that those who say that no international help has been accepted are just wrong. The more interesting question is whether the help should have been accepted sooner. Dailyhowler (
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh061810.shtml) quotes three newspapers on that point:
"According to Eilperin and Kessler, the U.S. has now started accepting help from these foreign governments—but only after rejecting such help earlier in the gulf disaster. This is the way the Post report started—the report which Olbermann quoted:
EILPERIN/KESSLER (6/14/10): Four weeks after the nation's worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.
"We'll let BP decide on what expertise they do need," State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19. "We are keeping an eye on what supplies we do need. And as we see that our supplies are running low, it may be at that point in time to accept offers from particular governments."
That time has come.
The Post report saw the glass half full, keeping things fairly cheerful. But it described the way the U.S. had rejected help from the Dutch and the Norwegians for more than a month—help the U.S. is now accepting. The U.S. started accepting this help “in late May,” the Post reported.
The Post adopted a cheerful tone. Meanwhile, other major newspapers have reported this glass half empty. The Christian Science Monitor first reported this situation back on June 1. This was part of Mark Guarino’s report:
GUARINO (6/1/10): Dutch companies that manufacture the sweeping arm system first contacted BP officials April 23, three days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, according to
Huisman, who spoke by phone from his office in The Hague Tuesday. After receiving little reply, the companies turned to his department for help in reaching out to the US State Department, Huisman says.
"We specifically asked those companies that if you have a firm order from BP or the US government, then we can make the arrangements available," he says. The US Coast Guard made a formal request for the systems May 18, according to Huisman.
<...>
Huisman and Koops would only speculate why recovery officials apparently waited about a month to request the technology. One reason may be Environmental Protection Agency regulations that prevent discharging oil-affected water back into the source.
In Guarino’s report, it was BP which failed to react early on; it isn’t clear when the Obama administration got into the flow. On June 9, the Houston Chronicle offered a somewhat gloomier account, Loren Steffy reporting:
STEFFY (6/9/10): DISASTER IN THE GULF/U.S. was slow to accept offer of Dutch expertise
Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.
It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.
The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: "The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'" said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.
Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.
Which of these three accounts is more accurate? We don’t know."
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