obama deploys combat troops to Africa

[hypocritexposer]

Obama sending troops to central Africa to aid fight against rebels

President Obama has deployed troops to central Africa to aid in the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army. In a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner, Obama says 12 troops with "appropriate combat equipment" were deployed on October 12 and approximately 100 in total will be deployed including a second combat team and headquarters, communications and logistics personnel. The forces will provide information and advise and assist "select partner nation forces," Obama explains. The troops will not fight except in self-defense. The full letter

obama's letter to congress at link

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/14/obama-sending-combat-troops-to-central-africa-to-aid-rebel-fight/

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 Joseph Kony from the battlefield.

 

[Steve]

I had to look into this a bit .. not wanting to jump in and attack the President for his actions..

but in looking into Uganda and the muddled mess it is in... I would question his intelligence and the constitutionality of the action...

here is my take on it...

Idi Amin led a brutal regime... after he was outed the corruption continued..

then a new dictator came on the scene, Marxist Museveni, he has been in charge for the last 25 years despite a two term limit..

during his 24 years he has acquired an army, part of the army is made up of foreign fighters.. fighters who have attacked Rwanda leading to genocide.. Sudan leading to a long endured civil war, and the Cong repeatedly..

The Sudan has thus supported the lord army against Museveni.

and somewhere in the middle of all this he is implicated in Kenya..
(not sure the details on that.. so I'll have to check back later) ..

The country is polarized with many Ugandans objecting to [the constitutional amendments]. If Parliament goes ahead and removes term limits this may cause serious unrest, political strife and may lead to turmoil both through the transition period and there after ... We would therefore like to appeal to President Museveni to respect himself, the people who elected him and the Constitution under which he was voted President in 2001 when he promised the country and the world at large to hand over power peacefully and in an orderly manner at the end of his second and last term. Otherwise his insistence to stand again will expose him as a consummate liar and the biggest political fraudster this country has ever known

"Many observers see Museveni's efforts to amend the constitution as a re-run of a common problem that afflicts many African leaders – an unwillingness to follow constitutional norms and give up power"

as for human rights...

– although Museveni later received criticism for using child soldiers. we welcomed them," said one villager, "but then they started to arrest people and kill them

n March 1989, Amnesty International published a human rights report on Uganda, entitled Uganda, the Human Rights Record 1986–1989. It documented gross human rights violations committed by NRA troops. In one of the most intense phases of the war, between October and December 1988, the NRA forcibly cleared approximately 100,000 people from their homes in and around Gulu town. Soldiers committed hundreds of extrajudicial executions as they forcibly moved people, burning down homes and granaries.

In December 2005, the International Court of Justice ruled that Uganda must pay compensation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for human rights violations during the Second Congo War

as for fairly elected..

the Supreme Court of Uganda. The court ruled that the elections were not free and fair but declined to nullify the outcome

The most recent presidential elections were held in 2006 where again Museveni prevailed over Dr Besigye scoring 59% of the vote. The election petition in this case had more evidence of election malpractice but by a 4:3 decision, the result was upheld. As before, the judges ruled as they ruled in the 2001 petition.

The Supreme Court of Uganda later ruled that the election was marred by intimidation, violence, voter disenfranchisement, and other irregularities. However, the Court voted 4-3 to uphold the results of the election.

so the last three elections were not fair or free.. and the second had more evidence of malpractice.. but the dictator was allowed to stay in charge..

I guess it is better to leave a dictator in place then be put to death?

but he has been praised for reducing Aids in Uganda...

the 2009 Ugandan efforts to institute the death penalty for homosexuality,

I wouldn't exactly brag about them but I am sure Iran supports their Aids efforts...

and as for those pesky Constitutional term limits..

Museveni was re-elected on 20 February 2011 with a 68% majority with 59% of registered voters having voted.These election results were disputed by both the European Union and the opposition,"The electoral process was marred with avoidable administrative and logistical failures"

let see.. a term as a dictator,.. then "free, fair" elections are held.. all marred by fraud.. and when that wore thin, he trumped up some charges and jailed his opponent but was able to win the last with only the use of fraud again.. (He has been President of Uganda since 26 January 1986.)

this like many other dictators is not a person we should be helping.. let alone putting American service members lives on the line..

 

[Steve]

looks like the government we are now helping has a reputation., or should i use the term Regime?, or just the Dictator we are helping?

At times the Ugandan government army has also committed atrocities, which has benefited Kony's credibility.[according to whom?] The government has also recruited children in the army, and its army has been accused of mass rapes both in Uganda and in Congo

ever wonder why we haven't heard about any of the Marxist Dictators crimes on the news??

 

[Steve]

on the other side..

Robert Gersony, in a report funded by United States Embassy in Kampala in 1997, concluded that "the LRA has no political program or ideology, at least none that the local population has heard or can understand."

Obita also stated that the LRA's objectives are:

To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people.
To fight for the immediate restoration of competitive multi-party democracy in Uganda.
To see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans.
To ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda.
To ensure unity, sovereignty and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans
To bring to an end to the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the NRA ideology.

The International Crisis Group has stated that "the LRA is not motivated by any identifiable political agenda, and its military strategy and tactics reflect this.

Yoweri Museveni (Dictator/president of Uganda) was the first to use child soldiers in this conflict.[32]

Since the LRA first started fighting in 1987 they may have forced well over 10,000 boys and girls into combat, often killing family, neighbors and school teachers in the process

Many of these children were put on the front lines so the casualty rate for these children has been high. They have often used children to fight because they are easy to replace by raiding schools or villages.[34] The soldiers are organized into independent brigades of 10 or 20 soldiers.

In August the Lord's Resistance army attacked the Our Lady Queen of Peace church in Ezo on the Feast of the Assumption while worshippers were at prayer. They proceeded to desecrate first the Eucharist then the altar itself, after which they abducted seventeen people of ages ranging from teens to twenties. One was tied to a tree and murdered soon after the initial attack.[55] This event caused Sudanese[55] Archbishop John Baptist Odama to call on the international community for help in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis

the LRA is not by any description Christians.. it may have started out initially with it's first leader, now dead, but now it is more a twisted cult, with a made up set of rules and a leader who thinks he is now the lord..

this by any account is one sick bunch of terrorists.. not completely unlike the dictator on the other side..

 

[Steve]

our unclassified history of involvement..

In 2006, the United Nations mounted a covert operation to capture or kill Joseph Kony. A squad of U.S.-trained Guatemalan Special Ops soldiers set out into Congo's Garamba National Park, a longtime LRA refuge and the scene of the 2008–2009 Garamba offensive. Trained in jungle warfare and accustomed to surviving in the bush for long stretches, the Guatemalans were equipped with M-16s and the latest special-operations technology. Five LRA soldiers were killed and none of the Special Ops soldiers survived. According to one account, the commander of the Special Ops soldiers was beheaded. The battle, which lasted for several hours, included hand to hand combat. Reports put the U.N. dead at eight to forty. The LRA left the corpses in the jungle but took the weapons—including heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.

well that didn't work out well... to say the least..

In May 2009, U.S. President Obama signed into law the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act,[46] legislation aimed at stopping Joseph Kony and the LRA. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate on March 11, 2010 with 65 Senators as cosponsors, then passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on May 13, 2010 with 202 Representatives as cosponsors. On November 24, President Obama delivered the strategy to disarm Joseph Kony and the LRA.

Efforts by the Ugandan army in early 2009 ('Operation Lightning Thunder') to inflict a final military defeat on the LRA were not fully successful. Rather, the US-supported operation resulted in brutal revenge attacks by the LRA, with over 1,000 people killed in Congo and Sudan. The military action in the DRC did not result in the capture or killing of Kony, who remained elusive.

On October 14, 2011, United States President Barack Obama announced that he had ordered the deployment of 100 U.S. military advisers (with a mandate to train, assist and provide intelligence) to help combat the Lord's Resistance Army.[58] It has been reported that the bulk of the troops are from the Army Special Forces.[59] Obama said that the deployment did not need explicit approval from congress, as the 2010 Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act already authorized "increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability". The military advisers will be armed, and will provide assistance and advice, but "will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense". The advisers will operate in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, subject to approval by those states. The military advisors will not operate independently of the host states. Human Rights Watch welcomed the deployment, which they had previously advocated for.[60] General Carter Ham, the head of US Africa Command, said last week that his best estimate was that Kony was probably in the Central African Republic, not located in Uganda.

after researching this I feel we should not be involved, hopefully our involvement will be limited and the thugs will soon be brought to justice..

 

[Steve]

about the terrorist/cult leader

Joseph Kony was born in 1961 in Odek, a village east of Gulu in northern Uganda[1][3] Kony was the son of farmers. He had a good relationship with his siblings, but if they crossed him he came down hard on them.[7] As a teenager, Kony apprenticed as the village witch doctor under his older brother, Jamie Brow,

Joseph Kony was thought among followers and detractors alike to have been possessed by spirits; he has been portrayed as either the Messiah or the Devil. He reportedly made annual trips to the Ato Hills in Uganda. He would allegedly ascend to the highest of the hills and lie down in the hot sun for days. He would be covered by a blanket of red termites that slashed deeply into his skin. Oil from the Yao plant was spread over his body. Then he would enter a cave and stay in seclusion for weeks.

Gulu is a city in Northern Uganda
The years since 1986 to 2006 have been war ridden, first attacts against civiliants were initiated in 1986 by the Museveni's government force called NRA meaning National Resistance Army now known as UPDF.

In 1996 the Ugandan government ordered all civilians to go in to concentration camps called "Internally Displacement Camps". By 2005 World Health Organization in Uganda had reported that there were 5000 exess deaths per week due to camp conditions alone besides cross-fire casualties. Several campaings such as Stop the Genocide in Northern Uganda (StGiNU), demanded the immediate closure of the concentration camps in the North of the country.

the guy is one sick twisted wackjob..

but by the look of how his community (Gula)was treated by Dictator Museveni,... a person can see how this disturbed psychotic witch doctor with christian upbringings was made.

 

[Faster horses]

And we have 100 of our best over there in harms way...
and I'm still not really sure of the reason. Dictators and fighters
are everywhere, so why did Obama pick this one to go after?

Something funny here, if you ask me.

 

[hypocritexposer]

And we have 100 of our best over there in harms way...
and I'm still not really sure of the reason. Dictators and fighters
are everywhere, so why did Obama pick this one to go after?

Something funny here, if you ask me.

obama has sided with a marxist dictator, not surprising at all.

the "rebels" are fighting for freedom from a dictator

What ever happened to the President consulting congress before sending troops into a foreign Countries?

It's almost like he's a marxist dictator

 

[Steve]

still haven't figured out the Kenyan connection to the Dictator, Uganda dictator that is,, and how he was involved in or interfering with the Kenyans legally elected officials..

or how it plays into Obama's support for the local Ugandan dictator..

 

[Lonecowboy]

Do you think this has any bearing on it?

After President Barack Obama announced earlier this week that he would be sending American troops into Uganda, WND uncovered billionaire activist George Soros' ties both to the political pressure behind the decision and to the African nation's fledgling oil industry.

Soros sits on the executive board of an influential "crisis management organization" that recently recommended the U.S. deploy a special advisory military team to Uganda to help with operations and run an intelligence platform, a recommendation Obama's action seems to fulfill.

The president emeritus of that organization, the International Crisis Group, is also the principal author of "Responsibility to Protect," the military doctrine used by Obama to justify the U.S.-led NATO campaign in Libya.

Soros' own Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that has been cited many times by activists urging intervention in Uganda.

Authors and advisers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, including a center founded and led by Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, also helped to found the International Criminal Court.

Several of the doctrine's main founders also sit on boards with Soros, who is a major proponent of the doctrine.


Soros also maintains close ties to oil interests in Uganda. His organizations have been leading efforts purportedly to facilitate more transparency in Uganda's oil industry, which is being tightly controlled by the country's leadership.



Soros' hand in Ugandan oil industry

Oil exploration began in Uganda's northwestern Lake Albert basin nearly a decade ago, with initial strikes being made in 2006.

Uganda's Energy Ministry estimates the country has over 2 billion barrels of oil, with some estimates going as high as 6 billion barrels. Production is set to begin in 2015, delayed from 2013 in part because the country has not put in place a regulatory framework for the oil industry.

A 2008 national oil and gas policy, proposed with aid from a Soros-funded group, was supposed to be a general road map for the handling and use of the oil. However, the policy's recommendations have been largely ignored, with critics accusing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of corruption and of tightening his grip on the African country's emerging oil sector.

Soros himself has been closely tied to oil and other interests in Uganda.

In 2008, the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute brought together stakeholders from Uganda and other East African countries to discuss critical governance issues, including the formation of what became Uganda's national oil and gas policy.

Also in 2008, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, a grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch, helped established the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, or PWYP, which was purportedly launched to coordinate and streamline the efforts of the government in promoting transparency and accountability in the oil sector.

Also, a steering committee was formed for PWYP Uganda to develop an agenda for implementing the oil advocacy initiatives and a constitution to guide PWYP's oil work.

PWYP has since 2006 hosted a number of training workshops in Uganda purportedly to promote contract transparency in Uganda's oil sector.

PWYP is directly funded by Soros' Open Society as well as the the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute. PWYP international is actually hosted by the Open Society Foundation in London.

The billionaire's Open Society Institute, meanwhile, runs numerous offices in Uganda. It maintains a country manager in Uganda, as well as the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, which supports work in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

The Open Society Institute runs a Ugandan Youth Action Fund, which states its mission is to "identify, inspire, and support small groups of dedicated young people who can mobilize and influence large numbers of their peers to promote open society ideals."

U.S. troops to Uganda

Obama yesterday notified House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that he plans to send about 100 military personnel, mostly Special Operations Forces, to central Africa. The first troops reportedly arrived in Uganda on Wednesday.

The U.S. mission will be to advise forces seeking to kill or capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA. Kony is accused of major human rights atrocities. He is on the U.S. terrorist list and is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

In a letter on Friday, Obama announced the initial team of U.S. military personnel "with appropriate combat equipment" deployed to Uganda on Wednesday. Other forces deploying include "a second combat-equipped team and associated headquarters, communications and logistics personnel."

"Our forces will provide information, advice and assistance to select partner nation forces," he said.

Both conservatives and liberals have raised questions about whether military involvement in Uganda advances U.S. interests.

Writing in The Atlantic yesterday, Max Fisher noted the Obama administration last year approved special forces bases and operations across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.

"But those operations, large and small, target terrorist groups and rogue states that threaten the U.S. – something the Lord's Resistance Army could not possibly do," he wrote.

"It's difficult to find a U.S. interest at stake in the Lord's Resistance Army's campaign of violence," continued Fisher. "It's possible that there's some immediate U.S. interest at stake we can't obviously see."

Bill Roggio, the managing editor of The Long War Journal, referred to the Obama administration's stated rationale for sending troops "puzzling," claiming the LRA does not present a national security threat to the U.S. – "despite what President Obama said."

Tea-party-backed presidential candidate Michele Bachmann also questioned the wisdom of Obama's move to send U.S. troops to Uganda.

"When it comes to sending our brave men and women into foreign nations, we have to first demonstrate a vital American national interest before we send our troops in," she said at a campaign stop yesterday in Iowa.

Soros group: Send military advisors to Uganda

In April 2010 Soros' International Crisis Group, or ICG, released a report sent to the White House and key lawmakers advising the U.S. military run special operations in Uganda to seek Kony's capture.

The report states, "To the U.S. government: Deploy a team to the theatre of operations to run an intelligence platform that centralizes all operational information from the Ugandan and other armies, as well as the U.N. and civilian networks, and provides analysis to the Ugandans to better target military operations."

Since 2008 the U.S. has been providing financial aid in the form of military equipment to Uganda and the other regional countries to fight Kony's LRA, but Obama's new deployment escalates the direct U.S. involvement.

Soros sits in the ICG's executive board along with Samuel Berger, Bill Clinton's former national security advisor; George J. Mitchell, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader who served as a Mideast envoy to both Obama and President Bush; and Javier Solana, a socialist activist who is NATO's former secretary-general as well as the former foreign affairs minister of Spain.

Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is the ICG's senior advisor.

The ICG's president emeritus is Gareth Evans, who, together with activist Ramesh Thakur, is the original founder of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, with the duo even coining the term "responsibility to protect."

Both Evans and Thakur serve as advisory board members of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, the main group pushing the doctrine.

As WND first exposed, Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect.

Soros' Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Samantha Power, Arafat deputy

Meanwhile, a closer look at the Soros-funded Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect is telling. Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

WND was first to report the committee that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

Also, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect. The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term "responsibility to protect" while defining its guidelines.

The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, was Carr's founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect.

With Power's center on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya, widely regarded as test of Responsibility to Protect in action.

In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign in Libya, Obama cited the doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.

Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege, but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of "war crimes," "genocide," "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic cleansing."

The term "war crimes" has at times been indiscriminately used by various United Nations-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops who commit alleged "war crimes" overseas.

Soros: Right to 'penetrate nation-states'

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article titled "The People's Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World's Most Vulnerable Populations."

In the article Soros said, "True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments."

"If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified," Soros wrote. "By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens.

"In particular," he continued, "the principle of the people's sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict."

'One World Order'

The Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, meanwhile, works in partnership with the World Federalist Movement, a group that promotes democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power. The Movement is a main coordinator and member of Responsibility to Protect Center.

WND reported that Responsibility doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a "global rebalancing" and "international redistribution" to create a "New World Order."

In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, "Toward a new world order," Thakur wrote, "Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution."

He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, "Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions."

In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.

"The West's bullying approach to developing nations won't work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia," he wrote. "A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train."

Thakur continued: "Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations."

Thakur contended "the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of 'superior' Western power."

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Mike]

It's a piece of cake. Just follow the money...................

 

[flounder]

I had to look into this a bit .. not wanting to jump in and attack the President for his actions..

"

:lol2: :lol2: :lol: :disagree: :liar:

 

[Faster horses]

I take pleasure in being the first to tell you:

Steve does not lie. He doesn't need to. The TRUTH
is on his side.

Too bad for you, if you want to believe otherwise.

 

[katrina]

Steve, Thanks for doing the research on this..... Nice eye opener that we would never hear form the news media..

 

[hopalong]

And told to us with out a lot of useless snips and garbage as opposed to the h/s drop out self imposed expert DR terry, who posts useless crap!!!

EH terry the wann a be?????

 

[Steve]

I had to look into this a bit .. not wanting to jump in and attack the President for his actions..

"

:lol2: :lol2: :lol: :disagree: :liar:

I thought I presented all sides of this.. fairly and honestly.. I am really sorry if you can't understand that..

but let me break it down to a 3rd grade level..

there is no good guy here in this fight in Uganda..

there is a bad guy and his government forces who have committed atrocities

and a sick crazy psycho guy.. and his followers who have committed atrocities.



Just in case..

atrocitiesplural of a·troc·i·ty (Noun)
Noun:

An extremely wicked or cruel act: "war atrocities".

Uganda: officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, which is also bordered by Kenya and Tanzania.

(it's the little yellow country with the big arrow pointing to it!)