`Get some devastation in the back,''

“"Get some devastation in the back," Frist told a photographer.

http://www.thedailytimes.com/sited/story/html/182750

GALLE, Sri Lanka -- Bill Frist, majority leader in the U.S. Senate, visited tsunami-stricken southern Sri Lanka on Thursday and pledged U.S. government support and American private sector for tens of thousands who lost homes and loved ones.

``The devastation is actually worse than I had anticipated,'' said Frist, who flew by helicopter to the southern city of Galle from Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, and viewed twisted railway tracks and the foundations of homes laid bare by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

Frist, a Tennessee Republican, was accompanied by Mary Landrieu, a Democratic senator from Louisiana.

The pair visited a Muslim school that had been turned into a camp for the homeless and the local office of Sarvodaya, a Sri Lankan non-governmental organization, where they announced the donation of $150,000 worth of oral rehydration fluid for children.

``The short-term relief seems to be going well, but it's going to take a long time'' to provide permanent shelter to stricken residents and find them jobs, said Frist, a medical doctor.

As many as 4,000 people died in the Galle district, and the destruction extends far inland in some areas.

At the A.R.M. Thassim College the two senators inspected a Sri Lankan Red Cross clinic set up in an open-sided building to treat tsunami victims who suffered cuts and bruises. Landrieu's eyes filled with tears as she comforted one weeping woman who lost four children and her husband in the disaster. One of her children survived.

``It's unimaginable,'' Landrieu said of the human toll.

The senators delivered boxes of aid from the U.S. Agency for International Development, including packets of water-purifying powder and sleeping mats.

A group of homeless men at the camp expressed frustration with government-led relief efforts, complaining that the local Red Cross had only set up their clinic, complete with flags and banners, a few hours before the U.S. senators visited. Red Cross officials said their mobile clinics were treating patients at hundreds of camps.

``They talk as though they do everything here. Many people come here; they just take photographs, but we don't get anything,'' said Ramzan Mohideen, a man in a Muslim cap and gown who lost his jewelry business.

He said religious leaders and Muslim community groups were the driving force behind relief efforts in his neighborhood, and that he had traveled to Colombo shortly after the disaster to collect medical supplies with $800 raised in a mosque.

Mohideen also said the state government had asked the displaced people to leave the college by Sunday, ahead of the start of school on the following day. Uncomfortable that men and women were mixing in the camp, Muslim leaders were constructing a women's shelter nearby, and expected the men to stay at a mosque.

Just before his helicopter lifted off, Frist and aides took snapshots of each other near a pile of tsunami debris.

"Get some devastation in the back," Frist told a photographer.”

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“Did he kiss any babies?”

“on the surface, an insensitve choice of words, but ultimately, a non-story.”

“Didn't Frist's family's medical practice defraud the Federal goverment (Medicare) and pay some massive fine?”

“Someone should heckle Frist with a duck-call when he speaks in the Senate.”

“Look. A visit from Colin Powell to express formal condolences and offers of help from th U.S. is enteriley appropriate.

The rest, from stupid a$$ Jeb Bush on down are purely photo ops.”

“Yeah, and who pays their airfare?

We do!”

“Somebody said Jeb is the frontrunner.. for this next election fiasco.”

“Uh huh, runnin' in the front of a pack of dogs.”

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“*yawn*”

“I heard Newt was going to run. [shiver]”