecked Asian coasts Saturday after meeting Thai children who lost their parents in the disaster. "It's very moving," Bush said after a little girl whose mother died in the Dec. 26 tsunami handed him a picture she had drawn of that day, showing her fishing village beneath the killer wave and a woman floating, eyes closed, in the water. "I'll never forget this," he said. Clinton also fought back tears as he spoke to reporters after receiving a similar drawing from another child of Ban Namkhem, where an estimated 1,500-2,000 people -- more than a third of the village -- died when the wave crashed ashore. The tsunami may have killed 300,000 people around the Indian Ocean, prompting President Bush to appoint his father and Clinton to lead U.S. fund-raising for survivors across the region. Clinton, who is also a special U.N. envoy for tsunami aid, estimated that roughly another $4 billion was needed to help the survivors put their lives back together and appealed for world media to keep the spotlight on the disaster. "That's the number one problem: that we will just forget these people. What we have to do is not to forget... see this thing through," he said. The relief work in Thailand, where the presidential pair began their lightning four-nation tour, has turned from providing emergency aid and recovering bodies to costly reconstruction. Thai troops were building dozens of houses of concrete and steel in Ban Namkhem. Almost wiped off the map on Dec. 26, the village was a hive of activity. Battered fishing boats sat among the buildings going up, ready for repairs funded by U.S. aid. "WAY ABOVE POLITICS" Once fierce political rivals, 80-year-old Republican Bush and Democrat Clinton said tsunami relief was above politics. "You are almost in tears when you see this little girl here. It gets way beyond politics," Bush said at Ban Namkhem. The pair, who fly Sunday to Indonesia's Aceh province, the worst-hit area, are striving to keep attention on the disaster and encourage Americans and U.S. firms to keep giving. Private donors worldwide are estimated to have given over $2 billion so far in relief aid. Total private and government aid commitments total $7 billion, Clinton said, still short of total tsunami losses estimated at $11-12 billion. He estimated that about half of private U.S. donations for tsunami relief had been channeled via the Internet, which emerged during the crisis as a prodigious source of funds. Clinton and Bush plan to keep the computer mice clicking. Clinton, who is making his most grueling journey since undergoing quadruple-bypass heart surgery recently, said donor fatigue had yet to set in but the danger was there, explaining it could take two years before devastated areas returned to normal. "We have to get countries to honor the commitments they have already made," he said after a meeting with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on the resort island of Phuket, south of Ban Namkhem. Earlier, the ex-presidents flew in U.S. military helicopters over the ruins of Khao Lak, near Ban Namkhem. Below them, the tsunami had leveled resorts and hotels packed with European tourists, killing hundreds of them. The badly decomposed bodies of about 1,600 people, including many of the dead tourists, are still stacked in concealed, refrigerated containers at a makeshift morgue next to where Clinton and Bush visited a remembrance wall on Phuket. The pair laid a floral wreath beneath the U.S. flag, one of 37 fluttering atop the wall, in memory of Americans killed in Thailand. Ten Americans have been confirmed dead. After flying to Aceh on their White House plane Sunday, Clinton and Bush are to visit Sri Lanka's battered south coast and the remote Maldives, a chain of idyllic coral islands popular with tourists that was also hammered by the tsunami. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. 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