CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Cincinnati Republican leaders tried to denigrate Sen. Barack Obama's legislative record -- and perhaps mock his race -- by linking him to a bill aimed at helping the Congo. But a conservative Republican who co-sponsored the measure, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, went to the troubled African nation and reported that only heartless Americans could turn their backs on the suffering.
"We listened to one young girl's story as she held a baby on her hip. At the young age of 10 or 11 these girls are abducted into the militias and serve as wives or sex-slaves to the commanders until they become pregnant and are then turned to the streets. Others are given or sold by their own families in hopes that the village would be spared from violence," Brownback wrote in a journal he kept on a fact-finding mission to the Congo in December 2005.
The journal is online HERE where Brownback has it posted on his official U.S. Senate Web site.
The compassionate Republican, who is a GOP presidential candidate, did not ridicule the Congo. He said it needed attention from American leaders.
"It is a place that has seen death and destruction of great proportions. In one of the deadliest conflicts since the end of World War II, an estimated 4 million people lost their lives and many more fled as refugees, or were internally displaced," Brownback wrote. He added, "With as many as 1,000 people dying per day, a tsunami-sized tragedy is happening every few months, without much attention being paid."
Doesn't that make those folks at the Hamilton County Republican Party in Cincinnati look like political geniuses? They issued a press release that dissed Obama, saying his sole legislative achievement was to pass a bill that helped the Congo. Brownback was his co-sponsor.
Inquiring minds want to know: Does the whole sorry episode make one wonder what those GOP wiseacres actually think of Mother Teresa?
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