Poor Pay for War on Terror
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
This model of an up-armored Humvee is entirely made of plastic. Plastic Humvees cannot be relied upon in combat situations. However some soldiers get into these plastic deathtraps every day. They are real American heros.
(SNN Washington) Today, the Amnesty International Annual Report on Human Rights was released. AI cited governments that compromise fundamental principles for the "War on Terror".
In presenting the report, the Secretary General said that Government sponsored torture was just as bad as terrorism. "Governments collectively and individually (have) paralyzed international institutions and squandered public resources in pursuit of narrow security interests, sacrificed principles in the name of the 'war on terror'", said Secretary General Irene Khan of AI.
But the biggest bombshell that Khan dropped was the statement that "the heaviest price is being paid by the poor and powerless." She said that an enormous amount of damage was being done to the lives of ordinary people.
Some say this is where Khan goes way off base. No one cares about the poor and the powerless, at least not anyone worth mentioning. And how can the poor pay more than the rich? It’s not just possible. A poor person doesn’t even have the money to buy one our troops one Humvee, and yet they always seem to have money for cigarettes.
