Why was the Haiti earthquake so devastating?

There's one fairly unsettling reason.

At Common Dreams Ted Rall tells us why the Haitian earthquake was Made in the USA.

As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere..."

Gee, I wonder how that happened?

Hat tip to the Cranky Linguist, who points out a neglected (or contradicted, depending on where you get your "news") truth:

There were [before the quake] 300-400 Cuban doctors and other health workers in Haiti, doing the job the US is mostly AWOL from of providing ongoing health care to Haitian people.