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xssve -> RE: Obama sending 100 troops to Uganda as "advisors." (3/30/2012 8:09:15 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Masta808
quote:
ORIGINAL: popeye1250
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/obama-sends-100-u-military-advisors-uganda-193812911.html
Isn't this how Vietnam started?
And why do we even have any relations or communications with Uganda?
I wonder how much "foreign aid" they're stealing?
I wish the election were next month instead of next year. Oblunder is insane.
Instead he should have said that uganda has WMDs. That worked out well for Iraq
Not far off the mark as it turns out: while the LRA and the Ugandan civil war has been a curse on Uganda, a conflict going back to colonial times, the ruling kleptocracy in the South was routinely slaughtering Northern Ugandans, from whence the LRA arose, led by Kony.
The fallout makes even Darfur look tame: Kony's tactic was to raid villages, kill the adults, kidnap the children, then retreat on a forced march back to his camps across the border in Sudan. On these marches, the children were forced to kill any children to young or tired to keep up, and then eat them, once they reached the camps in the Sudan, the boys would be trained as soldiers, the girls farmed to to his officers.
As a result, enormous numbers of civilians were herded into IDP camps (INternally Displaced Persons), where they faced rampant malnutrition and disease, and at the mercy of the Ugandan army, who torture the men and rape the women, while the Ugandan government skims the international aid and the funds provided to fight the LRA.
Now the thing is, this has been going on for over 20 years, rape is common, and Uganda has some of the highest AIDS rates in the world (actually less among the LRA: Kony is paranoid about STDS, adultery and premarital sex are punishable by death) - blamed on homosexuals, but more likely spread by rapists infected by eating bushmeat.
The good news is, the war itself is effectively over: nobody has seen Kony in like 5 years, most people think he's dead, the LRA's activities have diminished significantly, and the two sides are engaged in peace talks.
The bad news is, more oil has been discovered, and US "advisors" sent in in response to what probably is the most severe humanitarian crisis on the planet (and has been for 20 years), about the time it looks like it might be over.
Of course, they still have AIDS, Ebola, malaria and malnutrition, and a corrupt psycho-kleptocratic government grown fat skimming aid, so it will be interesting to see just what sort of changes our advisors will be able to effect, even insofar as making the world safe for Halliburton.
We could cynically pin this on Obama, but it's basically in line with Bush energy policy (in fact Obama is basically following through on the Bush policy in Uganda, this thing was put into play back around 2005 when the ICC issued a warrant for Kony, which actually hindered peace efforts), and it might be more productive to ask why abetting kleptocratic mass murderers is so critical to out energy policy to begin with.
i.e., there doesn't appear to be any "good" side here, other than the Ugandan people, just a side able to grant on Oil contracts for a price.
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