I read this editorial today with some interest......

Editorial Darfur showdown Thursday, March 15, 2007 RWANDA, Kosovo and Cambodia were recent instances of genocidal slaughter that made an on-looking world promise never to allow a repeat. Yet, it is happening in the Darfur region of Sudan, where 200,000 have died and more than 2 million have been made refugees. Despite steady diplomacy, public rallies and worldwide pressure, the Sudanese government refuses to allow peacekeepers in or to call off its murderous militia in the province. A new U.N. report, one of the toughest ever by the world body, should break this stalemate. Intervention, sanctions and war-crimes prosecution are in order, the human-rights report says. Sudan's overseas funds, such as oil revenues, should be frozen, its leaders sould be barred from leaving the country and a beefed up military force should be sent in to restore peace, the panel added. It's a welcome, though overdue, plan. The real question is whether the United Nations will do anything, starting with its Human Rights Council, which ordered the study. The council was remade from the ashes of the prior and widely discredited commission, which included notable human-rights abusers such as Libya, Zimbabwe and Sudan. Since its creation last year, the new council has cited Israel as a human-rights violator and no other nation. Sudan -- rest assured -- will play the delay game, calling in favors from allies such as Russia and China, which have fended off calls for action. It's past time for talks and negotiations with a nation that kills its own people and menaces a region of northern Africa. The new U.N. Human Rights Council is due to take up the study this week, with the final stop being the Security Council. It's time for both bodies and the world community to end the killing in Darfur.

Darfur on Their Radar By Jackson Diehl Monday, April 2, 2007; Page A15 For months it's looked like the genocide in Darfur has fallen off the agenda of a White House desperately fighting fires in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Yet last Monday President Bush's anger rocked the Oval Office when aides presented him with a plan for sanctions against the Sudanese government. Raising his voice, he demanded that his special envoy for Darfur, Andrew Natsios, and national security adviser Stephen Hadley come up with something stronger. Or so I'm told. The result, according to several sources, is that the United States and Britain may finally make an effort, beginning this month, to push for serious punishment of the regime of Omar Hassan al-Bashir at the U.N. Security Council -- and to shame the governments, such as China's, that have blocked multilateral action. Britain takes over Security Council chairmanship this week from South Africa, another resister of action on Darfur, while the United States' turn follows in May. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been feeding each other's passion on Darfur. They've decided "to stop watering down U.N. resolutions before they are even introduced," one official said. "This time they will ask for what they want," including both economic and military sanctions. As for China, which buys Sudan's oil and invests in its industry while shielding the government from international pressure, the official predicted: "There will be an international campaign against countries that are obstructing action by the council." In the meantime, Bush is expected to approve more unilateral U.S. sanctions against Sudan, probably sometime after Easter. Among other steps, these will target assets of three Sudanese leaders and prohibit business in dollars with several dozen Sudanese companies, including an oil services firm. The United States could also help to rebuild former rebel forces in southern Sudan, which signed a peace deal with the government in 2005. Why the tough action now? In part, Bush is said to be out of patience with Bashir, who has refused to accept a U.N. plan to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur to help protect the hundreds of thousands of refugees bottled up in camps. Under pressure from Arab leaders at a summit in Riyadh late last week, Bashir hinted that he would reconsider parts of the plan -- but most likely he's stalling for time. Bush and Blair are also feeling the effects of an international campaign for action on Darfur that has ranged from appeals from Hollywood stars and European intellectuals to petition drives and newspaper ad campaigns. The two leaders have talked about Darfur several times in recent weeks; at a European summit a week ago Blair declared the situation "intolerable" and the actions of the Sudanese government "unacceptable." He said the imposition of a no-fly zone over Darfur should be reconsidered -- a step that could appear in the new Security Council resolution. Curiously, the resolve of the two leaders has hardened at a moment when the situation in Darfur may be softening. Attacks by the Sudanese military have fallen off during the past several months -- since Feb. 8 the United Nations has recorded only one, with no casualties. Assaults by government-backed janjaweed militias against civilians have also appeared to slacken. U.S. government and other Western analysts believe that Bashir has backed off from military operations, at least for now, because his army was unexpectedly bloodied by Darfur rebels in fighting in the fall. Outside experts, such as John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, think Bashir has not changed his scorched-earth policy for Darfur, merely his tactics. In recent weeks inter-communal fighting has erupted around the province, sometimes between rival Arab clans; Prendergast thinks the government has encouraged it. Though the level of mass killing is down, refugees are still pouring into camps -- more than 80,000 since the beginning of this year, according to the United Nations. Meanwhile the government has been severely restricting the activity of aid organizations, a tactic it has used in the past to starve opponents into submission. Last week a new aid agreement was struck with international groups after the United Nations raised alarms; yet to be seen is whether Bashir will respect it. It's possible that Bashir perceives the possibility of concerted international sanctions that could harm Sudan's booming oil industry, or a Western military intervention imposing a no-fly zone, and is trying to head them off. His country is vulnerable to sanctions; their use forced the settlement of the earlier civil war in the south. A U.N. envoy will be in Khartoum this week to test, again, the government's willingness to accept the plan for U.N. peacekeepers. If there's no breakthrough, we'll see if Bush and Blair can translate their passion into serious action.

The authors of these editorials calls for an end to the killing in Darfur and asks what President Bush and Prime Minister Blair plan to do about it. So apparently, we can agree that something needs to be done right??

Is it just me, or is anyone else having flashbacks to the Saddam Regime?? Hundreds of thousands of people murdered or displaced, starving, being subjected to unjustifiable incarcerations and torture simply because of their religion, culture and ethnicity.

Reading about the situation in Sudan and particularly Darfur sickens me and I am the first to agree that something does need to be done. But I am forced to wonder if we are going to see a repeat of Iraq here. Are our countries Leaders going to face political backlash and persecution for supporting the victims of yet another tyrannical regime simply because it involves another oil rich country?? Are those who have grown weary of the War in Iraq (that would be the people sitting comfortably at home nowhere near the conflict) going to protest and actively engage in slander campaigns against our countries Leaders if they attempt to intervene in Darfur??

For those of us who live in the Western worlds the answers to these questions should be obvious. Those of us who are free to live where we chose, work to earn a living, eat the food of our choice and live in free and democratic societies should be outraged by the events in Darfur, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and every other country that struggles against tyranny and actively supporting our Leaders in their attempts to intervene. Yet we grow tired, we the people sitting at home watching the war on the 6pm news become 'battle weary'. What apathetic (or simply pathetic) people are we that we become bored with the suffering of others and wish to withdraw because their plight no longer holds our interest.

We need to make a choice and be prepared to stand by that choice til the end.... Do we want to help these people or do we simply want to stand by while these thugs and terrorists become empowered by their successes??

A_C