White House Watch - Page A1
November 14, 1996 CLINTON PUTS U.S. TROOPS AT RISK IN ZAIRE!
Another Somalia To Distract American Voters?
by Staff Journalists, The Daily Republican Newspaper
WASHINGTON BUREAU - President William Clinton has announced that he is sending American military forces to Zaire as part of a U.N. operation to restore peace in that collapsed nation.
There is no enthusiasm in the U.S. for placing several thousand U.S. troops in harm's way. No vital U.S. interest has been given for his action to provide welfare aid to a million Rwandan homeless in eastern Zaire.
Michael McCurry, the White House spokesman, hedged that after weeks of discussions and meetings, "'the U.S. is willing, in principle to participate in a limited fashion in this humanitarian mission, as long as certain conditions are stipulated.'
Details have not been worked out yet. However, in a rushed meeting Thursday in New York, United Nations refugee officials will meet with White House representatives and others who may be participating in the welfare give-away in Zaire. The meeting, will be attended by Clinton advisor, Anthony Lake.
The chaos in Zaire presents an unstable and unpredictable trap for U.S. troops much worse than Somalia. Again, American troops are being placed in grave danger when there is no vital U.S. interest at stake there.
The Zaire situation is so far gone that it has been estimated that a military force of 10,000 to 15,000 ground troops cannot contain the violence and unpredictable events that are now present in Zaire now that the government has collapsed.
The Wall Street Journal played a story on Thursday that Chester Crocker, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa in the Reagan administration, said the international force must be prepared to separate the refugee Rwandan Hutus from the thousands of Hutu militants living among them. Many of the militants took part in brutal and bloody massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda and are considered war criminals. Because the Hutu war criminals are using the Hutu civilian refugees for cover, U.S. troops are going to die trying to separate the Hutu war criminals from the Hutu civilians.
McCurry admitted that is the goal of president Clinton's sending U.S. troops there. It will be their job, MaCurry said, to 'disarm militants, to conduct any type of forced entry or to police some of the operations and the refugee camps.'
McCurry told reporters at the White House briefing Wednesday that the U.S.would start out by sending about 1,000 ground troops in Zaire, involved in such activities as securing and holding the airport in Goma, along with several thousand other U.S. forces in the region participating in 'ancillary activities.' These would include helping to airlift other forces to the area and to provide security along a three-mile corridor from Goma to the Rwandan border.
U.S. officials expect a widespread public reaction from American taxpayers. McCurry emphasized that president Clinton would review the outcome of Thursday's meeting 'before making any final decisions related to deployment' of U.S. forces.
Americans have not forgotten the disastrous Clinton administration involvement in the U.N. unjustified intervention in Somalia, which cost the lives of American military men whose bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and desecrated in full view of American TV cameras.
Pentagon officials are saying that once the U.N. resolution is approved, which could come this week, U.S. troops could be on the way to the region by next week. Among the forces will be about 600 elite U.S. Army paratroopers based in Vicenza, Italy.