USS Abraham Lincoln now a "floating hotel"

The Diplomad (If it's not already on your list of daily reads, it should be.) points to a guest column written by Ed Stanton, the pen name used by a career U.S. Navy officer currently serving with the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. After providing tsunamis relief for three weeks, Stanton writes:

I'd like to say that this has been a rewarding experience for us, but it has not: Instead, it has been a frustrating and needlessly dangerous exercise made even more difficult by the Indonesian government and a traveling circus of so-called aid workers who have invaded our spaces. . . .

As I went through the breakfast line, I overheard one of the U.N. strap-hangers, a longhaired guy with a beard, make a sarcastic comment to one of our food servers. He said something along the lines of "Nice china, really makes me feel special," in reference to the fact that we were eating off of paper plates that day. It was all I could do to keep from jerking him off his feet and choking him, because I knew that the reason we were eating off paper plates was to save dishwashing water so that we would have more water to send ashore and save lives.

Read it all.