Jim Webb's Weekend With a War Criminal

Weekly Standard ^ | 9/24/09 | Michael Goldfarb

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In my last post on Burma, I reported the second meeting in as many months between Senator Jim Webb and Nyan Win, the foreign minister for the Burmese junta. This time the meeting was in Washington, which required that Win be granted a visa waiver (he, like the rest of the junta's senior figures, is on a prohibited list).

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Foreign Minister Nyan Win is actually Major General Nyan Win in the Burmese Army. Before heading up the Foreign Ministry where he became the point man for explaining away the butchery his regime visits on the Burmese people, he was deputy chief of military training for the country's military.

According to Human Rights Watch in their definitive report “My Gun Was As Tall as Me” detailing the role of child soldiers in the Burmese Army, they estimated there could be as many as 70,000 in a force of roughly 300,000-400,000. Training for these child soldiers is brutal. They are beaten, starved, and, because they are conscripted (as in swept up from schools, walking down the street, or pryed from their homes) cut off from all contact with their families.

These child soldiers are then deployed as cannon fodder in the regime’s wars against ethnic groups in the country. One child soldier -- a 13-year-old -- told his debriefer after defecting to the Thai-Burma border that he "was stolen at a bus stop by men in a miltiary truck…We were trained to hate ethnic groups and they must be killed. They said our families no longer exist and the military is our new family.” He also stated that he met a child as young as nine who had also been conscripted. A 9-year-old.

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With Jim Webb now publicly attacking General McChrystal, the American officer responsible for military operations in Afghanistan, it's worth taking another look at who Webb keeps as friends.

[paulycy]

Jim Webb is downright creepy.

Remember when he was caught smuggling a gun into the Capitol through an aide’s bag?

We never got the whole story on that little episode.

[cripplecreek]

The aide ended up under the bus.

[paulycy]

The aide ended up under the bus.

Guess I shoulda guessed that.

[Friendofgeorge]

I also recall a book he wrote where he writes...A man held a young child by it`s feet while the child performed a disgusting act on the man (I added the word disgusting) This is the kind of thing that holds Webb`s interest. And the book was fiction?? How the people of Virginia voted for this man over George Allen???? Because he said Maccacca or something like that, give me a break.

[Rodebrecht]

Isn’t Webb the guy who said he wanted to punch Bush in the face when he asked how his son was doing?

[SueRae]

As I remember, he basically threatened president Bush as well.

Chirping crickets on that apology as well.

A vile and angry little man.

[LeonardFMason]

Jim Webb is a first-class a-hole. He is pompous, imperious, vicious, jerk. Oh yeah....add pervert as well.
To write fiction and have those thoughts in your mind makes you at least a weirdo and possibly someone who fantasizes about pedophilia.

[AuH2ORepublican]

So Webb got a visa for and met with a brutal, sub-human vial of pond scum that starved 9-year-old boys if they didn't kill women and babies and uses dogs to rape male prisoners, so what? At least he didn't refer to an Asian with a mohawk as “macaca” instead of “mohawka” (or whatever it is that his staff had nicknamed the ubiquitous spy from the opposing campaign). We've got to set priorities in life, you know.

I'm sure some FReepers will jump to Webb's defense now, explaining that he's “misunderstood.”

[Impy]

Yup that Webb “Reagan’s Secnav” one those patriotic old school democrats we hear so much about right. AS IF. He’s a sick man. Now you can add this to list to go with writing perverted pornography and waving guns at black people for kicks. If Reagan were alive and well he’d have busted his hump campaigning for Allen.