...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Friday, October 08, 2004
      ( 11:06 AM )
 
Doing Right Wrong by Afghanistan

Yesterday marked the third anniversary of the beginning of American bombing of Afghanistan (not that we heard anything about that). We struck out a little less than a month after 9/11, ostensibly to punish those who gave haven to Osama bin Laden, and to catch Osama bin Laden himself. Of course, 15 out of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, and the rest were from other countries (not Afghanistan). So our massive bombs fell all over a country that has been brutalized for 30 years already. Now, the fact that we left the effort midstream in order to invade Iraq, that of course Osama bin Laden is free as a bird, that we put in power an American puppet who only years before had been lobbying the White House to work with the Taliban, that the Taliban are in fact back in power in several parts of the country, that our "ambassador" (previous Unocal partner of Karzai) has been assisting in the effort to buy votes, and that this election will not only not be fair, but the sham of what we have done to Afghanistan has made it virtually impossible for it to become a democracy any time soon ... these are all issues worth discussing, remembering and taking action on as we observe this somber anniversary.

But what I really want to talk about is one of the least reported stories of the last year - that now, three years after we bombed and killed thousands of innocent Afghani villagers - they and our troops who served there are dying of poisoning from depleted uranium - what we pack into our bombs.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Tokyo last December, a team of attorneys from Japan, the United States and Germany indicted Bush on a number of war-crimes charges--among them the use of depleted uranium in armor-piercing weapons. Leuren Moret, president of Scientists for Indigenous People, testified at the trial and later reported that a U.S. government study conducted on the babies of Gulf War veterans conceived after the soldiers returned home found that a full two-thirds suffered from serious birth defects or illnesses, including being born without eyes or ears, or with missing or malformed organs or limbs. In Iraq, Moret said, the defects are even worse. But those are just some of the images of war we never see on the evening news.

More recently, the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent group of U.S. and Canadian scientists that has conducted studies of Afghan civilians, found evidence that the United States is also using nondepleted uranium in its weapons, which is far more radioactive than depleted uranium. (Mama's emphasis)

So here we have another lie this administration is telling us - or rather, hiding from us. Not only have we not helped mankind in any conceivable way in the last four years, we have harmed them in immeasurable amounts, and that harm will last for generations.

What possible reason could anyone have for voting for four more years of this?

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