Peeling back the Band Aid

Get ready to have your stomach turned. But at least yours is full...

You all (30s and older) will remember the 1985 Band Aid and other relief efforts pursued by governments and other organizations around the globe to help alleviate the 1984-85 droughts in Ethiopia that left most Ethiopians malnourished if they weren't one of the 1 MILLION who starved to death. A host of jokes about sandwiches and Ethiopians followed, but many Ethiopians were saved by these individual and government donations.

What you won't remember:
At the direction of the CIA (they deny it, of course) hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars from these efforts were siphoned off into rebel groups who bought weapons to fight the Russian backed Ethiopian government of the time.

Here's some key information that will set your stomach to turning:

In one instance, a member of Christian Aid bought sacks of grain inside of Ethiopia worth $500 MILLION. Underneath the handful of grain sacks that Christian Aid inspected were many more sacks of fine Ethiopian sand. Yum!

The man who swindled Christian Aid into spending all this money on sand, Meles Zenawi, went on to become Ethiopia's prime minister in 1991.

He remains the PM to this very day in spite of having used money intended to help his fellow citizens to kill them with guns instead.

The deputy head of the CIA at the time sought to "impose ever stiffer costs on the Soviet Union for its Third World adventurism." What better way to do this than sell bags of sand to aid groups in order to use the money to buy guns? (I'll bet many of those guns were bought from the U.S.)

The deputy head of the CIA at the time was none other than our very own Secratary of Defense, Robert Gates. He's no Prime Minister of a third world country, but he has certainly been well rewarded for his career choices.

I can't even sum this one up in a quick snide sentence. As an American citizen, I apologize to the world...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Ethiopia famine aid 'spent on weapons'(bbc)