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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128092)	4/1/2004 3:38:14 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Frm the SMH today: Papers prove US knew of genocide in Rwanda 1994 By Rory Carroll April 1, 2004 KLP NOTE: One must ask here.....if the rest of the world knew about this at this time, why didn't the rest of the world do something about it??? US president Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, classified documents made available for the first time reveal. Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene. Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president knew of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak. It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington policymakers. The documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his officials that they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings. "It's powerful proof that they knew," said Alison des Forges, a Human Rights Watch researcher and authority on the genocide. The National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute based in Washington, went to court to obtain the material. It discovered that a secret CIA briefing circulated to Mr Clinton, his vice-president, Al Gore, and hundreds of officials included almost daily reports on Rwanda. One, dated April 23, 1994, said rebels would continue fighting to "stop the genocide, which . . . is spreading south". Three days later the secretary of state, Warren Christopher, and other officials were told of "genocide and partition" and of declarations of a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis". However, the administration did not publicly use the word genocide until May 25 and even then diluted its impact by saying "acts of genocide". Ms des Forges said: "They feared this word would generate public opinion which would demand some sort of action and they didn't want to act." The administration did not want to repeat the fiasco of intervention in Somalia, where US troops became sucked into fighting. It also felt the US had no interests in Rwanda, a small central African country with no minerals or strategic value. Many analysts and historians fault Washington and other Western countries not just for failing to support the token force of overwhelmed United Nations peacekeepers but also for failing to speak out more forcefully during the slaughter. Mr Clinton has apologised for those failures but the declassified documents undermine his defence of ignorance. On a visit to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1998 Mr Clinton apologised for not acting quickly enough or immediately calling the crimes genocide. The Guardian This story was found at: smh.com.au

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128092)	4/1/2004 6:59:26 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "If we run from our obligations in Iraq now, it will be seen as a complete and utter defeat for any of the democratic and modernist goals we hope to instill in the people of that region." Then let them live in squalor. Re: "The militants will tout that it was their superior tactics and strategies (suicide bombings) which has cause the US to retreat." So? After we left Vietnam the commies said the same thing but it didn't do us no harm. Fact is that our military ain't no good at repressive occupations. How many boys are you willing to have die to prove that? Every new body bag or busted body just proves a fact that you're not willing to acknowledge. Re: "Thus, if they can make us retreat from there, they can use the same tactics to make us retreat elsewhere." So they can make us leave Saudi Arabia? I thought we did that on purpose, LOL. Come on, seriously. The Arabs can't make us leave any place that doesn't have an Arab majority population. -- Carl