The US Military and the State Department were given advanced warning. America's Navy base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was notified.

As confirmed by several reports, US scientists in Hawaii, had advance knowledge regarding an impending catastrophe, but failed to contact their Asian counterparts.

Charles McCreery of the Pacific Warning Center in Hawaii confirmed that his team tried to get in touch with his counterparts in Asia.

According to McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu, the team did its utmost to contact the countries.

His team contacted the US State Department, which apparently contacted the Asian governments. But the Indian government confirms that no such warning was received. (The Hindu, 27 Dec 2004)

Chussodovsky asks pertinent questions and provides compelling evidence that much more could have been done to prevent this disaster.

Chussodovsky's Key Questions

1. Why were the Indian Ocean countries' governments not informed?

Were there "guidelines" from the US military or the State Department regarding the release of an advanced warning?

According to the statement of the Hawaii based PTWC, advanced warning was released but on a selective basis. Indonesia was already hit, so the warning was in any event redundant and Australia was several thousand miles from the epicentre of the earthquake and was, therefore, under no immediate threat.

2. Did US authorities monitoring seismographic data have knowledge of the earthquake prior to its actual occurrence at 00.57 GMT on the 26th of December?

The question is whether there were indications of abnormal seismic activity prior to 01.00 GMT on the 26th of Dec.

The US Geological Survey confirmed that the earthquake which triggered the tidal wave measured 9.0 on the Richter scale and was the fourth largest quake since 1900. In such cases, one would expect evidence of abnormal seismic activity before the actual occurrence of a major earthquake.

3. Why is the US military Calling the Shots on Humanitarian Relief

Why in the wake of the disaster, is the US military (rather than civilian humanitarian/aid organizations operating under UN auspices) taking a lead role?

The US Pacific Command has been designated to coordinate the channeling of emergency relief? Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Rusty Blackman, commander of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa, has been designated to lead the emergency relief program

Lieutenant General Blackman was previously Chief of Staff for Coalition Forces Land Component Command, responsible for leading the Marines into Baghdad during "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Three "Marine disaster relief assessment teams" under Blackman's command have been sent to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

US military aircraft are conducting observation missions.

In a bitter irony, part of this operation is being coordinated out of America's Naval base in Diego Garcia, which was not struck by the tidal wave. Meanwhile, "USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, which was in Hong Kong when the earthquake and tsunamis struck, has been diverted to the Gulf of Thailand to support recovery operations" (Press Conference of Pacific Command ).

Two Aircraft Carriers have been sent to the region.

Why is it necessary for the US to mobilize so much military equipment? The pattern is unprecedented:

Conway said the Lincoln carrier strike group has 12 helicopters embarked that he said could be "extremely valuable" in recovery missions.

An additional 25 helicopters are aboard USS Bonhomme Richard, headed to the Bay of Bengal. Conway said the expeditionary strike group was in Guam and is forgoing port visits in Guam and Singapore and expects to arrive in the Bay of Bengal by Jan. 7.

Conway said the strike group, with its seven ships, 2,100 Marines and 1,400 sailors aboard, also has four Cobra helicopters that will be instrumented in reconnaissance efforts.

Because fresh water is one of the greatest needs in the region, Fargo has ordered seven ships — each capable of producing 90,000 gallons of fresh water a day — to the region. Conway said five of these ships are pre-positioned in Guam and two will come from Diego Garcia.

A field hospital ship pre-positioned in Guam would also be ordered to the region, depending on findings of the disaster relief assessment teams and need, Conway said. (Ibid)

Why has a senior commander involved in the invasion of Iraq been assigned to lead the US emergency relief program?

On his website, GlobalResearch.ca, details are published of telexes and communications together with images and accurate time lines.

(Animation by Kenji Satake, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)

Sunday 26 December 2004 (GMT)

00.57 GMT: Between 00.57 GMT and 00.59 GMT, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake occurs on the seafloor near Aceh in northern Indonesia. (See http://ioc.unesco.org/itsu/ and other reports)

00.58 GMT: Saturday 25 December, 2.58 pm Hawaii Time (GMT-10) 26 Dec 00.58 GMT. US government's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center registers the earthquake on its seismic instruments. In other words at the time of its occurrence at 00.58 GMT.

shortly after 01.00 GMT: Earthquake hits several cities in Indonesia, creates panic in urban areas in peninsular Malaysia. The news of the earthquakes is reported immediately.

01.3O GMT: Phuket and Coast of Thailand: The tidal wave hits to coastline shortly after 8.30 am, 01.30 GMT

02.30 GMT: Colombo Sri Lanka and Eastern Coast of Sri Lanka, the tidal wave hits the coastal regions close to the capital Colombo, according to report at 8.30 am local time, 02.30 GMT (an hour and a half after the earthquake)

02.45 GMT: India's Eastern Coastline. The tsunami hits India's eastern coast from 6:15 a.m.(2:45 GMT)

04.00 GMT: Male, Maldives: From about 9:00 am (0400 GMT), three hours after the earthquake, the capital, Male, and other parts of the country were flooded by the tsunami. (more than three hours after the earthquake)

11.00 GMT (approximate time according to news dispatches): East Coast of Africa is hit. More than ten hours after the earthquake

The survivors from Great Nicobar Island spent four days without food before trekking through the jungle to the wrecked headquarters settlement at Campbell Bay.

When they arrived they discovered the island's assistant commissioner and deputy assistant of police eating a plate of biryani, witnesses said.

The crowd of Punjabi settlers took the men hostage, demanding that they provide help to the hundreds of islanders who were starving in the jungle.

"The assistant commissioner was eating biryani in his guesthouse," one witness, Lilly Ommen, said. "The men arrived and pointed out that they were starving. They also said there were people stuck in the forest with nothing, as well as many dead bodies."

Mrs Ommen, who is now in a church-run refugee camp in the island's capital, Port Blair, said the group had survived after finding a sack of rice floating in the sea. They had made their way to Campbell Bay with a group of survivors by jumping over crocodile-infested canals.

"I'm very angry," Suresh, 22, a welder from Great Nicobar Island, added. "We saw these people eating biryani. But we had nothing but rice soaked in saltwater."

The assistant commissioner was released after promising to provide more food.

The kidnapping came amid mounting criticism of the Indian relief operation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where as many as 20,000 people have died.

According to aid agencies very little aid has reached the people who need it, with some island communities still waiting for help. Delhi has so far refused all offers of foreign assistance to the islands.

A group of aid workers from Oxfam who managed to reach Little Andaman Island yesterday described conditions there as appalling. They also said the local administration in Port Blair had made it virtually impossible for them to join the relief effort.

"The conditions are terrible. People are living in the open. They don't have a roof," Shaheen Nilofer, Oxfam's east India programme manager, said. "There are acute problems with water and sanitation. People have the right to receive humanitarian assistance. Who are they [the local administration] to decide we will take assistance from there and not from there? More people are going to die."

The Indian government says its rescue operation across the 435-mile long archipelago has been hampered by the islands' remoteness, and by the fact that pontoons and jetties have been washed away. On Great Nicobar, the tsunami and subsequent landslides have destroyed the island's only road.

"All the small boats have been destroyed. We urgently need boats with metal bottoms," Hoslo Jiwa, an aid worker, said, after touring Car Nicobar, the island worst affected by the disaster, on Saturday.

"You really need teams to hack their way through the jungle or use these small boats. On the really remote islands, God knows what is happening. They have only made aerial surveys and dropped packages."

The local administration in Port Blair puts the death toll across the 572-island archipelago at more than 3,000. But aid agencies say that figure is based on out-of-date voters' lists, and fails to take into account the thousands of illegal migrants living on the islands who are now missing. They say that on Car Nicobar Island alone, which was 80% destroyed, as many as 20,000 may have perished. From an unofficial population of 35,000, only 15,000 are still alive.  (The Guardian, UK)