April 21, 2013 (LD) - The US has announced that it will provide militants in Syria, now openly admitted to being Al Qaeda terrorists, with $123 million in military aid - while thousands of cancer patients at home are being turned away from clinics because of budget cuts. Compounding the the criminal negligence of telling sick people to seek help elsewhere, is the fact that the military aid the US is providing terrorists in Syria will be used to perpetuate an already 2 year long, sectarian-driven humanitarian disaster. RT recently reported in their article, "US to give $123 million military aid package to Syrian rebels," that:
The US$123 million defense aid package, announced by Kerry at the meeting in the Turkish capital on Sunday, includes body armor, armored vehicles, advanced communication equipment and night vision goggles.
In an April 3, 2013 Washington Post article titled, "Cancer clinics are turning away thousands of Medicare patients. Blame the sequester," it was reported:
Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially.
When one considers that the conflict in Syria was premeditated by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, as early as 2007, simply to overthrow the Syrian government and weaken neighboring Iran, the mind-numbing criminality of America's current foreign and domestic policy becomes even more obscene.It was reported by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" that:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
Now clearly, while the West attempts to feign ignorance over the inception and rapid expansion of Al Qaeda in Syria, these 2007 plans are coming into fruition. It was revealed by the London Telegraph and the Washington Post that even "non-lethal" aid provided by the United States, including flour, was being used as a political weapon by Al Qaeda's al-Nusra front in Syria to win over support in territory it invades and occupies. When pursing a destructive war of geopolitical hegemony abroad takes precedence over the health and well being of a nation's citizens at home, the government taking such a posture has lost all legitimacy. The people of America will continue to watch their nation rot out from beneath them as long as they continue investing their money, time, energy, and attention into an establishment clearly divorced from the interests of the vast majority. Instead, the special interests exploiting America should be identified, condemned, boycotted permanently, and replaced by local alternatives - thus stealing from beneath them both their source of power, and their capacity to continue forward.