Well Bin Laden might as well be hailed as one…

This guy killed MY people like roaches and we’re still counting more than 5.4 million deads up to this day and YOU really believe he’s a hero because he loves making meaningless interviews to tell people what they wanna here?

So pathetic

Idiocy has taken a brand new height I see smh

Nkunda is accused of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity of which most cases are well documented by various human right organzations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. In September 2005, the Congolese government issued an arrest warrant for Nkunda, accusing him of numerous war crimes and crimes against human rights. Human Rights Watch, for example, which has been calling for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity since February 2006 has documented summary executions, torture and rape committed by soldiers under the command of Nkunda in Bukavu in 2004 and in Kisangani in 2002. Also armed groups loyal to warlord Nkunda have been repeatedly accused of using rape as a weapon of war and the recruitment of child soldiers, some as young as 12 after the abduction from their homes.

According to Mr. Kyubwa, NKunda continues to be involved in the committing of crimes in DRC, and in particular in the province of North Kivu, where again groups armed acting under his command are reportedly responsible for killing civilian systematically in the town of Kiwanja. The continuing horrific killing of civilians testifies that Human Rights Watch was absolutely reasonable in its warning then in 2006 and it’s today. “So long as Nkunda is at large, the civilian population remains at grave risk”

The website http://www.arrestNKUNDAnow.org encourages concerned people around the world to sign a petition to demand that MONUC immediately arrest Nkunda for war crimes and crimes against humanity. For more information please call the project coordinator in the United States , Amede Kyubwa at (916) 753 5717 or email: arrestkundanow@hotmail.com

However, this subject is so totally misrepresented that I will put a little effort into it. I won’t respond point by point. Instead I’ll just pick on what comes to mind in no particular order.

First though, I want to say I’m a big fan of Gary’s work. There’s plenty of stuff I disagree with, but nothing is as badly off the mark as this. One thing I really like about his work is that he usually doesn’t fall for the bullshit. Sadly in this case he’s gone tonsil deep in it.

First point, the so-called independent report about what the French forces did. This report was commissioned by the Rwandan goverment, which is led by the virtually dictatorial Paul Kagame, erstwhile leader of the RPF/RPA. Last year, a French judge issued arrest warants for Kagame and several others for the murders of the Rwandan and Burundi presidents in April 1994 which triggered the ‘genocide.’ This year, they just happen to come up with this ‘independent’ report? For details of the charges against Kagame you can google Jean-Louis Bruguière. For info about a UN knobbled ICTR investigation into tha same google Michael Hourigan Rwanda.

Second, Gary said the RPF raised a small army in response to the Hutu’s genocidal rampage. This is absolute crap. The RPA, which is the military wing of the RPF, invaded Rwanda on Oct 1, 1990, and occupied the northwest of the country, committing massacres and ethnic cleansing. So many Hutus were forced of their land and made internal refugees that it almost crippled the Rwandan economy. The RPA was a ‘breakaway faction’ of the Ugandan military, led by Kagame who had been a high level intelligence officer. Under the guise of the Ugandan military they’d received training and assistance from…the US military. And remember this all kicked off right about the time that Bush Snr was telling the world we must not let naked aggression stand. Of course he was referring to Saddam Husseins naked aggression.

So three and a half years later the RPF murders the president of Rwanda and Brecher either isn’t aware of the history, a war nerd sin, or is aware but chooses to ignore it, intellectual dishonesty. So rather than the Hutu’s reacting to a historical situation, Gary puts their violent rampage down to a savage bloodlust. That’s inexcusable.

Believe me, what I’ve mentioned here only barely scratches the surface of the historical context.

I’ll leave it there. If you’re interested in more details, check out http://www.taylor-report.com/, particularly the translation of Robin Philpott’s book and the interviews with and articles by Paul Rusesabagina, the real manager of the ‘Hotel Rwanda’. Also see more articles at http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com and google Keith Harmon Snow.

Tell me what they are along with links to back yourself up. Not saying he isn’t wrong, just want to know the other side.

This article is so full of lies and misrepresentations, it’s virtually Victor Davis Hanson material. I’m sad to say, Gary seems to have supped from the Kagame kool aid cup.

The stunning lack of relevant facts and context, mixed with the outright lies, suggest that his entire research for this is based on pro-Tutsi proaganda websites.

And you lot lapped it up like, well, lap dogs.

For shame, Brecker. You’ve tarnished yourself with this. Next thing you’ll be cheering HR Clinton as the next Sec of State.

Boy, have you come to the wrong website.

Nevertheless I apologise for insulting your hero and will send you a ‘What Would Gary Brecher Do?’ bracelet to make amends if you provide your contact details.

As for that article, I don’t know why you told me to read it, it’s a good article but if your comparing me to an American suburban wife who buys into sob stories and loves saying s/he only read one or two books, here’s the thing, I’ve been living in the UK for a few years and am not from the west. Oh yeah and I love books.

Clearly, Warlord and Hero do not appear often in the same context – which word is used depends opon the nature of the reader response the writer wants to elicit.

Military forces the North Atlantic alliance finds inconvenient are led by warlords. The Contras in Nicaragua, however were not led by Warlords – though in fact their leaders fit the type totally, in goals, organization, and tactics.

When the leader of an organized but irregular military force intervenes to prevent the slaughter and rape of a large number of people, to you he apparently is a warlord – not because he is more so than another military leader, but because you want to elicit a set of pre programmed responses to him from careless and ill informed readers.

Raab, our “msm” which you are so proud of not reading, does not and probably will not cover the points in this story. We who do read it know that from experience; we have many ideas about why and those resolve, basically to ignorance and careless on the part of reporters and editors, and mendacity and bias on the part of editors and publishers.

With regard to your not following much news, I would recommend that you read, carefully, John Dolans article “Frey’s Fall” at the old Exile site [ http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8011&IBLOCK_ID=35
]

Tam, though I read the Gaurdian fairly often for a US’r I am not familiar enou to confirm or dispute your compassionate assessment of Chris McGreal’s writing on Rwanda.

Your implication that Brecher in this piece displays a tendency to “nihilism” seems forced, even strident. Maybe you spent too much time reading criticisms of Noam Chomsky’s criticism of Clinton’s intervention in Kosovo, which was described as nihilist by defenders of that air war. I supported Clinton, opposed the Repug skeptics in that, but now am struck by the assymetry of WJC’s response in Kosovo and that in Rwanda.

(I’d still support our action in Kosovo – as I’d support intervention by stable, pluralist and tolerant states to protect ethnic or religious groups living regions where they are threatened by rogue states or by the failure of the national governments to protect them from rogue militias and group violence. Those failures are no longer the “internal affairs” of the states which sponsor or permit them – the are threats to the entire world and warrant full and decisive preventive engagement.)

Becher’s willingess to describe in plain and easily understood terms the actual acts involved in and human consequences of the Hutu murder and rape of Tutsis in Rwanda and the Eastern Congo does not warrant your snide “doesn’t find people killing each other as entertaining as you do” aspersion, either. I mean, your sarcasm in that remark is distasteful, and uncalled for.

Becher may want his audience to face the character of the violence of the Hutu militias during their time in Rwanda and now in the Congo in a way that is uncomfortable to you, or to any good Whig. Whigs are good people, but their squeamishness about facing the truth of much of human behavior makes them useless when the moral impications of particularily reprehensible human behaviors (slavery, genocide, totalitarinism, theocratic sedition) call for radical responses. Becher may take more satisfaction from seeing the perpetrators of that kind of violence get some of what they so love to give out than you are comfortable with.

That does not make him “nihilist” or indicate that he finds the rape and murder of innocents “entertaining” as you imply. It makes you, in my eyes, simply too squeamish to face the truth of what has been happening, and too much of a Whig to accept that it calls for radical action in response – action that – in the utter absence of action by the North Atlantic alliance – we can be grateful is coming from even an irregular force under General Nkunda.