Following up on this post, we are now sending 50 Marines to protect the US Embassy in Haiti. Adding today's entry to the list from last week we have this chronology:
17 February 2004 3:28PM:
"There is frankly no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down the violence that we are seeing," Powell told reporters.
19 February 2004 2:15PM:
The Bush administration said Thursday it would send a military team to Haiti to assess the security of the U.S. Embassy there, but stressed that it is still looking for a political solution to the bloody uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
23 February 2004 2:30PM:
Fifty Marines headed Monday to protect the U.S. Embassy and its staff after rebels overran Haiti's second-largest city and threatened to attack the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Residents of Cap-Haitien went on a rampage of reprisal and looting for a second day as supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide armed themselves and set up burning barricades outside Port-au-Prince. There were ominous but unconfirmed reports of rebels executing Aristide backers.
The Marines were dispatched to the capital to secure the embassy, according to Western diplomats and a Defense Department official.
Still no peacekeepers, but can those really be that far behind? As Fred Kaplan discussed last week, Colin Powell is all but irrelevant in forming US foreign policy and has been for a long time.
