Uzbekistan- Information Cleansing

From EurasiaNet:

Eyewitnesses present in Andijan’s Babur Square on May 13 say Uzbek security forces unleashed a "military operation" against civilian protesters who had gathered to call for economic and social justice.

Two journalists – Galima Bukharbayeva of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Marcus Bensmann, a German freelance reporter – were present when Uzbek armored vehicles opened fire a little after 5 pm. During testimony given in June before the US Helsinki Commission and elsewhere they said the scene at the square after the shooting began was like that of a "slaughterhouse."

The Uzbek government is engaged in a far-reaching effort to convince domestic and international opinion that the testimony of Bukharbayeva and Bensmann -- along with all the other eyewitness accounts of the Andijan massacre -- are either a big lie or a wild dream. In the months since Andijan, Uzbek authorities have quashed all potential sources of independent information inside the country, and conducted a media campaign designed to portray the Uzbek government not as the perpetrator of an atrocity, but as the victim of a global Islamic radical conspiracy.

At the heart of the Uzbek government’s strategy is an effort to create an alternate reality -- completely at odds with reliable eyewitness accounts. In this alternate reality, the Andijan horrors were perpetrated by a local Islamic militant group called Akromiya, with alleged backing from international radical and terrorist organizations including Hizb-ut-Tahrir and al Qaeda. Tashkent insists the Islamic militants were attempting a coup designed to topple President Islam Karimov’s administration.

You know, Karimov kicked us out of the country. We have no reason to not engage in diplomatic war with this asshole. I hear echoes of the Cold War in this nonsense- we spent most of last century competing with the Soviets, yet we have totally forgotten about this part of the world. Perhaps the gops are so busy spitting out their "Reagan won the Cold War" b.s. that they fail see that many of the former Soviet states have fallen back to their Soviet ways. There is even a glimmer of empire in the eyes of the Russians, who are continually trying to regain their sphere of influence. I, for one, am sick of the "War on Terror(TM) excuse that allows the rulers of these countries to justify any human rights abuse for the sake of "security." I am also sick of Washington types ignoring the plight of these people.