NEVER SEE THE U.N. DO THIS

The Navy is moving the hospital ship USNS Comfort from Baltimore to New Orleans. In the summer of 1989, I was a summer clerk for a law firm in Norfolk when Comfort was pulled out of drydock. The ship, a converted oil tanker like her sister Mercy, is just a little longer than an Iowa-class battleship and watching the tugs manuever her in the Elizabeth River between Norfolk and Portsmouth was quite a sight to see.

The ship is fitted as an 1000-bed hospital capable of providing Level I trauma care along with anything a physician could possibly want. At the time she was put into military service, I remember reading that if she was a land-based hospital, it would be the 10th largest in America. (I knew in the summer of 1990 that H.W. was serious about getting Saddam out of Kuwait when Comfort put to sea because it showed the President was ready to launch something that could result in mass casualties.) Comfort will give the taxpayers their money's worth when she arrives on station.