Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for us to focus only on the humanitarian aid instead of bombing them? Yeah, I know there are huge logistical challenges - but are the challenges any worse than they are for trying to win a war?

Afghan refugees who fled the war-torn south have claimed they are so neglected by government in Kabul that their children are dying from hypothermia for want of the most basic supplies.

Families that left Helmand, Kandahar and other southern provinces to escape the fighting between US-led forces and a resurgent Taliban say the cold is much more lethal.

Living in a make-shift camp on the edge of Kabul, residents told Al Jazeera's James Bays that no government official has ever come to see how they have been forced to live.

The claim comes as UN officials say Afghan children are suffering disastrous levels of abuse and deprivation.

At a news conference marking the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child this week, officials said children’s rights were being neglected despite vast flows of Western aid into the country.

“Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world," said Catherine Mbengue, country representative for the UN children’s fund Unicef.

“Seventy per cent of the population has no access to safe drinking water. Thirty percent of children are involved in child labour. Forty-three per cent of girls are married under-age,” she said.

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Rachel talks to native South Carolinian Eugene Robinson about the sorry state of South Caronlina's education and health care systems in contrast to the attitudes of their politicians who are all opposed to health care reform.

MADDOW: We‘ve had that lot of reaction to our report last night about the appalling new data out of South Carolina that read like a statewide cry for health care reform.

Last night, we reported that South Carolina has among the country‘s worst women‘s reproductive health care. Rates of teen pregnancy, low birth weight infants, and infant mortality that are among the highest in the country. The rate at which young women in South Carolina received the important and effective HPV vaccine is also among the lowest in the country.

But wait, there‘s more—and it‘s all bad. The state has the fifth highest rate of obesity. It has the highest stroke death rate of all states in the country, and has maintained that distinction for five decades. It has the second highest death rate for oral cancer. The life expectancy in South Carolina is the third worst in the union.

If Governor Mark Sanford, for example, decided to move to Argentina permanently, he would be among people expected to live at least a year and a half longer than South Carolinians are—in Argentina.

Yes, South Carolina needs better health care. And to get it, it may need some civil servants who are slightly more interested in getting that for the state.

Governor Sanford, considered just a year ago a possible presidential contender in 2012, led the fight to turn down stimulus funding from the federal government, shunning federal unemployment benefits when South Carolina had the second highest rate of joblessness in the country. We should‘ve seen that as a symbol.

And that was all before he offered this fine moment in leadership.

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Rachel points out that the states that have the most elected representatives opposed to health care/insurance reform are also the same ones that rank the worst in a number of national health metrics, such as HPV vaccination rates, teenage pregnancy, premature births, lowest birth weight and infant mortality.

As Rachel notes, you'd think they'd be the states most concerned with rather than opposed to some real reform of our health care system.