Details US Taxes Funded Coup Attempt vs. Demo Elected Leader of Venezuela

glynch,

i clicked the link but it wouldn't go through.

 

I found it!

Thanks for bringing it up. U.S. policy in Latin America has been majorly flawed for a long time.

This stuff makes me sad.

 

Talk about sensationalizing headlines... ...That's like complaining about tax dollars going to Robert Maplethorpe...

Since it has changed many times, I find this statement silly. Even this article written on 'anti-war.com' admits US policy is largely hinged on SUPPORTING democracy in Latin America.

 

The policy was supposed to be hinged on supporting democracy.

The U.S. policy I was referring to was supporting Contras in Nicaragua, the mining of the harbors of nicaragua, the supporting of death squads of El Salvador, the invasion of Panama. There have been policy changes in Latin America, and there have been screwed up policies like these that span many administrations.

 

Supporting the Contras in Nicaragua WAS in support of democracy. Which was worse, the Contras or the Sandinistas, is another debate. Not sure how the invasion of Panama was anti-democratic. They didn't like Noriega any more than we did. He stopped elections. Now they have elections. Death squad were not even governmental, they were at most Duarte's unofficial support which we had nothing to do with. In fact it was US pressure that eventually brought a halt to the death squads. And you have to put the Cold War in perspective, the choices in many cases we hard anti-communist dictators (Pinochet et al) or dictators in leftist clothing (Castro, Ortega in Nicaragua et al). Strange how most of the dictatorships and bloody communist insurgencies died out once the Soviet Union collapsed, isn't it?

 

Question:

Can anyone (franchiseblade?) tell me more about the death squads in El Salvador?? I'm dating a girl from El Salvador and her father is a retired General!! Hope they don't send one after me if we stop dating!!

Just time frame and what happened would be great!!

 

Time frame - 80s. President of El Salvador Duarte was elected but highly conservative (rightist). Opposed by armed (Soviet) insurgents in long running civil war. Highly criticised for 'death squads' which were paramilitary forces detached from official military that killed opposition in El Salvador. Death squads came to worldwide attention (I believe) after several non-Salvadorian nationals were killed by the death squads (priests or nuns I think).

If he was a general then he probably was around at the time.

 

Nicaragua had elections under Ortega. Under the Samosa regime they didn't.

Saying that the govt. didn't have anything to do with the death squads in El Salvador, and that they were unofficial isn't correct at all. A lot of the guys were high up in the army.(not to Khan: Don't ask too many questions of your girlfriends father. )

Yes eventually the U.S. did put some pressure on El Salvador to stop the murders but that doesn't escuse teh fact that the guys doing the murdering were U.S. trained.

These are a couple of exerpts from a BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/americas/1891145.stm

"There is a tremendous irony that President George W Bush has chosen to visit El Salvador on the anniversary of the murder of the country's Archbishop, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, 22 years ago.

A campaigner against the Salvadorean army's death squad war, Monsignor Romero was shot through the heart while saying Mass, shortly after appealing to the US not to send military aid to El Salvador.

The appeal fell on deaf ears and for the next 12 years, the US became involved in its largest counter-insurgency war against left-wing guerrillas since Vietnam. "

"At the same time an elite US-trained army unit murdered six Jesuit priests, the country's leading intellectuals, in cold blood.

The murders showed that after a decade of US instruction the army still had a lot to learn about human rights and democracy.

The priests were taken out of their house and repeatedly shot through the head with machine guns.

A US congressional investigation found strong evidence that the army's high command had ordered the murders, prompting a cut in military aid. "

 

Khan here are some sites that talk about the El Salvadoran death squads.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html
"Death Squad Members, Testimony
Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, a soldier in the First Infantry Brigade's Department 2 (Intelligence), is the most recent Salvadoran to admit his involvement in death squad activity. At a November 1, 1989 press conference Joya Martinez stated that certain military units in Department 2 carried out "heavy interrogation" (a euphemism for torture) after which the victims were killed. The job of his unit was to execute people by strangulation, slitting their throats, or injecting them with poison. He admitted killing eight people and participating in many more executions. He stated that the Brigade Commander had sent written orders to carry out the killings and that the use of bullets was forbidden because they might be traced to the military.
Joya Martinez also claims that one of the U.S. advisers working with the First Brigade sat at a desk next to his and received "all the reports from our agents on clandestine captures, interrogations...but we did not provide them with reports on the executions. They did not want to hear of the actual killings." U.S. advisers authorized expenses for such extras as black glass on squad vans to allow executions to take place unobserved; provided $4,000 for the monthly budget; and conducted classes in recruiting informants and conducting intelligence reconnaissance.
Another Salvadoran soldier, Ricardo Castro, is the first officer to come forward with information about death squad activity. Castro graduated from West Point in 1973 and was a company commander in the Salvadoran Army. He translated for several U.S. advisers who taught, among other subjects, interrogation techniques. Castro claims that one U.S. instructor worked out of the Sheraton Hotel (taken over briefly during the November 1989 FMLN offensive) and emphasized psychological techniques. Castro recalled a class where Salvadoran soldiers asked the adviser about an impasse in their torture sessions:
He was obviously against torture a lot of the time. He favored selective torture.... When they learned some thing in class, they might go back to their fort that night and practice.... I remember very distinctly some students talking about the fact that people were conking out on them...as they were administering electric shock. 'We keep giving him the electric shock, and he just doesn't respond. What can we do?'.... The American gave a broad smile and said, 'You've got to surprise him. We know this from experience. Give him a jolt. Do something that will just completely amaze him, and that should bring him out of it."
Castro revealed that he held monthly briefings with then deputy CIA chief of station in El Salvador Frederic Brugger who had recruited him for intelligence work after meeting at an interrogation class. Castro also claimed to have knowledge of the perpetration of large massacres of civilians by Army Department 5.
In December 1981, he met in Morazan Province with one of the officers that the U.S. instructor had advised. "They had two towns of about 300 people each, and they were interrogating them to see what they knew. Since I...knew something about interrogations, he said he might want me to help. The Major told me that after the interrogation, they were going to kill them all." Castro was, however, reassigned and did not participate. Later, his pro-government mother told him, "You know, son, these guerrillas, they invent the wildest lies. They say that in December, 600 civilians were killed in Morazan." "Oh, ****, I was hoping I'd been dreaming it," he thought. "I later found out, they did go in and kill them after all."
Rene Hurtado worked as intelligence agent for the Treasury Police, one of the three Salvadoran paramilitary forces. After a falling out with an officer, he fled to Minnesota, took refuge with a Presbyterian Church congregation, and began describing routine torture methods used by paramilitary forces. These included beatings, electric shock, suffocation, and mutilation. He described techniques such as tearing the skin from " interrogation" subjects, sticking needles into them, or beating them in such a manner that lasting internal injuries but no telltale external marks would be sustained. According to Hurtado, CIA employees and Green Berets taught some of these torture techniques to the Treasury Police in Army staff headquarters.
General John Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was particularly disturbed by the implication of the Green Berets and initiated an investigation. The investigator from the Army Criminal Investigation Division stated, "My job was to clear the Army's name and I was going to do whatever [was] necessary to do that." Hurtado refused to cooperate with the investigator on the advice of a member of Congress whom the church parishioners had called upon. When the investigator was told this by the minister, he responded, "Tell Mr. Hurtado that the Congressman has given him very costly advice. When I went to El Salvador to investigate his allegations, at the advice of the U.S. Ambassador, I did not talk to members of the Salvadoran military. If I go again and talk to the military, we don't know who will be hurt, do we?''
Following revelations of U.S. involvement in death squad activities, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees reported on allegations of U.S. complicity in death squad activity. The Republican-dominated Senate panel confirmed that Salvadoran officials were involved, but denied any direct U.S. role, keeping certain portions of its report classified. The House Committee stated that, "U.S. intelligence agencies have not conducted any of their activities in such a way as to directly encourage or support death-squad activities." Rep. James Shannon (Dem.-Mass.), who requested the inquiry, commented that the report was "certainly not as conclusive as the committee makes it sound.''

Varelli, Carranza, Montano, and others
Frank Varelli is the son of a former Salvadoran Minister of Defense and National Police commander. When Varelli's family came to the U.S. in 1980, Varelli started working as an FBI informant. Years later, he publicly revealed his role in FBI covert operations against domestic organizations opposing Reagan's Central American policy. He has also asserted that the Salvadoran National Guard gave him death lists which he compared to lists of Salvadorans in the U.S. awaiting deportation back to El Salvador. Varelli believes some may have been killed on their return to El Salvador. He reported these contacts with the National Guard to the FBI.
Former Colonel Roberto Santivanez claimed that the then chief of the Salvadoran Treasury Police, Nicolas Carranza, was the officer most active with the death squads. Colonel Carranza is also alleged to have received $90,000 annually from the CIA. Carranza has confirmed the close working relationship of the paramilitary forces with U.S. intelligence. "[They] have collaborated with us in a certain technical manner, providing us with advice. They receive information from everywhere in the world, and they have sophisticated equipment that enables them to better inform or at least confirm the information we have. It's very helpful.''
Carlos Antonio Gomez Montano was a paratrooper stationed at Ilopango Air Force Base. He claimed to have seen eight Green Beret advisers watching two "torture classes" during which a 17-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were tortured. Montano claimed that his unit and the Green Berets were joined by Salvadoran Air Force Commander Rafael Bustillo and other Salvadoran officers during these two sessions in January 1981. A Salvadoran officer told the assembled soldiers, "[watching] will make you feel more like a man.''
Above are the accounts of the death squad deserters. Non military sources have also reported the participation of U.S. personnel. For example, another (highly placed anonymous civilian) source maintained that Armed Forces General Staff Departments 2 and 5 (organized with help from U.S. Army Colonel David Rodriguez, a Cuban-American) used tortures such as beating, burning and electric shock. U.S. involvement has also been asserted in sworn accounts by some victims of torture. Jose Ruben Carrillo Cubas, a student, gave testimony that during his detention by the Long Distance Reconnaissance Patrol (PRAL) in 1986, a U.S. Army Major tortured him by applying electric shocks to his back and ears.
Various sources have reported the use of U.S.-manufactured torture equipment. Rene Hurtado, for example, explained, "There re some very sophisticated methods...of torture..[like the machine] that looks like a radio, like a transformer; it s about 15 centimeters across, with connecting wires. It says General Electric on it...."
Many other documented accounts of brutality by U.S. trained and advised military units exist. Indeed, the elite Atlacatl Battalion has been implicated in several massacres over the past ten years and members of the battalion have been indicted for the November slayings of the six Jesuit priests and two women.
It is widely accepted, in the mainstream media and among human rights organizations, that the Salvadoran government is responsible for most of the 70,000 deaths which are the result of ten years of civil war. The debate, however, has dwelled on whether the death squads are strictly renegade military factions or a part of the larger apparatus. The evidence indicates that the death squads are simply components of the Salvadoran military. And that their activities are not only common knowledge to U.S. agencies, but that U.S. personnel have been integral in organizing these units and continue to support their dally functioning.

Here is some more if you want to read it.
http://www.icomm.ca/carecen/page46.html
In its final report, the U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission investigating human rights abuses presented a detailed history of the death squads. Excerpts from the report are presented below.

El Salvador has a long history of violence committed by groups that are neither part of the Government nor ordinary criminals. For decades, it has been a fragmented society with a weak system of justice and a tradition of impunity for officials and members of the most powerful families who commit abuses. …

Violence has formed part of the exercise of official authority, directly guided by State officials. This has been reflected, throughout the country's history, in a pattern of conduct by the government and power elites of using violence as a means to control civilian society. In the past 150 years, a number of uprisings by peasants and indigenous groups have been violently suppressed by the State and by civilian groups armed by landowners.

A kind of complicity developed between businessmen and landowners, who entered into a close relationship with the army and intelligence and security forces. The aim was to ferret out alleged foreign conspiracy. …

There were several stages in the process of formation of the death squads in this century. The National Guard was created and organized in 1910 and the following years. From its inception, members cooperated actively with large landowners, at times going so far as to crack down brutally on the peasant leagues and other rural groups that threatened their interests.

Local National Guard commanders "offered their services" or hired out guardsmen to protect landowners' material interests. The practice of using the services of "paramilitary personnel", chosen and armed by the army or the large landowners, began soon afterwards. …

In other words, from virtually the beginning of the century, a Salvadoran State security force, through a misperception of its true function, was directed against the bulk of the civilian population. In 1932, National Guard members, the army and paramilitary groups, with the collaboration of local landowners, carried out a massacre known as "La Matanza", in which they murdered at least 10,000 peasants in the western part of the country in order to put down a rural insurrection.

Between 1967 and 1979, General Jose Alberto Medrano, who headed the National Guard, organized the paramilitary group known as ORDEN. The function of this organization was to identify and eliminate alleged communists among the rural population. He also organized the national military intelligence agency, ANSESAL. These institutions helped consolidate an era of military hegemony in El Salvador, sowing terror selectively among alleged subversives identified by the intelligence services. …

The reformist coup by young military officers in 1979 ushered in a new period of intense violence. Various circles in the armed forces and the private sector vied for control of the repressive apparatus. Hundreds and even thousands of people perceived as supporters or active members of a growing guerrilla movement...were murdered. Members of the army, the Treasury Police, the National Guard, and the National Police formed "squads" to do away with enemies. Private and semi-official groups also set up their own squads or linked up with existing structures within the armed forces. …

It should be said that, while it is possible to differentiate the armed forces death squads from the civilian death squads, the borderline between the two was often blurred. For instance, even the quads that were not organized as part of any State structure were often supported or tolerated by State institutions. Frequently, death squads operated in coordination with the armed forces and acted as a support structure for their activities. The clandestine nature of these activities made it possible to conceal the State's responsibility for them and created an atmosphere of complete impunity for the murderers who worked in the squads. …

The 1979 coup d'etat altered the political landscape in El Salvador. One of the competing factions directly affected by the coup was a core of military officers who sought to pre-empt the groups that had staged the coup and also any reform movement. ...The leader of this faction was former Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, who up until 1979 had been third in command of ANSESAL….

Former Major D'Aubuisson drew considerable support from wealthy civilians who feared that their interests would be affected by the reform programs announced by the Government Junta. ...The Commission on the Truth obtained testimony from many sources that some of the richest landowners and businessmen inside and outside the country offered their estates, homes, vehicles and bodyguards to help the death squads. They also used their funds to organize and maintain the squads, especially those directed by former Major D'Aubuisson. …

After the assassination of Monsignor Romero, which, in very closed circles, D'Aubuisson took credit for having planned, his prestige and influence grew among the groups that wielded economic power, gaining him further support and resources. …

…t must be pointed out that the United States Government tolerated, and apparently paid little official heed to the activities of Salvadoran exiles living in Miami…[T]his group of exiles directly financed and indirectly helped run certain death squads.

[Excerpted from pages 132-137 of the Truth Commission report

 

That is misleading FB. Neither the Samosa regime nor the Oretga regime that replaced them had free elections. Finally, Ortega had no choice as he had lost the support of his masters in the Soviet Union. With no power base he had little chance but to gamble on an election. Before the Soviet collapse Nicaragua DID NOT have fair elections. As far as the Samosa regime, that was more than THIRTY YEARS AGO. More than 4 administrations ago (including two two-termers). During the CARTER ADMINISTRATION which was WIDELY hailed for their stance on human rights.

You assume that because some of these people had US TRAINING that the US TRAINED them to form death squads. You are wrong. The training was conceived as a way to education third world militaries on the proper function of the military in society (separated from governance as in the US) and to help train them against violent insurgencies. Neither of those policies are immoral.

And there is nothing immoral about supporting a government against an armed insurgency.

The military was not TRAINED TO MURDER PRIESTS. It is very likely that the military would have murdered anyway. The process of taking someone outside and machine gunning them is not part of the training program.

Which would be the US responding after abuses were confirmed.

 

On the issue of 'training' the US gave Central and South American militaries...

"I have to clarify that while we are very disturbed when someone does commit a human rights abuse, and who has passed through the school at some time in the past, it is a very small percentage of the total number of students. We have had over 60,000 graduates of the School of the Americas since 1946. Less than 1 percent of those graduates have ever been linked to human rights abuses, according to our critics. That's a glass that's over 99 percent full, as opposed to the picture that's painted of the school." - -(from the school commandant)

Add to that the article from above (FranchiseBlade i think) that says..

"El Salvador has a long history of violence committed by groups that are neither part of the Government nor ordinary criminals. For decades, it has been a fragmented society with a weak system of justice and a tradition of impunity for officials and members of the most powerful families who commit abuses. …
Violence has formed part of the exercise of official authority, directly guided by State officials. This has been reflected, throughout the country's history, in a pattern of conduct by the government and power elites of using violence as a means to control civilian society. In the past 150 years, a number of uprisings by peasants and indigenous groups have been violently suppressed by the State and by civilian groups armed by landowners."

...and its easy to see 'death squads' were not some import from late 20th century US military training.

 

Yes I fault parts of the Carter adminstration policy as well in Latin America.

The contras though which were supported by the U.S. govt. were in large part, left overs from the Samosa regime. I agree that it was an effort by American administrations to support right wing dictators over anything left of center in latin America, but we were on the wrong side much of the time.

The mere fact that the Soviet Union didn't continue to support Ortega, as well as the fact that he held elections goes to show that he wasn't the monster he was presented as being by the Reagan administration.

The guy was in a war for his country, and actually continued to allow the publication of an opposition press(funded in part by the U.S.). They had a specific time every day where people could gather and were free to voice their concerns without fear of govt. reprisal. It was free speech. Ortega wasn't a saint by any means, but he was far better than the contras.

The fact that we trained murderers is the problem. Yes, everyone knew they were murderers and were going to continue to murder. So why did have to train them and arm them at all? It doesn't matter that we technically trained them in how to machine gun priests and nuns. The fact is that we knew they used those kinds of tactics, and continued to fund, support and train them. That's where our policy failed.

When you say supporting them against armed insurgency do you mean local rebels or the Honduran skirmishes?

Anyway there may be nothing wrong with defending the govt against armed insurgents, unless the armed insurgents are in the right, and the govt. supports the murder of innocents and priests, and is totally oppressive. In that case I think a policy that supports that govt. is in the wrong.

After all the U.S. wasn't supporting Ortegas govt. against armed insurgents they were funding, training, and helping the insurgents themselves.

 

Then you are saying that US foreign policy, no matter whether the policy of Carter or of Reagan, which were diametrically opposite of each other, is wrong. That makes no sense. And you act as if these policies were completely unrelated to the larger Cold War which destorts your view, IMO.

Not really. Choosing between two bad options leaves you with 'bad option' no matter how you look at it.

Silly. The Soviets only stopped supporting Ortega when their economy started to collapse (the same time they stopped support for the Warsaw Pact countries, Cuba, and the rest of their proxy states -see the great governments of the opposition like Menguistu in Ethiopia). The Soviets were not well known for their support of human rights, and neither were their proxy regimes, including Nicaragua.

You are smoking CRACK. This is a more accurate description...

"Sandinista methods resemble Somoza’s to the point where they appear as a mirror image: rapes, torture, disappearances, murders. . . " (from article I'll put below)...

Saying the policy failed is different than IMPLICATING the US in the actions of the military.

What are you trying to delineate?

The armed insurgents were FAR from 'in the right.' In fact, they were all the way to the Left (j/k)... You assume the US had a clear option of a good group and a bad group, and they chose the bad group. The world is not black and white, my friend.

The Contras were rebels. We supported them. What is the problem?

 

Lawrence E. Harrison is a senior fellow at the Academy for International and Area Studies at Harvard University. He directed five USA ID missions in Latin America between 1965 and 1981. His most recent book is The Pan-American Dream (Basic Books, 1997).

They’ve already started to congregate at the front gate at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga., as they have in November since 1992. By Nov. 19, the anniversary date of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in El Salvador in 1989 by Salvadorian army personnel, hundreds of clergy, students, entertainment luminaries — Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen and the Indigo Girls possibly among them — and others will have gathered for prayers, speeches and acts of civil disobedience. Their goal is to close down the U.S. Army School of the Americas, which the demonstrators refer to as the "School of Assassins." Congress almost eliminated the school’s training budget this year.

Few of the demonstrators know much about Latin America beyond what they have heard from Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois, who has dedicated several years and several prison terms to a crusade against the school. To appreciate how misguided the demonstrators are, one must know something about Latin American realities — and the Maryknoll order.

The demonstrators believe that torture and other abuses of human rights are skills that the Latin American military have learned at the school. The reality is that these practices have been commonplace in Latin America going back 500 years to the conquistador colonizers. As in Spain and Portugal until recent decades, the Latin American military have regarded themselves as above the law, a posture reflected not only in widespread abuses of human rights but also in pervasive corruption and repeated military coups.

The idea of civilian control of the military, so central to our own concepts of civil-military relationships, has been alien to Latin America until recently. The only country that has succeeded in avoiding military abuse and corruption is Costa Rica, which did away with its armed forces after the 1948 revolution. Yet Costa Rica values the school’s training highly: 2500 members of its police forces have studied there.

Abuse of human rights, including torture and assassination, has not been confined to right-wing caudillos like Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the Somozas in Nicaragua, the Argentine generals and admirals who prosecuted the "Dirty War" of the 1970s, and Pinochet in Chile. The caudillos of the left — Castro and the Sandinistas — as well as left-wing terrorists around the region, have behaved similarly.

A comment in 1845 by the renowned Argentine author and statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento is relevant: "Terror is a sickness that infects people like cholera, smallpox or scarlet fever. ... Don’t laugh, people of Latin America.. .. Remember that you are Spanish, and that is how the Inquisition educated Spain. Be careful, then!"

Carlos Alberto Montaner, the most widely read columnist in the Spanish language, recently described the blaming of the School of the Americas for the abuses of the Latin American military as "absurd." He added, "When it comes to torture and other human rights abuses, Latin America is not underdeveloped."

The Maryknoll Mission has long pursued left-wing causes in Latin America, and many of its priests and nuns have supported Castro and the Sandinistas. The Maryknollers continue to blame the United States for many of Latin America’s ills at a time when blaming the United States is out of fashion in Latin America. Growing numbers of Latin American intellectuals and politicians are concluding that traditional Latin American culture is the source of those ills.

Symbolic of the Maryknoll association with the far-left in Latin America were Maryknoll priest Miguel d’Escoto, who was the Sandinista foreign minister, and, in a very different way, former Maryknoll nun Geraldine Macias, whose husband, Edgard, was the vice minister of labor. The Maciases grew increasingly concerned about the failure of the Sandinistas to abide by their commitments to political pluralism and nonalignment. The Sandinistas threatened Edgard’s life, and he sought asylum in the Venezuelan embassy.

The Maciases and their children left Nicaragua and arrived in Washington, where they were treated as outcasts by many left-leaning church people, including Maryknollers, who had formerly been their friends. In a letter that circulated widely, they wrote that the Sandinista methods "resemble Somoza’s to the point where they appear as a mirror image: rapes, torture, disappearances, murders. . . "

These, then, are the realities that many Maryknollers, Father Bourgeois prominently among them, do not speak of.

The School of the Americas has since 1946 been promoting the professionalization of the Latin American military, including military subordination to civil authority. It is true that four manuals introduced from

outside the school in 1989 contained some sentences — 26 in 1,100 pages — suggestive of improper tactics in handling intelligence sources. The manuals were withdrawn as soon as the school authorities discovered the offensive language. They had been issued as supplemental readings to 48 students over a two-year period.

To be sure, some Latin American military personnel who have attended the school — less than one per cent of the school’s 61,000 graduates — have engaged in human rights abuses. But, in the light of the centuries-old traditions of torture and other abuses of human rights in Latin America, to blame the abusive behavior of these personnel on the school is akin to blaming Harvard, as some Mexicans do, for the allegedly corrupt behavior of former president Carlos Salinas Gortari, who studied there.

The manual, and the behavior of some graduates, notwithstanding, the school has for more than 50 years promoted professionalism, respect for civil authority, respect for the law and commitment to democratic institutions in a region historically bereft of these ideas. The school has an important role to play today, particularly as military reform gathers momentum in Latin America — for example in Argentina, where the military budget has been drastically reduced —and as military forces around the hemisphere are increasingly involved in counter-narcotics and international peacekeeping activities.

The demonstrators at the Fort Benning gates are attacking a U.S. government institution that has made a helpful contribution to the professionalization and democratization of the Latin American military, as well as to communication among the military establishments of the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America. Out of ignorance and misguided ideological fervor, the demonstrators contribute to the troubling erosion of trust in our governmental institutions of recent decades, which ultimately translates into our mistrust of one another.

 

Ouch!

Damn guys if I stop posting suddenly, I broke up with this girl and her father sent the Death Squads after me!! He was like a really high up General and the assistant to the Secretary of Defense!!

Remember that scene in Scarface : All those militants are jumping over the walls, with guns !!! I better get a better alarm system or train my little cocker spaniel not to lick intruders!