Your tax dollars at work: Pentagon Spends Millions Protecting Uzbekistan Dictator

[marmar]

via Truthdig:



Pentagon Spends Millions Protecting Uzbekistan Dictator
Posted on Nov 26, 2011


Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov is notorious for heading one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, and millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being given to a for-profit military contractor turned propaganda machine to make sure he remains a faithful and able ally in the global war on terror.

Freedom House, a D.C.-based Nongovernmental organization that conducts international human rights research, gave Karimov’s Uzbekistan the lowest score possible in its Freedom in the World report. Groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have uncovered widespread torture and child labor practices, while other organizations say the leader has detained more political prisoners than the leaders of all other post-Soviet republics combined. Most of the imprisoned are somehow linked to Islam. —ARK

Foreign Policy:

When people read a news website, they don’t usually imagine that it is being run by a major producer of fighter jets and smart bombs. But when the Pentagon has its own vision of America’s foreign policy, and the funds to promote it, it can put a $23 billion defense contractor in a unique position to report on the war on terror.

Over the past three years, a subdivision of Virginia-based General Dynamics has set up and run a network of eight “influence websites” funded by the Defense Department with more than $120 million in taxpayer money. The sites, collectively known as the Trans Regional Web Initiative (TRWI) and operated by General Dynamics Information Technology, focus on geographic areas under the purview of various U.S. combatant commands, including U.S. Central Command. In its coverage of Uzbekistan, a repressive dictatorship increasingly important to U.S. military goals in Afghanistan, a TRWI website called Central Asia Online has shown a disturbing tendency to downplay the autocracy’s rights abuses and uncritically promote its claims of terrorist threats.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/21/propagandastan?page=full">Read more

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/pentagon_spends_millions_protecting_uzbekistan_dictator_20111126/

[gratuitous]

1. Isn't Karimov the guy who was boiling people alive?

Tell me again how we're the world's bulwark against terror and oppression. But I'm sure the present U.S. administration has nothing whatever to do with any of the oppressive tactics of the Karimov regime. You know, like raping people in front of their relatives. But 84% of liberal Democrats support the Obama administration, so it's all right.

[elehhhhna]

3. we gave buhtrillions to Musharriff in Pak. THAT worked out well.

/sarc/

[Vanje]

5. Yes. Thats the one

[saras]

7. 84% support Obama, Obama supports Karimov 100%, therefore that 84% supports Karimov - simple logic

...which is the reason so many people hate logic so much, and prefer primate behavior, mainly, I think, because they then get to pretend the the less immediate consequences of their actions are outside their control.

[williesgirl]

2. This makes me sick - we have folks at home starving, homeless but pay yet one more contractor

to do something that shouldn't be done even if it were free. rec'd

[Angry Dragon]

4. it is time for Obama to finally play the transparency card

before he forgets where he put it

[ejbr]

6. Cain, the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-bekistan is...

Islam Karimov

[provis99]

8. considering Freedom House is a right-wing friend of dictators,

you really have to be bad to be a friend of America and still rank at the bottom of their list.