>>When it first happened, our PM Paul Martin got on the phone with Dubya, and offered whatever help he needed. George thanked Martin and said they didn't need any help yet.
>
>>Still in St. Bernard parish outside of New Orleans, a Canadian relief team showed up in 4 days.
>"If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, U.S. teams should be here faster than that," Stone said. Stone is the fire chief in the area.
>
>So you're saying that US refused Canadian's offer of help, but the Canadians showed up anyway.... Both of those events don't sound right. Can a country show up without the permission of the host country?

Here's a thing I heard. USA did'nt want help period. An explanation given for that reaction is that USA is the BIG country. The one dictating the rules all over the world. So with that in mind President Bush thought that americans would be able to handle it all by themselves. They probably could but I think that they underestimated what had to be done FAST. So after re-evaluating they accepted help from all other countries offering help.

This is a theory and there are many others. Anyways one thing for sure is that this is a very complex situation.