Bush to Deploy Troops in Liberia

[sassa]

Bush to deploy troops in Liberia

NBC NEWS AND NEWS SERVICES

Aug. 5 — President Bush has decided to send a small number of U.S. troops into Liberia, where they could arrive as early as Wednesday as part of an international peacekeeping force, NBC News has learned.

BUSH ORDERED that a small liaison team of U.S. troops be sent into Liberia during a conference call Tuesday with the Pentagon from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, U.S. officials told NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski.

The officials said the team would work with West African peacekeepers already on the ground to assess the situation and work out the details for deployment of a larger U.S. peacekeeping force in the country, which was founded by freed American slaves more than 150 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of people in the country face hunger and disease under a hail of bullets and shrapnel.

The total U.S. presence if Bush decided to go ahead with the full deployment would remain small, at only about 300 Marines, who would assist the West African troops for 60 to 90 days, the officials said.

Two U.S. warships — the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima, the assault ship leading a three-vessel amphibious group carrying about 2,300 Marines, and the USS Carter Hall — arrived near the coast Tuesday. A third U.S. ship, the USS Nashville, was expected within days.

TAYLOR DEPARTURE REPORTED SOON

The U.S. liaison team will meet up with a contingent of West African peacekeepers, 200 of whom began arriving Monday near the capital, Monrovia. Forty more Nigerian troops arrived Tuesday, and more were expected later as the force builds up its strength to move into the city itself in about a week.

Liberia’s embattled president, Charles Taylor, who has been charged with war crimes by a U.N.-backed court in Sierra Leone, has said he would hand over power and leave the country once peacekeepers arrive to keep government and rebel forces apart after 14 years of war.

South African President Thabo Mbeki said Tuesday that Taylor, whom he spoke to by telephone, reiterated his promise to hand over power to Vice President Moses Blah next Monday and leave for Nigeria, where he has been offered asylum.

However, there was no confirmation of the report from Taylor, who has reneged on previous promises to step down. A Nigerian government spokesman cast doubt on Mbeki’s declaration, telling Reuters that Taylor still appeared reluctant to accept Nigeria’s asylum offer and wanted the Sierra Leone-based war crimes court to drop charges against him first.

CELEBRATIONS

The West African peacekeepers’ arrival this week began bringing a measure of calm to Monrovia, although sporadic attacks continued. A mortar wounded four people Tuesday morning, and fighting still raged elsewhere in the country.

Still, their arrival triggered celebrations on both sides of the front line in Monrovia, where 2,000 people have died in three rebel attacks since June. Aid agencies also hope the peacekeepers’ arrival will allow them to cross the front line and stem a growing humanitarian disaster in Monrovia, which is desperately short of food and clean water and where disease is spreading rapidly.

Taylor’s enemies know him as a cunning survivor and fear that he will find some way of reneging on his promise to resign and leave the country.

Taylor emerged as the dominant warlord from a conflict that killed 200,000 people in the 1990s, before winning elections in 1997. He is accused of spreading war into Liberia’s neighbors.

“The resignation and departure from Liberia of President Charles Taylor is essential to restoring peace in Liberia,†U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington.

Child soldiers add to Liberia tragedy

TRUTH COMMISSION SOUGHT

The impending departure of Taylor has led political leaders to begin planning for life under a new government.

A leading opposition figure, Unity Party leader Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, said Tuesday that the country must set up a truth and reconciliation commission to come to terms with its past if it were to give itself the new start the ravaged country needed.

Johnson-Sirleaf, who lost to Taylor in the 1997 elections, said the commission could run along the lines of the South African body that exposed the secrets of apartheid.

“There will have to be a process through truth and reconciliation where there is contrition and forgiveness,†Johnson-Sirleaf told reporters during a stop in London on the way from the United States to peace talks in Ghana.

“During transition, the process will start, but clearly it will be the elected government that will see it through to its rightful conclusion,†she said.

NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski in Washington, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

[tranzwhore]

to find the nucs they sold to iraq?

[cintron]

eh I can't keep up with the crises we're involved with.

this one is pure peacekeeping I think. Civil war, people starving and being shot, the african usual. so we're being the good christian souls and sending our boys to stand inbetween the guns and feed the hungry.

I supose it serves a purpose but i stopped giving a shit after we conquered baghdad.

[bigpoppanils]

the US has sent in 20 troops so far.....mostly to handle logistics. all of the peacekeeping is being done by West African troops at this time.

[sassa]

they need african american votes for next year. why not show them they care about their brothers in africa by sending in troops.

this is such a smokescreen it's not even funny. what about sierra leone then? or burundi? Or zimbabwe?

[igloo]

Originally posted by sassa

they need african american votes for next year. why not show them they care about their brothers in africa by sending in troops.

this is such a smokescreen it's not even funny. what about sierra leone then? or burundi? Or zimbabwe?

there is something seriously wrong with you....you need a combination of medication, education, therapy, and cock

[seximofo2k]

Originally posted by sassa

this is such a smokescreen it's not even funny. what about sierra leone then? or burundi? Or zimbabwe?

The country was founded by freed slaves so we have much stronger ties with Liberia than these other countries. I still think it is a bad idea to get involved in these civil wars........

[sassa]

Originally posted by igloo

there is something seriously wrong with you....you need a combination of medication, education, therapy, and cock

medication: don't need it, except for what i'm taking for my sore tooth.

education: have it, and will continue to pursue two more degrees.

therapy: don't need it, but i would sorely recommend it for you.

cock: i have enough, but i find it interesting that you would recommend that to me. i guess you know all about getting it, don't you.

[igloo]

Originally posted by sassa

medication: don't need it, except for what i'm taking for my sore tooth.

education: have it, and will continue to pursue two more degrees.

therapy: don't need it, but i would sorely recommend it for you.

cock: i have enough, but i find it interesting that you would recommend that to me. i guess you know all about getting it, don't you.

medication: Or lack of explains a lot.

education: extends beyond the classroom and liberal professors retard.

therapy: The first step is just admitting you have a problem. Mental disorders can be treatable.

cock: synthetic ones don't count. may explain social disorders though.

[sassa]

Originally posted by igloo

medication: Or lack of explains a lot.

education: extends beyond the classroom and liberal professors retard.

therapy: The first step is just admitting you have a problem. Mental disorders can be treatable.

cock: synthetic ones don't count. may explain social disorders though.

just shut up already

[igloo]

Originally posted by sassa

just shut up already

[sassa]

Originally posted by seximofo2k

The country was founded by freed slaves so we have much stronger ties with Liberia than these other countries. I still think it is a bad idea to get involved in these civil wars........

how so? the fact that they left the US to create their own state says something about how they feel about their past. i'd be pissed off too.

[sassa]

'Those People Are

Not Human Beings'

The Real Casualties Of War

Mail&Guardian Online

8-12-3

MONROVIA (Sapa-AP) -- Clutching her daughter's photograph to her breast, Rebecca throws back her head and wails. Fighters burst into her home and raped the 10-year-old girl before the helpless mother, leaving the child lying in a pool of blood and vomit - dead.

Women are raped every time fighting surges in this war-battered country, but aid workers say that this time it's on a scale impossible to calculate, or fathom.

Wild-eyed gunmen on both sides are going door to door, ransacking homes, beating and killing residents, and raping any women - or girls - they find.

"Those people are not human beings," sobs Rebecca, who has found shelter in a friend's yard. July 20, the day Rebecca's daughter turned 10, began with the mother waking the sleeping child with a chorus of "Happy Birthday".

Rebecca gathered her son and a friend's 14-year-old girl with them for Sunday prayers. Without warning, government fighters started pounding at the gate.

When Rebecca (42) refused them entry, they forced their way inside and started carting away the family's belongings.

One man - barely in his 20s - smashed Rebecca's head with a hammer and ripped off her clothes. When he realised she was menstruating, he kicked her.

Through it all, the 10-year-old held on tightly crying "Mommy! Mommy!" Rebecca says - clutching the spot on her blouse as if she can still feel the child's tug. Another fighter - going by the name Black Dog - ripped the child from her mother and threw her to the floor.

"When he got through with her, I saw blood, I saw vomit, I saw toilet," she says, moaning rhythmically. "He raped her to death."

As her daughter lay on the floor, another man grabbed the 14-year-old, but she fought and kicked. Frustrated, he forced himself into her mouth.

The fighters took everything from the house, even the family album. Rebecca has only one picture left of her daughter, taken when she was 11 months old - a solemn child with bright bows in her hair, standing unsteadily with the help of a piece of furniture.

Falling to her knees, Rebecca sobs: "Just kill me. I want to die."

Figures for the latest sexual attacks are impossible to track - most victims are either cut off by fighting or too afraid of the stigma associated with rape to seek help.

But the few counsellors left after international aid groups pulled out foreign staff said they've never seen so many cases. Rape has always gone hand in hand with war in Liberia, where warlord President Charles Taylor's first grab for power in 1989 ushered in nearly 14 years of bloody strife.

"Every time there is an incursion going on, it is the same thing," says Miatta Roberts (46) a counselor with Concerned Christian Community - the only group remaining here that works with rape survivors.

"When there is war going on, no woman is safe."

In earlier battles most attacks took place as women fled through the bush, but the aid workers say that women are now being raped in their own homes.

The attacks are usually linked to looting sprees by drunk, drugged and disaffected fighters. Many feel abandoned since Taylor bowed to mounting international pressure and pledged to hand over power, so they have launched what they call "Operation Pay Yourself".

With no functioning court system at the moment to hold gunmen accountable, Roberts sees no end to their excesses. Of the 1 500 women who participated in the group's trauma programmes at an athletics stadium turned teeming refugee camp, 626 have been raped.

In better times, the group provided the women with food, clothing, medical treatment, training and other relief. Now they can do little more than provide a safe haven and keep them busy.

The women play games together in a bamboo and tarpaulin enclosure and sing traditional songs to remind them of home. Joining a circle of clapping, singing women, 20-year-old Alice breaks into a rare smile. Three years ago, she was gang-raped in front of her whole family as they fled through the bush ahead of a rebel advance.

Last month, pro-Taylor militia fighters caught up with her again on the outskirts of Monrovia, pulling her from a group of refugees huddled in an abandoned home to violate her again.

The repeated rapes have shattered her dreams of marriage and children. "I feel shame before men," she says. "No one approaches me now."

Violence against women is as widespread in rebel-held areas, aid workers say. While fleeing the insurgents' latest advance, Kula's family stumbled into a rebel ambush. Her husband, mother, aunt and brother were killed on the spot.

When she finally reached a refugee camp on the outskirts of Monrovia, she thought she was safe. But soon the rebels were back, moving from hut to hut in search of women.

"They shared us among themselves," says Kula, who looks far older than her 47 years. "Everyone was crying."

Four days later, the same thing happened again. Rebels with stockings over their faces burst into the house where she was staying and grabbed all the women. Two fighters raped Kula this time - one of them so young he could barely hold up his machine gun, she says. She guesses his age at 10.

"I think the women who can say they haven't been raped are very few," she says sorrowfully. "It pains my heart."

All material copyright Mail & Guardian.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=18586