Vietnam to halt American adoptions after damning US report

Five-month-old baby girls, are held by workers at an orphanage in Bac Ninh province, near Hanoi,Vietnam, Wednesday, April 23, 2008. Vietnam has failed to police its adoption system, allowing corruption, fraud, and baby-selling to flourish, according to a new report from the U.S. Embassy.
(AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki)

Doesn't this just warm the cockles of your heart.

Jesus H Christ wrapped in swaddling clothes, is there no end to human greed?

Vietnam - Vietnam, where growing numbers of Americans have turned to adopt a baby, announced Monday it is halting all U.S. adoptions following allegations of baby-selling, corruption and fraud.

The abrupt cutoff cast a cloud of uncertainty over pending adoptions in the Southeast Asian country, which have surged in the face of tightened restrictions in China, Guatemala and elsewhere.

The announcement came days after The Associated Press published details of a U.S. Embassy report that outlined rampant abuses, including hospitals selling infants whose mothers could not pay their bills, brokers scouring villages for babies and a grandmother who gave away her grandchild without telling the child's mother.

"It is tragic for children that the U.S. government has not been able to find ways to work with the Vietnamese government to prevent adoption abuses while at the same time processing legitimate adoptions," said Tom Atwood, president of the Washington-based National Council for Adoption, a research and advocacy organization.

"Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children will not have families as a result of this failure of leadership."

The headline links to the source.

No Big Shifts Planned After Report on Iraq

First of all, duh. Of course Bush has no intention of changing the way he's doing business in Iraq. So what's the point of even having a report on Iraq? Its just a waste of time and money.

Despite political pressure for a change of course in Iraq, the White House hopes to keep in place its existing military strategy and troop levels there after the mid-September report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, administration officials said.

Even as the administration faced a new call this week from Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a leading ally, to begin at least a symbolic withdrawal of troops by Christmas, White House officials said privately that they are not contemplating making major shifts before early next year. They said that next month's report is likely to highlight what they see as significant improvements in security over the past year and that they expect the president to assert that now is not the time to dramatically change approaches. [emphasis mine]

And as for that "...likely to highlight what they see as significant improvements in security..." bit, another duh. They're writing the damn thing. of course its gonna say exactly what they expect it to say and the words "quagmire", "failure", "mistake" won't be in it unless tied to Vietnam.

Via Washington Post.

Quote of the day

Since the 1970s, conservatives circulated a series of lies about Vietnam. Today, a Vietnam draft-dodger has degraded the presidency by making them his own."

-- Rick Perlstein
Blogger

Bush is an asshole and you should realize it

Everyone (on the left) is going ballistic over Bush's comparing Iraq to Vietnam (favorably) whereas he bristled when such comparisons were made a couple years ago.

Assholes do such things. They torture animals and lie to everyone in between drinks.

When you live in your own bubble, you can make up reality. Howard Hughes anyone?

Cojones of the large kind

Any regular reader here knows I'm for a troop withdraw, including the UK, but as long as there is fighting there...

Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, is getting his wish to serve in Iraq. The Ministry of Defense ended speculation that had been swirling for about a week by announcing Thursday the 22-year-old prince will be sent to Iraq with his Blues and Royals regiment in May or June. Harry, a second lieutenant, will assume a troop commander's role.

Obviously Prince Harry could have avoided being sent to Iraq. He would have taken a lot of flak from the press and the public, but he could have done it.

The difference between the prince and the king (Bush) is the prince has balls. Bush proved he has none.

Pointing to Kerry's war record by implication highlights the absence of his contemporary George W. Bush, who, on his own admission, had joined the Texas Air National Guard to avoid the war.