The US is quite willing to work with brutal dictators when it needs a favour

[cqo_000]

The idea that the United States is some kind of champion of democracy is a fairy tale. In reality both Republican and Democrat administrations will cosy up to the world's most repressive regimes when a favour is needed. The latest example of Uncle Sam's sickening duplicity can be seen with regards to Uzbekistan. The US needs to secure routes to Afghanistan and cooperation from Uzbekistan's tyrannical regime is essential to this goal. So Obama has decided to restore military aid to the government of Uzbekistan in the hope that Karimov will continue to support US interests.

Human Rights Watch called Obama's waiver on military aid a "fundamentally wrong decision" that "sends the wrong signal to Uzbekistan and to the world"

http://www.uznews.net/news_single.php?nid=18953

I still can't quite believe that Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize. It seems we live in a world devoid of credibility.

[gateley]

1. Or, install one if nobody's available. We have a rich history. nt

[OKDem08]

2. people are waking to this realization every day

the US govt is nothing but an endless war machine

[Selatius]

3. I think Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize had much to do with George W. Bush being president.

He will be remembered as one of the most ignoble presidents Americans ever elected to office, and Obama was, far and away, a far better alternative, and given that the world was still reeling from GWB's war to get the WMDs and Obama's conciliatory tone with respect to trying to re-establish the rule of law and making amends for Iraq, of course Obama would've made the short-list for Nobel Peace Prize winners.

[dballance]

4. This is News?

Anyone who has been paying attention to our government's actions since oh, I don't know, WWI would know they say one thing in public and do a totally different thing behind closed doors. In general, the thing they do behind closed doors serves their corporate and banking masters.

If that means propping up dictators who are mass-murdering their people that's just fine. Look at Saddam Hussien. We supported him and propped him up until he was no longer useful to us and then he became an evil dictator with weapons of mass destruction. Of course, since we were the real people running Iraq and Saddam was just a puppet we knew he had no nukes. But that didn't matter.

The narrative of the evil dictator we had to contain was far too easy to sell in a country that loves all it's video game and WWE good vs. evil meme.

What a bunch of ignorant, uninformed fucks 99% of the US population really is.

[Angry Dragon]

5. We gave arms to bin Laden

We gave arms to Iran

We gave arms to Sadam

We gave money to Noriega

We give arms to people then call them terrorists

and many. many others

[quaker bill]

6. And when we didn't, the Soviets did.

The super power competition of the cold war placed massive stockpiles of post WWII vintage weapons in unstable client states all over the planet. We are still paying the price for this globally, in blood. The Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans, and Iraqi's had fleets of cast off Soviet tanks and artillery pieces sent on the cheap to the ME to counter our supplies in Israel. We armed Iraq under the Shah in exchage for listening posts on the Soviet border. We then armed Saddam to oppose the Ayatolla when the Shah fell, and fed them both arms and intelligence when they were fighting each other. This was all "OK" until Saddam turned the guns we and the Soviets provided on Kuwait.

Noriega was fine doing all his stuff with oppression and drug trafficing until he started refusing to host Contra resupply missions at the request of Costa Rica, Cuba, and other neighbors. It was fine at least as long as we got a slice of the profits to fund the Contras. When this stopped and he threatened to go public he had to go and we invaded.

I can no longer remember all the names, but we had a stable full of oppressive RW dictators in Central America during the Reagan Admin. I believe they are all dead now.