Netters:
We have heard it all time and time again... Museveni's pledges to "Defeat Kony". Who in his/her right mind can really take Museveni serious when he says this time around he is going to defeat KONY?
From an analytical Mind ..rather point of point of view, I do not think Museveni and his NRM have any idea who "KONY" is or this so called "rebels" are.
Let us assume that KONY is UPDF (as some, including me, have asserted in this forum ) . How then is Museveni going to defeat the UPDF?
It is like Museveni is fighting his own shadows... Just like a dog trying to bit it's own tail end off!!
Museveni should issue an ultimatum that this time if he fails to defeat "KONY REBELS" he would resign and let other Ugandans take over and work for peace. Only when he states this, will his statements be taken seriously!
Matek
Uganda's Museveni pledges victory over rebels
By Paul Busharizi
LIRA, Uganda, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, taking personal charge of military operations, pledged on Tuesday to defeat the Lord's Resistance Army as the death toll from one of the rebels' worst attacks continued to rise.
A local member of parliament said the number of people killed in the LRA attack had risen to 239, from an earlier estimate of 192, as survivors retrieved bodies from the charred ruins of a camp for people fleeing fighting.
"We've got a big struggle but we shall win. We have won before," Museveni said after visiting a hospital in the northern town of Lira where more than 50 survivors of Saturday's attack were being treated for bullet wounds and burns.
Museveni, dressed in green general's uniform, drove in a convoy protected by several hundred soldiers to set up a new headquarters outside the town. From there he will personally direct the latest phase of operations against the rebels who have been fighting for most of his 18 years in power.
Several dozen survivors returned to the abandoned Barlonyo camp to retrieve food and bury bodies, hastily digging shallow graves near where the victims fell.
LRA attackers had rampaged through the camp about 30 km (18 miles) northeast of Lira, hacking people with machetes and burning others alive as they cowered in their huts.
One of many northern camps that house more than a million people uprooted by fighting, it was home to about 4,000 people.
Museveni, himself a former guerrilla leader, has repeatedly vowed to crush the revolt by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony.
The government says it would rather fight than negotiate with a movement whose publicly stated aims are vague, beyond the overthrow of Museveni and a better life for the Acholi people.
BODY COUNT RISING
Museveni issued a statement late on Monday blaming local military commanders for failing to provide enough security.
He put the death toll at 84 but local officials said it was much higher: "The chairman of the camp who was verifying the numbers told us he had 207 yesterday," member of parliament Charles Guotomoi told Reuters in Lira.
"This morning, he said that 32 other bodies had been found in a nearby garden, so that is 239 so far.
"But we still think there are more around the area."
The Hague-based International Criminal Court said it would investigate the killings and that it could open its first case against LRA leaders as early as next year.
The Ugandan army says it has killed dozens of rebels in the north in recent months, describing fresh attacks by the LRA as the "last kicks of a dying horse."
But observers say the LRA has defied repeated offensives by exploiting long grass and swamps to escape patrols and by refreshing its ranks through abducting child recruits.
02/24/04 11:47 ET
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
