U.S. Misguided Support For Uganda’s Congo War

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Date: February 10th, 2009
Name: Zyskandar A. Jaimot
Subject: Africa - Uganda - Congo
Comment: No where in this 'supposed article' did you mention the architect of this inanity - COLIN POWELL. WHY NOT??? Is it because the former general and Secretary-of-State is BLACK??? BLACKS can be 'FOOLS' also!!!

Editor's Note: Yes; Powell also is complicit in the crime.

Date: February 9th, 2009
Name: Nico van den Berge
Subject: Is this true?
Comment: Dear Carolyn, I read a lot of accusations in your comment, but they are not backed up by proof. You write that the Ugandan army always leaves bloodbaths in its way. That should prove that the Ugandan government this time around willingly created over 900 deaths in the north of Congo. As a Dutch correspondent working and living in Kampala for some three years I can't agree with these accusations. At least not without proof. A lot went wrong with this military operation. That's for sure.

Editor's Note: If you're a real correspondent (1) Why don't you go to the scene and interview people (2) Please ask President Museveni one question: Why did he ask Kofi Annan to block the United Nations investigation of war crimes by Uganda's army in eastern Congo when the army occupied eastern Congo from 1997-2003. This was reported in The Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2006
(3) In any event the writer is not saying the Ugandan army committed the instant massacres; she is saying don't be too quick to exonerate an army linked to several previous massacres

[Global News: Commentary]

Canada, February 7—The New York Times reported Saturday that the Government of the United States supported Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni in his December, 2008, invasion into the Democratic Republic of Congo in pursuit of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels; this U.S. collaboration with Museveni is infuriating.

How many thousands will die this time, and how many thousands of women will be raped, children disappear and hundreds of thousands become displaced, because the Uganda’s army, the UPDF, with American support entered the DRC on a doomed invasion pursuing the leaders of the LRA?

The excuse for opting for the military solution is that the rebels had refused to sign a peace agreement. Then again, neither had the Government of Uganda. The Uganda government simply did what it had done countless of times before and undermined the peace talks; this time with all the weaponry it had mustered with the help of the Americans, and with ex-president George Bush’s okay.

Who cares how many thousands of innocent lives will be lost.

We hear a litany of reports now about how "bloodthirsty" the LRA is. No one points out that everywhere that Uganda’s army, the UPDF/NRA goes, there is a bloodbath; the same bloodcurdling atrocities, and massive displacement of innocent people all of which is always blamed on the other side.

Think! Luweero in Uganda; think the Sudan; think the DRC; think Rwanda; and most important that we do not ever forget, think northern Uganda.

Two thirds of the people in northern Uganda live below the poverty line as a result of the conditions they were forced to live in for 20-plus years because of the treatment by the Museveni government and its failure to protect them from attacks, from disease, from the loss of their land. They have been deprived of education and don’t even have access to clean water.

The war in the northern part of Uganda was carefully planned by the Museveni government and the US government has played a key role in the background as it has just done in sponsoring this new war in DRC. Anyone, including Museveni, could have predicted what would happen if the UPDF attacked the LRA in Congo’s Garamba region.

So, is the depopulation of eastern DRC and northern Uganda a part of the policy of the US government? Many riches ate to be had and all that newly-discovered oil; if only all those inconvenient inhabitants, called humans, weren't in the way.

One can only hope that the new administration in Washington will stop sponsoring corrupt evil dictators and show that Americans value all human lives no matter where they live.