[I may well end up doing a series]

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2016/10/hissene-habre-...

On May 30, 2016, former Chadian President Hissene Habre was convicted for crimes against humanity. This was the culmination of a 17-year campaign for justice organised by a small group of lawyers, who made it their mission to see Habre stand trial, it might not have happened.

In 1975, a former political science student at the elite French school, Sciences-Po Paris, Habre led a rebellion against the Chadian government, which he considered to be overly influenced by France. This was the beginning of Habre's political career.

In order to further his image as a "warlord", Habre also carried out a series of kidnappings, targeting foreign personalities, elevating his visibility on an international scale. The first French hostage was archaeologist Francoise Claustre, who was kept prisoner in the Tibesti desert for 33 months.

Yet, stilll, even...even

After seizing power in 1982, Habre received support from France and the United States, who saw him as a bulwark against Gaddafi's regime in Libya - a significant turn in the tide for the ambitious Chadian leader.

As Human Rights Watch notes

The US government has been one of the strongest international supporters of the Extraordinary African Chambers, and of the effort to bring Habré to court. But it was not always so. In the 1980s, the United States was pivotal in bringing Hissène Habré to power, seeing him as a stalwart defense against expansion by Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and therefore provided critical military support to his insurgency and then to his government, even as it committed widespread and systematic human rights violations—violations of which, as this report shows, many in the US government were aware.

This report provides one of the most comprehensive analyses to date of that support. Drawing on US government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and documents from Hissène Habré’s own political police uncovered by Human Rights Watch in Chad, as well as the public record, it sets out how US officials were aware of the abuses and atrocities perpetrated under Habré but chose to look the other way in the face of perceived strategic interests.

Ah yes. the US getting all righteous after the fact....again. You can bank on the fact in a few years time that the truth will come out with respect to our current wars and CIA operations in the Middle East, the duplicity will once again be evident. It takes decades.

In March, just over a year before Habré came to power, international media reported that a mass grave had been discovered outside his home in N’Djaména. “Scores of skeletons of beheaded people, whom they [Chadian soldiers] identify as victims of Mr. Habré’s henchmen,” the New York Times reported. “Flowers have grown through the bones.”

CIA operations

When President Reagan invited Habré for a special visit to the White House in 1987, he expressed his conviction that their relationship would “continue to be strong and productive.” The United States also created a small army of anti-Qaddafi Libyan “Contras” from among the ranks of Habré’s Libyan POWs, some of whom were alleged to have been coerced into joining following inhumane treatment.

More detail from Foreign Policy

The inevitable flood of Libyan intelligence agents into N’Djamena posed a more immediate threat as well: Against the impassioned protests of some U.S. officials, the CIA had given Habré a dozen Stinger missiles, the shoulder-fired anti- aircraft weapon sought by rebels and terrorists everywhere. Qaddafi had already demonstrated an interest in downing civilian aircraft. The Stingers absolutely could not be allowed to fall into his hands.

And there was another issue: The CIA had established a secret camp a few miles outside the capital where it was training a vanguard of anti-Qaddafi Libyan fighters -- at least 200 men with CIA-supplied arms, including Soviet-made tanks, that they would not easily give up. A battle in the capital between Déby’s Qaddafi-sponsored fighters and the agency’s anti-Qaddafi forces would precipitate a bloodbath.

The enemy of "our" enemy, just another brutal mass murderer.

When people ask me stupid fucking questions like "why do they hate us" they better have plenty of time on their hands.

When people say "but the US is not an Empire" when "we" behave exactly like one, it boggles my mind.

If "we" really wanted to reduce terrorism around the world "we" would stop behaving as Imperialistic assholes.

Go on Hillary, give Henry a kiss from me. I think a Kissinger diary is due.

History matters and "our" perpetual wars create new enemies every day.

Since World War II the US has been involved in/started around 200 of the approximately 250 conflicts around the world.

We are indeed exceptional.