Secretary of State Colin Powell visted South Asia’s tsunami scene and was shocked at what he saw — a sight, he said, worse than any he had seen in his career in war.
"I have been in war and I have been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations, but I have never seen anything like this," America’s former top soldier said, according to Reuters..
"I cannot begin to imagine the horror that went through families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave," he said.
More from Reuters:
As Powell got a bird’s-eye view of the broken coastal landscape of northwest Sumatra, world leaders began gathering in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta for Thursday’s summit on rebuilding the millions of lives shattered by the giant waves 10 days ago….After a helicopter tour, Powell left for Jakarta where U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other world leaders were arriving for Thursday’s global relief summit for tsunami-hit Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and Malaysia.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.