when you have leaders who not only turn their backs, but rather encourage such discontempt for human suffering.... this is what happens.
CNN.com - American diver underwater during catastrophe - Dec 28, 2004: "'She said she saw a lot of trash in the water. The dive master said it was really rude for people to throw trash. Then they saw large bits of debris and thought there might have been a boat crash,' Helen Wachs said.
She said her daughter didn't know what had happened until the dive master got a text message from his wife telling him about the catastrophe.
Soon they saw bodies floating past them, Wachs' mother said in an interview from Oakland, California, where she lives.
Once they returned to shore, the couple did what they could to help, Helen Wachs said.
'I can't describe carrying a moaning person who just saw his girlfriend killed down a hill in the middle of the night,' the e-mail said. 'I saw more bodies than I care to report. The hotel where we were staying is mostly gone. We lost everything, but our lives.'
Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai government and the International Committee for the Red Cross, but 'she was appalled at the treatment they got' from the U.S. government, her mother said.
At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.
That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.
Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.
But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.
The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken "