(Updated: Originally published October 30, 2006)
Not sure of the sourcing, but it was in print. Trust me, readers!
"Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, an estimated 4.7 million refugees have flooded back from neighboring Iran and Pakistan, 3.7 million with assisstance from the United Nations refugee agency and another million on their own.... Over three million Afghan refugees still live in Pakistan and Iran... one of the main reasons they are not returning is because they have no house or land to go to."
Part of the problem is that many of those refugges were CREATED by our 2001 bombing campaign when Bush made the UN quit delivering food aid before the coming winter.
I remember the State Department predicting up to 3 million dying of hunger. Whatever happened with all that, anyway?
Yet the issue of "refugee return" is spun in such a positive light it almost makes you want to gag.
And that was ONE YEAR AGO!
Wait, let's qualify that:
"On the face of it, the return of huge numbers of refugees has gone remarkably well, but in every province there are hundreds of land disputes and complaints of illegal occupation, and tens of thousands of returnees remain in tents, crammed in with relatives, or in public buildings. The pressure for housing and land remains enormous... yet, when they were in the refugee camp, they had schools, clinics, electricity and water."
What Bush calls a SUCCESS! And that was ONE YEAR AGO!
Meanwhile, NATO reports "70 Taliban killed in Night Battle."
That was LAST YEAR, readers, not last night!
