Like N. Korea wanting to send its warships and troops to New Orleans to rescue people after Katrina

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/9/2008/3100

by Richard S. Ehrlich
May 7, 2008

BANGKOK, Thailand -- When Burma's biggest enemy the United States offered to send emergency cyclone relief, it probably sounded like North Korea wanting to send its warships and troops to New Orleans to rescue people in the aftermath of Katrina.

Imagine North Korea simultaneously trumpeting their purported benevolence with public insults against Washington for not warning Americans, or providing them with escape routes, before Hurricane Katrina hit the coast.

To complete the comparison, this through-the-looking-glass North Korea would also be successfully strangling the U.S. with harsh international economic sanctions, fueling widespread unemployment, a shattered banking system and other woes for most Americans in a failed bid to change Washington's policies.

Little wonder why Burma, a xenophobic Southeast Asian country also known as Myanmar, recoiled in silence when Washington said it just wants to help.

Then the Pentagon offered to send its nearby USS Kitty Hawk and USS Nimitz to Burma's cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy River delta.

The USS Kitty Hawk's warplanes dropped "more than 20 tons" of bombs on Iraq, the U.S. Navy said on the aircraft carrier's proud web site.

Seen through the eyes of Burma's military, in power since a 1962 coup, U.S. foreign policy is always perceived as a 21st century Trojan Horse.