Aruba, rashly and immediately, sent in 300 marines; three Royal Dutch Air Force F16s; gave 4,000 civil servants a half-day off to search; and local businesses donated over $1-million in free accomodation, food, alcoholic beverages and casino comps to the Holloway family and their associated TexasEquuSearch.

The US government sent, upon the express intercession of Representative the Honorable Spencer Bachus, 13 FBI agents to Aruba.

I say rashly because, recently, fellow Mountain Brook, Alabama, trip participants have released photographs of pre- and post-Aruba parties which indicate that alcohol use (and unlawful abuse, because the legal drinking age in Alabama is 21) was and is rife amongst Natalee and her coterie of friends.

Aruba has spent over 40 per cent of its 2005 policing budget investigating what may very well have been an alcohol or drug overdose that occurred at the hotel where the trip participants were staying (there are witnesses, including trip participants, who attest to having seen the young lady back at the hotel after the Aruban youth left her on the beach).

Ms Hawks states, as an American, that "I would never send anyone in my family or in my business to Aruba."

All that I can say, as a Canadian, is that another American going missing on Aruba would bankrupt the country and its courteous people (and few Caribbean countries could afford to do as much as Aruba, its people, its businesses and the Dutch did for this family -- who have repaid the kindness with boycott calls and nightly on-air outbursts of rudeness and unsupported sensationalism).

The families, on the natural father's and mother's individual sides, have three ongoing, unmonitored and non-reporting donation funds that I am aware of, and donations made to these funds must total in the tens of millions of dollars.

Natalee's brother had a $37,000 Toyota Tundra purchased for him in mid-August; and a Harley Davidson Fat Boy was purchased around the same time.

You state, "Her family deserved better ." I must ask, "How much better off do you want her family to be?"

The millions of dollars expended on the in-Aruba and in-America searches for this one tourist who vanished after a week of continuous partying could have greatly enhanced the well-being of many, many Arubans (who wouldn't be rude and who would have the grace to give thanks where thanks are due).

Hester Heemster
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada