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U.S. Government Operates Terrorist Training Camp Right Here In America
Since the tragedy of 9/11, we have learned some of the ways Osama bin Laden has schooled his al-Qaida organization into a formidable terrorist organization. No major media organization I know of, however, dares today to discuss how for more than five decades - the last two decades on our own soil - our own government systematically has been operating a more substantial terrorist school.
Since the tragedy of 9/11, we have learned some of the ways Osama bin Laden has schooled his al-Qaida organization into a formidable terrorist organization. No major media organization I know of, however, dares today to discuss how for more than five decades - the last two decades on our own soil - our own government systematically has been operating a more substantial terrorist school.
Established in Panama in 1946 as a hemispheric Cold War beachhead, the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), which operates solely for the training of Latin American military officers, was moved to Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA in 1984. Over 60,000 have graduated. They include Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer; the assassins of an archbishop, a bishop, six Jesuit priests and four American churchwomen; and countless other military strongmen responsible for the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands.
From 1989-93, I worked with and heard the graphic persecution stories of untold numbers of Central American refugees fleeing de facto military dictatorships. It was no coincidence that the majority of SOA graduates in those years hailed from the Central American countries of Guatemala and El Salvador. Today, the majority of trainees are imported from Colombia, where we have pumped over $2 million of military aid daily the last two years into a "war on drugs" smokescreen for business interests that has only served to inflame the 40-year civil war there. Just two weeks ago, a narrow House majority freed this "drug eradication" money to openly engage in counterinsurgency operations. Vietnam, anyone?
In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated the use of torture, extortion and execution, according to The School of the America's Watch, a watchdog organization. Even after these were made public, Defense officials continued to point out that most of the school's graduates had not committed the scores of human rights abuses against the millions of refugees fleeing the wrath that's come. This may be true. At the same time, for the last 55 years most of the Latin American military officers who actually ordered these abuses learned their lessons well through our taxpayer-supported SOA.
After the House of Representatives decisively voted to shut down the school in 1999, a House-Senate conference committee voted 8-7 to keep it open, provided the school be renamed - get this - the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). Even SOA proponents saw no difference in the much-touted renaming.
Georgia's late Sen. Paul Coverdell assured his constituents the name switch was "a cosmetic change," and the Columbus, Ga. Ledger-Inquirer strongly concurred in a recent editorial. Different name - same shame. Orwellian Doublespeak, anyone?
Please join me and numerous communions such as the Presbyterian Church in urging leaders such as our distinguished Sen. Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to close SOA/WHISC and discontinue "Plan Colombia." The irony again is that, in the midst of our current war on terrorism to parts East, we train and unleash scores of future terrorists yearly to parts South. Hypocrisy, anyone?
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch is pastor of Northside Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. He was one of 43 indicted in April for trespassing onto Ft. Benning during what he describes as a solemn nonviolent civil disobedience action last November. The "SOA 43" trial date has been set for July 8 at the U.S. District Court in Columbus, GA.
Established in Panama in 1946 as a hemispheric Cold War beachhead, the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), which operates solely for the training of Latin American military officers, was moved to Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA in 1984. Over 60,000 have graduated. They include Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer; the assassins of an archbishop, a bishop, six Jesuit priests and four American churchwomen; and countless other military strongmen responsible for the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands.
From 1989-93, I worked with and heard the graphic persecution stories of untold numbers of Central American refugees fleeing de facto military dictatorships. It was no coincidence that the majority of SOA graduates in those years hailed from the Central American countries of Guatemala and El Salvador. Today, the majority of trainees are imported from Colombia, where we have pumped over $2 million of military aid daily the last two years into a "war on drugs" smokescreen for business interests that has only served to inflame the 40-year civil war there. Just two weeks ago, a narrow House majority freed this "drug eradication" money to openly engage in counterinsurgency operations. Vietnam, anyone?
In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated the use of torture, extortion and execution, according to The School of the America's Watch, a watchdog organization. Even after these were made public, Defense officials continued to point out that most of the school's graduates had not committed the scores of human rights abuses against the millions of refugees fleeing the wrath that's come. This may be true. At the same time, for the last 55 years most of the Latin American military officers who actually ordered these abuses learned their lessons well through our taxpayer-supported SOA.
After the House of Representatives decisively voted to shut down the school in 1999, a House-Senate conference committee voted 8-7 to keep it open, provided the school be renamed - get this - the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). Even SOA proponents saw no difference in the much-touted renaming.
Georgia's late Sen. Paul Coverdell assured his constituents the name switch was "a cosmetic change," and the Columbus, Ga. Ledger-Inquirer strongly concurred in a recent editorial. Different name - same shame. Orwellian Doublespeak, anyone?
Please join me and numerous communions such as the Presbyterian Church in urging leaders such as our distinguished Sen. Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to close SOA/WHISC and discontinue "Plan Colombia." The irony again is that, in the midst of our current war on terrorism to parts East, we train and unleash scores of future terrorists yearly to parts South. Hypocrisy, anyone?
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch is pastor of Northside Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. He was one of 43 indicted in April for trespassing onto Ft. Benning during what he describes as a solemn nonviolent civil disobedience action last November. The "SOA 43" trial date has been set for July 8 at the U.S. District Court in Columbus, GA.
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"The SOA Watch people had originally gotten Azzolina's attention with claims that the School of the Americas is what they termed a "school of assassins." Their propaganda technique is to take virtually every atrocity that ever occurred in Latin America?except, of course, the many atrocities of the Sandinistas?and link it to a graduate of the School of the Americas. Typical was their assertion that the assassination of Archbishop Romero was the SOA's fault because Romero was killed by Roberto D'Aubuisson, a Salvadoran colonel who had once attended the SOA. The impression created is that D'Aubuisson was coached in assassination by the evil Americans at Fort Benning. One problem: D'Aubuisson's sole link to the school was that he had taken a course in radio operations long before El Salvador's civil war began.
Then there was the Guatemalan general Hector Gramajo, derided by SOA Watch as a School of the Americas graduate. Actually, he didn't attend the SOA. He did attend Harvard, however, so perhaps that school should be shut down too."
"My favorite was a 31-year-old sandalista named Linda Panetta. Her picture had appeared in my newspaper a few days before. She sat there scratching her chin, looking concerned and wearing?and I know this is such a cliche that you will accuse me of making it up?a Mayan Indian vest. I swear to God.
Anyhow, when I had called her up the night before I asked her about a quote she had given to our reporter. She had told him that none of the Latin-American Marxists were Marxists and that "There has never been a Communist threat, in Latin America."
"What about Cuba?"I asked.
She began to hem and haw. Then she hung up. (A common pattern among SOA Watch people, by the way. They are so used to getting softball questions from the liberal media that at the first sign of critical thinking they end the conversation.)
In the good old days when a Marxist was a Marxist and had read the Marxist canon, our home-grown lefties?though horribly misguided?at least knew what they were talking about. But the people who now make up the left are incapable of perceiving complexity in the world, or of making a complex judgement based on ends and means. The few actual communists they've met, say a Guatemalan guerrilla or a Sandinista bureaucrat, did not seem to be evil. Therefore they could not be communist. The idea that communism is a system that actually accomplished many good things while being essentially evil is much too complex for them to handle. So they simply deny that communism existed. If Castro had never used the word "communist" to describe himself, they would be all too happy to argue that he was only a maligned peasant nationalist driven to extremes by U.S. hostility.
Bamboozling these buffoons must have been child's play for a con man of Roy Bourgeois' caliber.
"
".."We in the United States should not be funding a school that trains assassins and that funds atrocities." And John Kelly, an aging and befuddled Republican, trumped that with an assertion that the school "teaches people to murder, rape, and massacre individuals."
The presentation ended. Though it was billed as a press conference, no questions were solicited. This was just as well. As a professional journalist, I like to conduct my interviews without intercession from a shouting mob of true believers.
I caught Assemblyman Doria at the door and asked if he was aware that virtually nothing uttered by SOA Watch was true. For example, I noted, Guatemala was not receiving U.S. military aid at the time the speaker's alleged uncle allegedly disappeared. "I have no idea why he was speaking," Doria said. He seemed extremely upset at being asked an actual question after this love-in. He began fuming and sputtering and he left.
I next got a hold of Kelly, but not before a woman who represented the Assembly Republicans tried to stop me from asking any more questions. "Quick," I said to her. "What's the capital of Nicaragua?" She stood there speechless for a moment and left.
I asked Kelly, a pleasant enough old gent who is a World War II vet, if he truly believed, as SOA Watch asserts, that the U.S. Army advisers directed Salvadoran soldiers to murder six priests in 1989. "I'm convinced they did," he said.
I asked him where he got the idea that U.S. soldiers were teaching people to murder, rape and massacre.
"I read a few pamphlets," Kelly said."
"...But if there is indeed a God in heaven, this is what I would love to have Him require of his humble servant, Roy Bourgeois. Bourgeois would be required to sit down with a Latin American whom he could not patronize, namely my friend Rafael. And he would have to explain to him exactly why Rafael should be required to live under a Marxist government.
And I get to sit and watch."
Well that about covers it . If you are interested in the whole article, it is by Paul Mulshine and is titled Watching the School of the Americas Watch: The War in South America Continues.
You could easily find quality articles like this at FrontPageMaga.com
By Paul Mulshine
In 1985, I made my first trip to El Salvador. I had been commissioned to write some columns for a newspaper in Philadelphia, and, being young and naive, I assumed that most of these columns would deal with the harsh military dictatorship that kept the legitimate aspirations of the people for freedom and democracy in check....
Paul Mulshine is a columnist for the Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey - http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/
<D'Aubuisson's sole link to the school was that he had taken a course in radio operations long before El Salvador's civil war began.>
Bobby D went all the way to a military school in America just to take a class in radio operations? Hmmmmm..........
<Then there was the Guatemalan general Hector Gramajo, derided by SOA Watch as a School of the Americas graduate. Actually, he didn't attend the SOA. He did attend Harvard, however, so perhaps that school should be shut down too.>
Excellent idea! The Kennedy School at Harvard, where Hector the Horrible matriculated, trains even more butchers than the SOA. By all means, shut it down.
<Guatemala was not receiving U.S. military aid at the time the speaker's alleged uncle allegedly disappeared.>
A technicality. We were ramming so much money down the junta(a)' throats that they probably just needed a break so they could stuff it in their Miami bank accounts.
<Azzolina: "I talked with some of my old military buddies [about the SOA], retired Army and Navy people and they said, 'Joe, don't get involved in that.">
This is my favorite quote (I took it from the Horowitz site). "Uh, yeah, I wasn't sure if the U.S. military was funding terrorism, so I called up the U.S. military." If I was a retired military officer, living off one of the bloated pensions these parasites get, I'd stay away from it too. Who wants to bite the hand?
<I caught Assemblyman Doria at the door and asked if he was aware that virtually nothing uttered by SOA Watch was true. >
The reason he may not have been aware of this "fact" is because mostly everything SOA Watch says IS true.
By the way, I went to FrontPageMag.com. I found lots of right wing porn but I couldn't find any qualtity articles. Sorry. Try again, loser.