Several protesters were arrested and jailed for trespassing on Fort Benning, location of America’s terrorist training ground, the School of the Americas, during the annual protests there. (They mark the anniversary of the rape and murder of American missionaries by United States-sponsored Salvadoran death squads.)
Ah, those were the Reagan years. Sponsoring death squads who rape and murder American churchwomen.
Old news? No, all the cool conservatives are advocating the “Salvadoran Option” for Iraq. It worked so well in Central America! Why not? We put the guy in charge of the original death squads plans, John Negroponte, in charge in Iraq.
Good thing this is all in the news. Oh, wait, it’s not in the news? Huh. I thought we had a liberal media…
Via Colin from ISCABBS, friend of protestor Dan Schwankl, who will be spending the next 90 days in Federal prison.
From the SOAW web page:
The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians…
In an attempt to deflect public criticism and disassociate the school from its dubious reputation, the SOA was renamed to “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)” in 2001.