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Forum Post: While They Try to Ban Assault Rifles in America, They're Arming Children in Yemen and Congo

Posted 11 years ago on Feb. 18, 2013, 1:49 p.m. EST by TrevorMnemonic (5827)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Tens of millions of dollars of U.S. military financing will continue to flow to Yemen and three other countries that recruit and use child soldiers, despite a 2008 U.S. law designed to restrict U.S. taxpayer funding of foreign militaries that enlist children to fight in war.

The White House issued a memorandum Tuesday evening to allow military funding to Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Chad, three of the six countries on the State Department's list of foreign governments that recruit and use child soldiers in state-backed armed forces and militias.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/obama-waives-child-soldier-ban-yemen-congo/story?id=14663930

article from Oct 2011. Hundreds of millions were given to these countries in 2012. The State Department has requested $35 million in foreign military financing for the Yemeni government for the 2012 fiscal year. The aid represents one portion of the total military, security and other assistance to the country, which has exceeded $100 million annually in recent years.

There's money to fund wars but not to feed the poor.

A common theme is giving foreign regimes tax payer dollars on the premise that they will buy weapons from American arms manufacturers. It's called corruption.

9 Comments

9 Comments


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[-] 2 points by HCabret (-327) 11 years ago

Is it a suprise that the United States government lives one big hypocracy?

All politicians are equally as bad.

[-] 1 points by OTP (-203) from Tampa, FL 11 years ago

The hypocrisy of this administration is appalling. I thought we reached a new low with Bush, and would put it behind us and learn from it.

We havent.

[-] -1 points by derain (-178) 11 years ago

after 4 years of barky you're just finding out that he's a fraud?

[-] 0 points by Builder (4202) 11 years ago

Accept that your govt are a bunch of hypocritical thugs who are out to line their own pockets, and think nothing about the welfare of their constituents.

[-] -3 points by Einsatzgruppen1 (-56) 11 years ago

"Your government?"

[-] -2 points by TrevorMnemonic (5827) 11 years ago

I'm not trying to nullify the assault weapons ban in this post. I'm trying to point out the overwhelming hypocrisy of people trying to ban assault weapons in America while they spend trillions on wars killing people with assault weapons, bombs, famine, and lack of health care. While they say nothing of demilitarizing police.

[-] 2 points by Middleaged (5140) 11 years ago

Congress takes no responsibility for anything. But the truth is they have the power of the Budget. They approve the budget, just as they approve the funding for wars, just as they approve the money that goes to military grants or loans to foreign countries.

And they want gun bans today like they wanted hand gun bans in the past .... but American Firearms are in all countries of the world, or we would have to start by naming countries that don't have US Firearms and Military Weapons.

I guess that is what you were saying. They want a domestic ban, but they support or enable weapons going overseas to child soliders all over Africa. We used to support South Africa too.

I saw a documentary this year about Apartheid. The US Congress was not only supporting the regime, it was selling weapons to South Africa through the 1980s up to like the very end of the Regime

Basically Ronald Reagen Supported Selling weapons to South Africa. By 1989, a bipartisan Republican/Democratic initiative in the US favoured economic sanctions 2 February 1990, De Klerk announced that he would repeal discriminatory laws and lift the 30-year ban on leading anti-apartheid groups

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid_in_South_Africa#Western_influence

[-] 0 points by Nader (74) 11 years ago

It really is amazing. Of all those things banning law abiding citizens from having assault weapons will save the least amount of lives.

[-] -3 points by Einsatzgruppen1 (-56) 11 years ago

Obama would never allow this! Why are you lying? Are you a filthy republican agent?