Friday, October 14, 2011

"Good Morning Vietnam!" ... Oops! I mean Uganda!

Note: It's Friday afternoon and time for the White House to reveal yet another war to the American people! Fridays' seem to be Obama's best day to announce bad news. It was on a Friday afternoon, months back, when we learned troops were sent to Libya. Now, this administration can say all it wants about "national interest", blah, blah, blah! However, sending troops to Africa as in an "advisory" compacity has the same ring as sending small waves of troops to Vietnam; ... just a war that escalated with time; with now a Memorial in Washington, DC as America's witness to how many of our troops died over a period of ten years. Americans today have been enduring another ten year,plus war that this administration refuses to call a "War on Terror"; talks about bringing troops home; while in his back pocket, SURPRISE! Do the Occupier demonstrators know about this?! Ladies and Gentlemen, WELCOME TO AFRICA! It must be Friday! Has Joseph Kony become America's "NEW" bin Laden?!

Joseph Kony

Hey, Hey LBJ

Obama Sends 100 US Troops to Uganda to Help Combat Lord’s Resistance Army

ABC NEWS

October 14, 2011

Jake Tapper

Two days ago President Obama authorized the deployment to Uganda of approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to help regional forces “remove from the battlefield” – meaning capture or kill – Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the LRA.

The forces will deploy beginning with a small group and grow over the next month to 100. They will ultimately go to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the permission of those countries.

The president made this announcement in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Friday afternoon, saying that “deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa.”

He said that “although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.”

The president said that for more than two decades the LRA has been responsible for having “murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa” and continues to “commit atrocities across the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan that have a disproportionate impact on regional security.”

The president in his letter noted that Congress passed “the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act,” signed into law on May 24, 2010, in which, the president said, “the Congress also expressed support for increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability.”

When the president signed that letter in May 2010, he said the bill “crystallizes the commitment of the United States to help bring an end to the brutality and destruction that have been a hallmark of the LRA across several countries for two decades, and to pursue a future of greater security and hope for the people of central Africa. The Lord’s Resistance Army preys on civilians – killing, raping, and mutilating the people of central Africa; stealing and brutalizing their children; and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Its leadership, indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, has no agenda and no purpose other than its own survival. It fills its ranks of fighters with the young boys and girls it abducts. By any measure, its actions are an affront to human dignity.”

Human Rights Watch has a great deal of information about the infamous LRA.

Update: A Defense Department official tells ABC’s Luis Martinez at the Pentagon that the U.S. troops will be in Africa “for a few months in an advisory role.”

- Jake Tapper