Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange, a human rights organization based in San Francisco, recently sent a fact-finding delegation to Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I didn't know that massive numbers of people were not getting food aid because the U.S. was blocking an international force from coming in to open up the roads so that aid could get in," Benjamin reports. "And I also had no idea of the extent of innocent victims, who were killed by U.S. bombs, until I realized that everywhere we went, we found people who had stories to tell of loved ones who were killed in the bombing. ... Many of the press people we met on the ground were extremely frustrated, because they wanted to do stories about these issues, ... but found that the stories were not wanted back in the U.S. ... That means that we will, quote, leave Afghanistan with the sense of great success, and then potentially move on to the next venue, like Iraq. That would be really disastrous, not knowing how so many people in the Muslim world feel about the U.S. bombing campaign. ... I think the American people will not understand why there continues to be a lot of rage against the United States."
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