Children carry guns in U.S.-financed army

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Children carry guns in U.S.-financed army
Somali young combatants' wages may come from American taxpayers
By Jeffrey Gettleman
updated 14 minutes ago

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection. But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.

“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry. “You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”

The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.

It is well known that Somalia’s radical Islamist insurgents are plucking children off soccer fields and turning them into fighters. But Awil is not a rebel. He is working for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, a critical piece of the American counterterrorism strategy in the Horn of Africa.





Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37680587/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

[unhappycamper]

1. Super.

Now we can add child soldiers to the roster. :sarcasm:

[saigon68]

10. Its more "Change we can Believe in"

[burnsei sensei]

15. +1

nt

[Blue_Tires]

2. the trail of U.S. cash can end in some really ugly places...

[Soylent Brice]

3. K&R

[Scuba]

4. It's OK, because....

...they're not white children. :sarcasm: <-- is that really needed?

[Robb]

5. Perhaps NATO should send troops.

I'm http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8199481">sure that would be better received. :eyes:

[No Elephants]

9. You make it sound as though child soldiers or NATO troops are the only two possibile courses.

I'm sure you did not mean to give that impression.

[Robb]

11. The choices are, as usual, money, guns, or nothing.

Do you have a preference?

[Regret My New Name]

14. They need lawyers.

[awoke_in_2003]

16. ...

:rofl: for the Zevon reference

[UpInArms]

6. Lives In The Balance

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.
You hear one thing again and again
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the President the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

Jackson Browne

I guess Jackson was just a few years ahead of this one, too.

[awoke_in_2003]

17. Nah, he wasn't ahead of the time...

we have been bastards for years.

[Child_Of_Isis]

7. I'm not even shocked

nor surprised. That's scary.

[No Elephants]

8. Will this kind of news ever end? I'm so ashamed,

[ProgressiveVictory]

12. I didn't think there was such a thing as a radical islamist? Holder told me so.

Why should we continue to give them money if this is what they are doing?!?

[tjwash]

13. Uh...yeah. Where was this flood of "concern" by MSNBC during the bush admin?

This shit has been happening in Somalia since Reagan, when their puppet Siad Barre allocated 2/3rds of that sad little country to the Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips oil giants. Now MSNBC is implying that this has just started happening on the D's watch?

Fuck them...

And, I have always used Somalia as an example of what the US would be like under a Ron Paul style "invisible-hand" looneytarian government. No regulations or taxes, with the the well-off minority with the money living behind concrete barricaded armed guarded fortresses and paying private contractors for things like water, sewage, and electricity, while the rest of the country is a heavily armed free for all where everyone pretty much fends for themselves.

Take a good fucking look at the USA if the flea-baggers ever got their way.

[bluesmail]

18. I was discussing all the mounds of money that the multinationals had accumulated

and a person asked me what do they want with ALL that money? Well it's not cheap to be in control of the NWO.

[MisterP]

19. can someone translate from milspeak?

I know that "Somalia's radical islamist insurgents" means "Somali claimant to government not controlled by the West and Somalia's bloodthirsty old enemy Ethiopia," but I'm stuck on the rest