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  • Obama sends 100 U.S. military advisors to Uganda

    Obama sends 100 U.S. military advisors to Uganda
    Obama sends 100 U.S. military advisors to Uganda | The Envoy - Yahoo! News
    By Laura Rozen | The Envoy – 2 hrs 1 min ago

    Joseph Kony, commander of the Lords' Resistance Army in 2006. (Stuart Price/AFP/Getty …
    The Obama administration announced plans on Friday to send about 100 U.S. combat forces to Uganda to act as military advisers to Ugandan and African Union forces fighting the Lords' Resistance Army (LRA). The U.S. forces will lend assistance to other central African nations trying to apprehend the LRA's top commanders and bring them to justice, and to bring about an end the group's two-decade campaign of atrocities and destabilization of the region, the administration said.

    President Obama announced the decision in an official notification letter to Congress Friday. In the letter, Obama said that he had sent the initial team of armed U.S. combat troops to Uganda on Oct. 12. He explained that the rest of the roughly 100 military advisers would be deployed over the next month to Uganda--as well as to the neighboring countries of South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.

    He also said that while U.S. troops would be authorized to use force for self defense they are not operating under an explicit combat mission.

    "For more than two decades, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa," Obama said in the letter. "In furtherance of the Congress's stated policy, I have authorized a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of [LRA commander] Joseph Kony from the battlefield."

    "On October 12, the initial team of U.S. military personnel with appropriate combat equipment deployed to Uganda," the letter explained. "During the next month, additional forces will deploy, including a second combat-equipped team and associated headquarters, communications, and logistics personnel. The total number of U.S. military personnel deploying for this mission is approximately 100."

    The deployed American forces "will act as advisors to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA," Obama wrote, adding that their role will be to "provide information, advice, and assistance" to troops from partner nations in the region. Some U.S. troops may "deploy into Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo," Obama also said, if those governments agree.

    The Lords' Resistance Army has been accused of killings and committing widespread atrocities against civilians, and the abduction of an estimated 3,000 children, in its two decades of warfare against the Ugandan government.

    Its top commander, Joseph Kony, 50, "styles himself as a prophet and spirit medium and practices a blend of mysticism and apocalyptic Protestant Christianity," the Washington Post's William Branigin wrote Friday. "He formed his Lord's Resistance Army from the remnants of the Holy Spirit Movement, an armed group led by his aunt that fought the Ugandan government in the late 1980s."

    Kony and four deputies are the subjects of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court in the Hague in 2005.
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

  • #2
    Isn't this exactly how the US' involvement in Vietnam started?
    Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

    Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

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    • #3
      There aren't that many LRA fighters for starters - a couple thousand.
      To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

      Comment


      • #4
        2,000 people have "murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa" for over 2 decades? In a region where every other person has a gun in their hands and an RPG-7 stashed away somewhere?
        Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

        Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by bigross86 View Post
          2,000 people have "murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa" for over 2 decades? In a region where every other person has a gun in their hands and an RPG-7 stashed away somewhere?
          Yep. Fair cop though, the Ugandans need help and the Americans don't carry the colonial baggage
          In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

          Leibniz

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          • #6
            That Nobel Peace Prize sure came in handy.

            The question is did he apologize first before sending in the troops or will he apologize later?
            "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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            • #7
              Good mission.

              This is exactly what AFRICOM was formed to do....and in 3rd SFG's core mission.

              And Pari is right...the US does not have the taint of colonialism to Africans.
              “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
              Mark Twain

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by bigross86 View Post
                2,000 people have "murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa" for over 2 decades? In a region where every other person has a gun in their hands and an RPG-7 stashed away somewhere?
                The size of the LRA has waxed & waned over time. It is currently in decline & has been since it stopped getting aid from Sudan. The fact that neighbouring Sth Sudan & the DRC have been war zones for most of this time (or longer) has helped. ALso keep in mind that the LRA has some sort of support structure among some members of the large Acholi tribe. It is estimated to have killed about 12,000, kidnapped over 50,000 (half of them kids) & raped & mutilated countless thousands of others. Millions have been made refugees.
                sigpic

                Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                • #9
                  Ugandan woman recalls harrowing tale of captivity
                  By Moni Basu, CNN
                  updated 6:00 PM EST, Sun October 23, 2011
                  Ugandan woman recalls harrowing tale of captivity - CNN.com
                  Ex-child slave takes on Rush Limbaugh
                  STORY HIGHLIGHTS

                  The Lord's Resistance Army abducted Evelyn Apoko when she was only 12
                  She was beaten, abused and suffered horrific injuries from a bomb blast
                  She escaped after three years and U.S. doctors operated on her face
                  Recently, she told Rush Limbaugh he was wrong to call the LRA Christians

                  Evelyn Apoko shares her story Sunday night on "CNN Newsroom." Tune in at 6 ET.

                  (CNN) -- What does a 22-year-old see when she looks at herself in the mirror?

                  Evelyn Apoko sees a face marred by war, one that is jarring to others. Even she can't stand to look sometimes.

                  Doctors reconstructed her jaw, removed scars and balanced her lips. In the coming days, she will get a new jaw implant, a bone graft and a set of upper teeth.

                  "I see me," she says, after pausing to think about how she might describe her reflection. "I look into my eyes and I know there is something there."

                  That something came from three harrowing years of captivity and the inner fortitude that fueled her desire to survive, so that she could live to tell about the ugliness she saw.

                  One summer night in 2001, Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas snatched Apoko from a community center near her home in Gulu district, Uganda. Notorious for their cold-blooded cruelty, the LRA beat her, tortured her.

                  She chooses not to discuss all the details but says this: if she didn't do what the LRA told her, she knew she would die.

                  Apoko's tale, sadly, is not uncommon. She is among thousands of children abducted by the LRA.

                  Yet her pleas, and the pleas of all others who have tried to put an end to the abuse and killings committed by the LRA, have fallen largely on deaf years, she says.

                  As she awaits her final round of surgery in Austin, Texas, Apoko is glad that the LRA-instigated conflict, the longest running in Africa, finally made headlines this year.

                  She rejoiced in President Barack Obama's decision last week to send 100 U.S. military advisers to the Central African Republic to help hunt down LRA leaders. And she rebuked conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who lambasted Obama and defended the LRA as Christians aiming to remove dictatorship.

                  "Lord's Resistance Army are Christians," Limbaugh said. "They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops, to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them."

                  "Dear Mr. Limbaugh," Apoko responded in a video message she sent to him.

                  "My name is Evelyn. I am a former abducted child. My heart breaks when I hear your message about the LRA."

                  She had no mouth left

                  Apoko, an ethnic Acholi, hailed from a poor family of nine children and grew up working on the farm with her parents. They grew corn, ground nut, cassava, sweet potatoes.

                  She was a night commuter, as were many children in her district. Every night, she traveled almost 10 miles just to sleep in the town center, where her parents felt she would be safer under near other public buildings and under the watch of the Ugandan army. In many cases, parents put their children in cages to protect them from the LRA.

                  The LRA sprouted as a rebel movement in the late 1980s among the Acholi people in marginalized northern Uganda. But if there was a group ideology, little remains today.

                  Human rights groups say the LRA is known as a cult group that follows the self-proclaimed spiritual powers of its leader, Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for atrocities. For more than two decades, the LRA has targeted civilians and terrorized them in Uganda and other neighboring nations.

                  When the LRA's ruthless ways dwindled support from the Acholi people, it began abducting children to carry on the fight. The group liked to kidnap boys and girls between the ages of nine and 12 -- strong enough to shoot a gun, small enough to squeeze through a window, young enough to have their moral compasses recalibrated to kill.

                  Apoko was one of them.

                  "It is not uncommon for the girls who are abducted to be converted into sex slaves or forced into marriages with LRA fighters," according to Daniel DePetris, associate editor of the Maxwell Journal of Counterterrorism and Security Analysis.

                  "The boys who are snatched up have two choices, which are not really choices at all. Either they fight to the death for Kony's apocalyptic worldview, or they can expect to be executed and dumped into a mass grave filled with their victims," DePetris wrote in a CNN article.

                  Or, sometimes, the girls are used as mules, says Jedidiah Jenkins, spokesman for the advocacy group Invisible Children.

                  Apoko recalled walking and walking. Day and night. Without food, without water. She was forced to carry things.

                  The LRA stays alive by constantly moving, Jenkins said. Through the thick, remote jungles of southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. There, people are poor and disconnected from the rest of the world.

                  "The LRA are basically like sharks," Jenkins says. "When people get too tired, they just kill them."

                  Or in the very least, hurt them. The LRA soldiers beat Apoko.

                  It was impossible to live among them and not be subjugated.

                  Sometimes Apoko got caught in ambushes or firefights. She saw other children die around her. She had not even reached her teenage years and yet, there was no one around to hold her, soothe her, tell her things would be alright.

                  Days turned to months. More than a year passed like this for Apoko.

                  One day, planes roared overhead -- the Ugandan and Congolese armies often raided the LRA. The winds were strong, the planes flew low.

                  A bomb exploded behind her. Her backpack, laden that day with heavy pots and pans, caught on fire.

                  She felt a sharp pain in her foot. She took her shoe off and saw it was full of blood.

                  She was carrying a child in her arms, desperate to find safe haven somewhere. And then she felt the blast of another bomb. Shrapnel tore into her body, mangled her flesh, shattered all her teeth. In place of her face, there was a giant hole, like a crater in the ground.

                  Her clothes dripped with blood. She gasped for air. She realized the child had died in her arms. She laid her down by her mother's body. She did not want them to be separated.

                  She remembers the guerrillas snapping pictures of her. They sent them to Kony to ascertain if she was worth saving. They were going to pull the trigger unless she could keep walking.

                  And so she did, even with her horrific wounds.

                  The LRA spared her life but refused her treatment. Soon, infection set in. She couldn't tell whether she would survive.

                  She had no jaw or mouth left so she couldn't eat or chew. Instead, she lay down on the ground and poured liquid food into her mouth.

                  She had only one set of clothes, constantly damp and smelly from the saliva that dribbled out.

                  She knew she was a better, kinder person than the people around her who had inflicted such cruelty. She knew she had to escape.

                  'Hardly human'

                  One night in the fall of 2004, Apoko she said she was going to the bathroom but she never went back. She ran through the forest the darkness and didn't stop until she reached safety in Uganda.

                  She was admitted to the Rachele Rehabilitation Center in northern Uganda, which takes in child soldiers and helps them assimilate back into normal life. And she was able to see her family again.

                  She first arrived for a series of surgeries in the United States in 2005 with the help of Cori Stern, a co-founder of the Strongheart Fellowship Program, which seeks to help young survivors of trauma heal and begin life anew.

                  In between her surgeries, she returned to Uganda to endure more tragedy. Her pregnant mother and the baby girl she was about to deliver died after they were poisoned.

                  Apoko arrived in America frightened and without speaking a word of English.

                  Those who sheltered her here are amazed that she is the same woman who delivered a recorded message to Rush Limbaugh earlier this month.

                  "The LRA is not Christian," she told the talk show host. "Joseph Kony and his commanders could hardly be considered human."

                  In the video, Apoko wore a necklace bearing the name of an abducted child, part of a campaign to raise money and awareness.

                  That is her mission now -- to bring peace to children who have suffered. She even wants to try her hand at making a documentary film. And next month, she will appear in an episode of "Facing Trauma," a series airing on Discovery Fit & Health channel about women who have suffered facial injury.

                  "Enough children have died and too many have been displaced," Apoko said in her video. "Every human being deserves peace in their life. We all deserve to live life without fear."

                  But all these years have gone by and efforts to quell LRA violence have not been successful.

                  Ironically, it was Limbaugh's statements about the LRA that has cast attention on a neglected conflict, said Jenkins, the spokesman for Invisible Children.

                  Apoko is still waiting to hear back from Limbaugh.

                  And waiting for the last round of surgery. The reflection in the mirror will perhaps be more pleasing to look at then. But she will always see "something there."
                  To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    And she rebuked conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who lambasted Obama and defended the LRA as Christians aiming to remove dictatorship.

                    "Lord's Resistance Army are Christians," Limbaugh said. "They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops, to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them."
                    I've heard this now & again from other conservative Americans. It truly scares me that people this ignorant are even allowed out of the house unescorted, let alone elect the most powerful leader in the world & even become influential opinion shapers. The whole '4 legs good, 2 legs bad' element of this is also scary: 'They are Christians, therefore they must be good', 'they are fighting muslims, so they must be good' (they were actually backed by muslims & mostly fighting other christians, but no matter); and the most pathetic of all 'Obama supports it, so it must be bad'. Wonder if everybody's favourite recovering addict will change his tune.
                    sigpic

                    Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                      I've heard this now & again from other conservative Americans. It truly scares me that people this ignorant are even allowed out of the house unescorted, let alone elect the most powerful leader in the world & even become influential opinion shapers. The whole '4 legs good, 2 legs bad' element of this is also scary: 'They are Christians, therefore they must be good', 'they are fighting muslims, so they must be good' (they were actually backed by muslims & mostly fighting other christians, but no matter); and the most pathetic of all 'Obama supports it, so it must be bad'. Wonder if everybody's favourite recovering addict will change his tune.
                      His comments are disgusting and pathetic.
                      The LRA is one of the most brutal organizations in the world. It forces children to join, then to rape and kill their mothers. They are sometimes forced to cannibalize their victims. Some soldiers there would bet on the gender of the baby of a pregnant woman, then cut off the woman's stomach, determine the gender (dunno how), then kill both the baby and the mother.
                      Just absolutely gruesome

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                      • #12
                        That is just a sick, ignorant comment...people like Rush just give right wingers a bad name.
                        "Draft beer, not people."

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                        • #13
                          1.I read an article a while ago that related how some rural Ugandans had to improvise some shotguns,determined to fight the next raid by the LRA.The word got around and the attack never came,IIRC.The guys showed some great initiative,but were so dirt poor they couldn't find 2000 bucks in the whole village to buy some proper weapons.AK's for 100$ are no farther than a few days drive,no matter where you're in Africa.

                          2.The Green Berets will probably have some great fun and will do some great good in the process.

                          Now,my point is that Uganda provided thousands of private contractors in Iraq.Said contractors have some modicum of military training.At the very least they can work as a fire team and point the guns in the right direction,which for Africa is more than enough.Yet we have the above 1&2.That tells the state of the affairs in what's supposed to be one of the positive examples on the continent .IMO,that's the real(and disheartening)news.
                          Those who know don't speak
                          He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

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