By Ben Barrack

It appears that a barbaric Ugandan warlord named Joseph Kony may be close to being captured. Last year, Kony 2012 went viral thanks to the Kardashian / Bieber celebrity crowd, which tweeted links to it shortly after the documentary had been released. The movie was about making Kony “famous” in order to help bring him to justice.

Joseph Kony

Today, it looks like Mr. Kony may be running out of room, via Yahoo News:

Notorious Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony is “solidly on the run,” just one step ahead of his pursuers, thanks to U.S. training for regional militaries hunting him, and an aggressive campaign that offers rewards for information leading to his arrest, a top U.S. official told Yahoo News.

“We’ve got him in a box,” Stephen Rapp, the ambassador-at-large for war crimes and crimes against humanity, said in an exclusive interview.

Kony, who leads the Lord’s Resistance Army, drew renewed global attention in 2012 when a 30-minute video about his activities went viral. He has been accused of kidnapping tens of thousands of children and training them to fight for him or forcing them into sexual slavery.

In 2005, Kony and some of his top deputies became the first people indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. Most have eluded capture. {emphasis ours}

At first blush, it may seem that if Kony is captured, the Obama administration will have another welcome distraction, in a way similar to how Syria was a distraction from Egypt. Kony’s capture could help to distract from Syria while also giving Obama a public relations victory, right?

Well…

Let’s look at a recent example of how one scandal distracted from another.

Whether intentional or not, the timing of the IRS scandal (May 10th) came just two days after the Congressional testimony of Gregory Hicks on Benghazi. The IRS scandal was – in many ways – worse for the administration than Benghazi was. On top of that, neither went away; Benghazi is getting more attention just this week, with House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa even saying that Hillary might be called back to testify.

As an aside, if not for the IRS scandal, we likely would not have discovered Malik Obama’s ties to the Sudanese government of Omar Al-Bashir, that country’s Muslim Brotherhood leader.

That’s what leads us to another man with connections to Al-Bashir – Joseph Kony.

Omar al-Bashir: Funds Kony, employs Malik Obama.

Kony has been supported with money, supplies, and weapons by al-Bashir for years. Sam Childers, the man about whom the Hollywood film Machine Gun Preacher – starring Gerard Butler – was made, has long maintained that Kony is funded by al-Bashir. Here is a video Childers released in response to the viral Kony 2012 video:

As for the degree to which the Obama administration is fully on board with supporting Kony’s arrest, if there’s one thing we’ve learned about this administration, it’s that if it doesn’t want to support something, it will go out of its way to avoid addressing it. In the case of Kony 2012, if the celebrities who magically supported it so publicly didn’t convince you there was a behind-the-scenes effort of the administration draw attention to Kony, perhaps Obama’s own words will:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney commented on the viral video at the time as well. He even read from notes, which indicates prepared statements:

Speaking of both Jay Carney and videos, let’s go back to September 14, 2012. In this press briefing, Carney said – for the first time – that the 9/11/12 attack in Benghazi was in response to a video (later proven to be false):

The group behind Kony 2012 – Invisible Children – held a Fourth Estate Summit last month and Samantha Power, Obama’s Ambassador to the U.N. spoke to an adoring crowd.

Our own Theodore Shoebat reported on that very same day that Omar al-Bashir was allegedly behind the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sudan. Citing Al-Rakoba, Theodore wrote:

The attacks by Muslims on American embassies in Egypt and Libya has shocked the media enough, but now North Sudan has just exploded, with mobs raiding the British, German and American embassies. Who is responsible? According to Al-Rakoba, a Sudanese news site, it is Omar al-Bashir, the president of North Sudan, and his despotic government who is behind this.

So why would the Obama administration support the arrest of Joseph Kony but not the arrest of the man who has both enabled him over the years and who appears to have been behind the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sudan, Omar al-Bashir?

Incidentally, like Kony, al-Bashir is wanted by the ICC on seven counts relating to crimes against humanity as well.

As we have written before, Hollywood actor George Clooney’s biggest cause celebre’ outside of acting is seeking to bring al-Bashir to justice. Yet, when it comes to Barack Obama’s brother working for Bashir’s government, Clooney is silent.

Here is a song from the Machine Gun Preacher soundtrack by Chris Cornell entitled The Keeper: