Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein's is obsessed with linking George Soros to anything and everything on the non-conservative side through tenuous fits of guilt-by-association.
Klein takes this to absurd heights in an Oct. 15 WorldNetDaily article, in which he asserts that President Obama's action of sending "American troops" into Uganda was motivated by "billionaire activist George Soros' ties both to the political pressure behind the decision and to the African nation's fledgling oil industry."
Yes, Klein really is saying that we're sending troops to Uganda to protect Soros' oil interests:
Soros also maintains close ties to oil interests in Uganda. His organizations have been leading efforts purportedly to facilitate more transparency in Uganda's oil industry, which is being tightly controlled by the country's leadership.
[...]
Soros himself has been closely tied to oil and other interests in Uganda.
In 2008, the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute brought together stakeholders from Uganda and other East African countries to discuss critical governance issues, including the formation of what became Uganda's national oil and gas policy.
Also in 2008, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, a grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch, helped established the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, or PWYP, which was purportedly launched to coordinate and streamline the efforts of the government in promoting transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
Also, a steering committee was formed for PWYP Uganda to develop an agenda for implementing the oil advocacy initiatives and a constitution to guide PWYP's oil work.
PWYP has since 2006 hosted a number of training workshops in Uganda purportedly to promote contract transparency in Uganda's oil sector.
PWYP is directly funded by Soros' Open Society as well as the the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute. PWYP international is actually hosted by the Open Society Foundation in London.
The billionaire's Open Society Institute, meanwhile, runs numerous offices in Uganda. It maintains a country manager in Uganda, as well as the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, which supports work in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
The Open Society Institute runs a Ugandan Youth Action Fund, which states its mission is to "identify, inspire, and support small groups of dedicated young people who can mobilize and influence large numbers of their peers to promote open society ideals."
It's not until the 19th paragraph that he gets around to hinting at the actual reason for intervention: to target the Lord's Resistance Army. Surprisingly, Klein does concede (unlike Rush Limbaugh) that the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, is a very bad man: "Kony is accused of major human rights atrocities. He is on the U.S. terrorist list and is wanted by the International Criminal Court."
Then, it's back to guilt-by-association. Klein also rehashes his usual attacks on Obama advier Samantha Power, smearing her as an "Arafat deputy" (in fact, that's just more guilt-by-association -- she once served on a committee with an Arafat deputy). Power is an advocate of the idea that U.S. foreign policy should be guided by the principle of the "responsibility to protect" -- which Klein despises because Soros has a guilt-by-association link to it, not out of any philosophical differences with it.
