Randall Tobias, Murderer, Resigns.

(Randall Tobias wins the "Norm Weatherby Memorial Douchebag Award" for the month of April.)



This man is named Randall L. Tobias. He was the first U.S. Director of Foreign Assistance, and served concurrently as the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He is also a murderer.

In his capacity as Director of Foreign Assistance, Tobias encouraged sexual abstinence, and discounted the use of condoms in preventing HIV/AIDS. "Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective," Tobias told a news conference in Berlin on April 21, 2004. (1) This is a blatant lie, and flies in the face of all credible scientific study of HIV/AIDS.

On April 27, 2007, Tobias immediately resigned after being asked about an upscale escort service involved in prostitution by ABC News. Within minutes of his resignation, Tobias's biography was removed from the USAID website. State Department officials declined to comment on the reasons for Tobias's resignation. (2)

So far, 32 million Africans have died from HIV/AIDS. 47 million Africans are infected with HIV/AIDS. In the time it took you to read this article, 5 Africans have died from HIV/AIDS, and 11 Africans have contracted HIV/AIDS. (3)

Condoms drastically reduce the chances of contracting AIDS. In Cambodia and Thailand, the slowing increase of AIDS contraction and decreasing STD incidence is credited to increased condom usage. In 2005, the UN's special envoy on fighting AIDS in Africa accused the U.S. of endangering the gains Uganda has made in containing the disease, directly due to pressure from the U.S. and from Bush appointee Tobias.

(How is this any different than the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, except for the fact that even more people are dying?)

As one of those directly responsible for pressuring countries and organizations in Africa to decrease condom education and usage, Randall Tobias is responsible for the infection of thousands and thousands of Africans with HIV/AIDS. Most, if not all, of them will die.

Republican policies have consequences. We ignore many of those consequences because it isn't happening here, and it's easy to play "nobody really knows how to make HIV/AIDS stop spreading" when you're just looking at "opinions." But it isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact.

This is what Republicans do, and to my eyes, it's no better than genocide.

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