Clinton and Rwanda

The UK Guardian ran this story about Rwanda today.

President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time.

That’s real leadership, for sure. “Quick Madeleine! We must act immediately to justify our complete inaction! Lives are at stake!”

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.

Well why would a modern liberal ever intervene to stop genocide? Hell, half of them are always out protesting in favor of it, waving their big Saddam posters.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak.

“I’d really like to help. I really would. You know I feel for those people, but I just don’t see how we can intervene without interfering with my golf outing with David Geffen.”

It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington's top policymakers.

They were probably even getting nice satellite photos of the growing piles of corpses, and field intel on the whole operation.

The documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his senior officials that they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings.

Oh, they appreciated the speed and scale all right. They just didn’t give a damn.

"It's powerful proof that they knew," said Alison des Forges, a Human Rights Watch researcher and authority on the genocide.

Well maybe some on the left should re-evaluate their opinion of the left, which thinks using force is always the wrong option, except when it comes to forcing people to adopt socialism. Of course, this is also the same Human Rights Watch which recently concluded that NO amount of genocide in Iraq justified our invasion.

It discovered that the CIA's national intelligence daily, a secret briefing circulated to Mr Clinton, the then vice-president, Al Gore, and hundreds of senior officials, included almost daily reports on Rwanda. One, dated April 23, said rebels would continue fighting to "stop the genocide, which ... is spreading south".

Like Al Gore gives a shit how many innocent people die either.

Three days later the state department's intelligence briefing for former secretary of state Warren Christopher and other officials noted "genocide and partition" and reported declarations of a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis".

I guess they don’t even remember what the term “final solution” implies.

However, the administration did not publicly use the word genocide until May 25 and even then diluted its impact by saying "acts of genocide".

The democrats are always spinning and wordsmithing, even when 800,000 people are being butchered. Tell me these people wouldn’t just rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. And yet these same morons want us to believe they were actively pursuing Al-Qaeda in some capacity other than figuring up how much money the Trial Lawyers Association could make off a court case.

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. It was a very pragmatic determination."

Yes. Keep the people ignorant of impending genocide so they won’t know to stop it. It sounds vaguely familiar, for some reason.

The administration did not want to repeat the fiasco of US 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.

And these same people think Bush is fighting over oil???? Give me a fucking break! Clinton and his croanies obviously put more value on a tin mine than 800,000 human lives. Yet the only way he could avoid repeating the debacle in Somalia would be by having himself and his entire cabinet resign so adults could take charge, and of course none of them were willing to do that.

William Ferroggiaro, of the National Security Archive, said the system had worked. "Diplomats, intelligence agencies, defence and military officials - even aid workers - provided timely information up the chain," he said.

It looks like everyone did their job except Clinton and his cabinet.

"That the Clinton administration decided against intervention at any level was not for lack of knowledge of what was happening in Rwanda."

Isn’t it telling that Clinton’s best defense is that he was ignorant, which we all knew applied generally? Turns out he wasn’t so much ignorant as a willing accomplice in genocide. Maybe that’s how he got a Nobel Peace prize nomination.

Many analysts and historians fault Washington and other western capitals not just for failing to support the token force of overwhelmed UN peacekeepers but for failing to speak out more forcefully during the slaughter.

Hell. They’re left criticizing Clinton for not even throwing around a few harsh words. A couple orders of magnitude past that and you might get a President who’s actually willing to dosomething. Thank G-d Bush won in 2000.

Some of the Hutu extremists orchestrating events might have heeded such warnings, they have suggested.

Mr Clinton has apologised for those failures but the declassified documents undermine his defence of ignorance. "The level of US intelligence is really amazing," said Mr Ferroggiaro. "A vast array of information was available."

Hell, Clinton probably had better intelligence about the scale and scope of operations than the damned Hutu planners did. Maybe they should’ve called him for some advice on how to improve their genocidal efficiency. I’m sure some under-the-table campaign cash would’ve worked wonders.

On a visit to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1998 Mr Clinton apologised for not acting quickly enough or immediately calling the crimes genocide.

Not acting quickly enough? The pompous ass didn’t act at all!

In what was widely seen as an attempt to diminish his responsibility, he said: "It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."

Isn’t it amazing how he’s willing to lie his ass off to the faces of the very people whose families were butchered because he chose to knowlingly let it happen.

A spokesperson for the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation in New York said the allegations would be relayed to the former president.

Now isn’t that just elitist as hell. They’ll attach a note to a pigeon and send it winging off to the esteemed Presiden’ts ivory tower. Maybe he’ll take pity on the dead serf’s families.