Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and actor/director/producer/Jimmy Kimmel fuck buddy Ben Affleck (D-Massachusetts) reportedly had a little tussle at a House Armed Services Committee hearing this week.
The heart of the matter that split the pair was not the proper use of undocumented folks who can vote you into office and go on to work Hollywood film sets, but U.S.-led training of the Congo's military.
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Affleck, who heads up the East Congo Initiative, was at Wednesday's D.C. hearing to defend the more than year-old operations that have U.S. trainers from the East Command helping prepare Congolese light infantry forces for battle against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) headed by infamous warlord Joseph Kony, reports The Hill.
You may recall Kony from one of the most controversial and widely read Navel Gazing posts of 2012, Kenya-born former Weekly intern Peter Ngugi's dissection of the documentary KONY 2012.
KONY 2012: A Kenyan OC Weekly Intern Calls B.S. on the Film
Affleck–who has been mentioned as both a possible best director Oscar nominee and, less seriously, candidate for the Massachusetts Senate seat John Kerry will abandon should he be confirmed as Secretary of State–referred to U.S. military training missions in Iraq and Afghanistan as successes.
Argo . . . er . . . ergo, similar ops can be successful in east Africa, Affleck maintained.
Advise and assist missions by the U.S. forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan were “emblematic of what could happen” in the Congo,
should Washington continue its efforts in the volatile African nation,
said Affleck.
“We take these signs” from combat operations in
southwest Asia “and assume it can be done [successfully] in a larger
scope” in Africa, he added.
And that, dear citizens, is what set off Sanchez, senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and the ranking Democrat on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee.
She countered American efforts to train Afghan National Security Forces have been an abject failure, marred by insider attacks
against U.S. and NATO troops, Taliban infiltration into the military's
ranks and consistent desertions by ANSF troops.
Kiss a cameo in The Town 2 goodbye, Loretta
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.