Excuse me if I'm not impressed.

It seems to me that in this point in our Nation's history the president issuing a condemnation of slavery is not a bold, newsworthy statement.

On Goree Island, Bush toured a centuries-old house that was used as a processing center for countless thousands of Africans who were herded aboard ships that took them into slavery in America.

"Human beings were delivered, sorted, weighed, branded with marks of commercial enterprises and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return," Bush said. "One of the largest migrations in history was also one of the greatest crimes of history."

Bush did not apologize for slavery but noted Americans throughout history "clearly saw this sin and called it by name."

"The spirit of Africans in America did not break," Bush said. "Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted."

Uh-huh. Meanwhile, people are getting raped, macheted, and cannibalized in the Congo.

In the eastern part of Congo there is a town run by children, an uncontrollable army playing soldiers with Kalashnikovs. In the city of Bunia, men machete men, and underground there are diamonds and bones. At night the women hide in the forest because it is safer than in their homes, but they desperately hush their infants lest the noise bring looters who rape and sometimes kill.

..."We believe that human suffering in Africa creates moral responsibilities for people everywhere," President Bush said in a speech last week. But while the U.S. fights the war on terror, it has been 9/11 there for years -- and few seem to care. On a five-day trip beginning Monday, Bush travels to five countries -- Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria -- to focus on HIV/AIDS, democracy, security and trade. But despite his stated concern for human suffering in Africa, he will not be going to the Congo.

More on the Congo situation here, here, and here.