Brice, what about Sudan?
George the Christian just stands and watches?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,1586995,00.html

Darfur wasn't genocide and Sudan is not a terrorist state 
Even MI6 and the CIA are frustrated by the attitude of US neocons and the 
Christian right towards the Sudanese conflicts 

Jonathan Steele in Khartoum Friday October 7, 2005    The Guardian 

Question: when do Bush administration officials cuddle up to leaders of 
states that the US describes as sponsors of international terrorism? 
Answer: when they are in Khartoum. I know because I saw it the other day. 
It was in the garden of the headquarters of Sudan's intelligence service, 
not far from the Nile. Fairy lights twinkled on wires draped round palm 
trees. African drummers played. Sadly, no alcohol was served, but clearly 
there was something in the air.

Up stepped a senior CIA agent. In full view of the assembled company, he 
gave General Salah Abdallah Gosh, Sudan's intelligence boss, a bear hug. 
The general responded by handing over a goody-bag, wrapped in shiny green 
paper. Next up was a senior MI6 official, with the same effusive routine - 
hug, hand-shake, bag of presents.
We were attending the closing dinner of a two-day conference of African 
counter-terrorism officials, to which the US and the UK were invited as 
observers. The western spooks were less than happy to have the press on 
hand, especially as their names were called out. But loss of anonymity was 
a small price for the excellent cooperation both agencies believe Sudan is 
giving in the campaign to keep tabs on Somali, Saudi and other Arab 
fundamentalists who pass through its territory.

Pragmatic Britain has had polite relations with Sudan's Islamist government 
since it took power in a military coup in 1989. Ideological Washington has 
not. Bill Clinton designated Sudan a terrorist state in 1993 and later 
slapped on trade sanctions, partly under pressure from Congress and 
America's Christian right.

US officials have produced no proof that Sudan finances, trains or harbours 
terrorists, and the Bush people would probably lift the bans if they could. 
But once on the terrorism-sponsor list, few countries manage to get off. It 
is a rare case where the great warrior on terror finds himself trapped by 
US politicians even more extreme than himself.

Bush's Sudan policy contains other big contradictions. As secretary of 
state last year, Colin Powell described the conflict in the western region 
of Darfur as "genocide". He had hesitated for months, because a finding of 
genocide requires a state to take immediate action to stop it. Yet what did 
the US do next? Nothing, or at least no more than many other states, 
including Britain, which did not want the genocide label to be lightly 
used, and so devalued.

The US supported an armed African Union (AU) mission to monitor a ceasefire 
and protect humanitarian relief. It pressed for a peace deal. More 
reluctantly than any other state, it supported an inquiry that could lead 
to indictments of Sudanese leaders at the international criminal court. But 
Washington's lack of follow-through showed that, as with the terrorism 
label, the genocide finding was a sop to the Christian right and anti-
Islamist neocons.

Coverage of Darfur has dwindled, but AU monitors, as well as UN officials 
in Khartoum, report a marked improvement since last year's campaign of rape 
and killing left close to 200,000 dead and forced 2 million to flee. 
Janjaweed militias, usually backed by the government in clashes with rebel 
groups, were behind most of the atrocities.

Thriving on bad news - typical was Caroline Moorehead's Letter from Darfur 
in the New York Review of Books this summer - commentators who still write 
about Darfur often thunder away without any sense of time or context. In 
fact, the UN secretary general's latest report to the security council 
points out that the influx of 12,500 aid workers has "averted a 
humanitarian catastrophe, with no major outbreaks of disease or famine". 
Patrols by the hundreds of AU monitors have reduced violence and other 
human-rights violations.

The report attacks the government for not disarming the Janjaweed or 
holding enough people accountable for last year's atrocities, but it blames 
the rebels for most of this year's abductions of civilians and attacks on 
aid convoys.

In recent weeks there has been a turn for the worse. A new chain of tit-for-
tat violence is developing. Janjaweed forces attacked a displaced people's 
camp in western Darfur last week, an unprecedented assault on a sanctuary 
in which at least 30 people died, and AU monitors report that government 
helicopter gunships were seen over the camp. This may have been retaliation 
for a rebel seizure of a town a few days earlier.

To its credit, Washington has stepped up efforts to get the anti-government 
rebels to stop blocking the peace talks now under way in Abuja. As inter-
ethnic tensions among the rebels grow stronger, leaders of the Zaghawa, the 
main fighters, are unwilling to attend despite face-to-face pleas from US 
and UN diplomats urging them to accept the model that ended the much longer 
war between the government and the south.

Former southern rebels, who recently joined the Islamists in Sudan's new 
government of national unity, will soon go to Abuja for the first time, to 
act as mediators if necessary. This is a big step forward. As Riek Machar, 
the new vice-president of south Sudan told me in Juba last week: "We 
believe we are the people who can crack the issue of Darfur. We have 
experience of negotiating a settlement with the group governing in 
Khartoum. We will take that experience to Abuja. The liberation movements 
have confidence in us."

Even if peace were agreed, implementation would be rocky. The north-south 
deal has made a poor start. The Arab-led former ruling party denied its new 
southern partners any of Sudan's key ministries; this will not encourage 
the Darfurians. UN analysts believe peace-building in Darfur will be harder 
than in the south. "Destruction progressed over 20 years in the south, and 
it wasn't mainly done by locals. It was done by the Sudanese army and 
militias from outside. In Darfur you've had dozens of ethnic groups 
clashing ... Some won, some lost, and it has been very quick. Bitterness 
and hatred are still raw," said one official.

Grim though it has been, this was not genocide or classic ethnic cleansing. 
Many of the displaced moved to camps a few kilometres from their homes. 
Professionals and intellectuals were not targeted, as in Rwanda. Darfur 
was, and is, the outgrowth of a struggle between farmers and nomads rather 
than a Balkan-style fight for the same piece of land. Finding a solution is 
not helped by turning the violence into a battle of good versus evil or 
launching another Arab-bashing crusade.




On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:48:42 -0500, Brice Yokem <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>GWB did, what he wanted to do and what is best for the oil-industry.
>He lied to everybody incl. the UN security council.
>Ok, here he send, Colin Powell. But Powell presented the same documents
>and
>lies that GWB, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney had fabricated.
>
>In Iraq, surprisingly, alot of the sanctions worked.
>They did not have any WMD nor the capability to attack anyone, which was
>the main reason for the sanctions.
>Alot worked in Iraq.
>
>They why, out of at least 20 countries, are only the Iraqies given
>this "chance"?
>What about all these African countries without OIL?
>Don't they deserve a chance?
>Or North Korea?
>Or China?
>
>-------------------------
>
>You are stating opinion as fact here.
>
>The 'lies' had more to do with George Tenant then with the people you
>present as 'liars'.  He has more complicity in this WMD issue than any
>of the others, yet you leave his name out.
>
>The oil for food program was massively corrupted by the UN.  Shorting
>people on food and medicine, and yet you say it 'worked'.  The capability
>to create poison gas and weaponized disease existed and could have been
>cranked up on short notice once the rest of the world's attention was
>diverted.
>
>Iraq was still in violation of UN resolutions, and did still have some
>poison gas.
>
>So what if it is about oil?  The people are being given a chance to choose
>what kind of government they want.  You say they should not be given that
>chance because of China or North Korea or 20 other countries.  Well I say
>we should give them the chance and people like you should work to that
>end instead of grousing about why we are there.  If mistakes were made
>we can review that after we have done everything we can to make the effort
>in Iraq successful.
>
>With regard to North Korea, we did make an attempt there but the
>success of that effort was to politicized to work.  Some day we may
>have to finish that job too.
>
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