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Posted by: CaptainLucid 6 months, 1 week ago
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CaptainLucid6 months, 1 week ago
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jcmcamis6 months, 1 week ago
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The lie is the picture being painted by a well-established left-wing propaganda machine where the story comes from. Take a little bit of truth, spin it, and presto! Instant self-gratification. Right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook. Pick a person, personalize it, demonize it, and hammer it home. The problem is that the authors are trying to depict that school as being bad. There's nothing wrong with the school, never has been. But there might be something wrong with some of its students. How convenient if you're against the military establishment.
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dissent6 months, 1 week ago
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are you denying its graduates include an array of people responsible for coups and brutalities in their own countries? .... bad apples, huh?
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it's remarkable the legacy of death, brutality and horror a "few bad apples" can leave in their wake especially when we have trained them for just such a purpose
School of Assassins
What do Col. Byron Lima Estrada of Guatemala, Lt. Josê Espinoza Guerra and General Juan Orlando Zepeda, both of El Salvador, and General Juan López Ortiz of Mexico have in common?
They are all murderers. They were all trained at the School of the Americas. Because of them, and because of thousands of others like them, many people call U.S. Army's School of the Americas the "School of Assassins."
And what do Panama's Manuel Noriega, Argentina's Leopoldo Galtiere, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado, Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez, and Bolivia's Hugo Banzer have in common? They have all been dictators in their countries, and they were all trained at the School of the Americas. Because of them, and others, many people call the U.S. Army's School of the Americas the "School of Coups."
The School of the Americas (SOA) is a military training school for Latin American soldiers. SOA is an official program of the U.S. government, funded by the government and run by the U.S. Armed Forces since 1946. SOA graduates have long been implicated in terrorism, human rights violations, coercion, and atrocities committed against civilian populations across Latin America.
A University of Wisconsin graduate thesis demonstrates that the defenders of SOA are wrong. Studying data on individual SOA graduates over a 40-year time span, Kate McCoy found that "students who took multiple courses at the School were more almost four times more likely to violate [human rights] than their counterparts who took only one course. ... [G]reater exposure to the School of the Americas training makes trainees more likely to engage in human rights violations ..."
In its 57 years, the School of the Americas has trained more than 61,000 Latin American officers in combat techniques, command tactics, military intelligence, and techniques of torture. These graduates have left a trail of blood and suffering in their own countries. Today, SOA/WHISC trains about a thousand soldiers each year.
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file...-
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jcmcamis6 months, 1 week ago
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I've read all those articles before. The assumption, and message I might add, is that it was "because of" SOA that those people committed the atrocities. Atrocities have been committed in those countries for centuries, long before the US ever existed. Unless you've forgotten the almost complete eradication of the indigenous peoples of Central and South America by the Spanish. And if you want to talk about El Salvador, let's talk about VillaLobos, now an upstanding Congressman, but once a vicious killer in command of an FMLN paramilitary group. According to intelligence reports, he personally killed between one and two dozen people personally, many using torture techniques. He was trained by the Cubans. And you wonder why I get a contrary attitude when zealots point fingers? For all the people that have died at the hands of US troops, it pales in comparison to what the Japanese did to the Chinese, or what the Russians did to their own, or what happened to the Jews before, during and after the Crusades all the way up to WWII. Where's the discussion about that? I stand firm. Yes, there were SOA grads that committed atrocities, but they most likely would have done them anyway as history has shown. To malign an institution that has also produced good officers is unjust. But I'm sure that doesn't matter to you, does it?
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CaptainLucid6 months ago
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So your argument is we have been F ing the natives since columbus so therefore we should continue with no moral remorse. We also used to consider black people as property. Should we endorse that because it is an American tradition? Just because we have done bad things in the past is no argument to continue perpetuation wrongs. We have some bad history as a nation. We don't need to add anymore bad history. Close down our terrorist training camp now.
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jcmcamis6 months ago
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Simply put, it's called perspective. You don't throw the baby out with the bath water. That's my point. The article is inflammatory and out of context in the bigger picture. I could pick any school, exclude all but the bad apples, and make the same arguments the author is making. That is also my point. If you're going to make an argument, you present ALL the facts and let the reader decide. You don't spin the facts in order to get the result you want. It's dishonest and disingenuous. If the author said, for example, 10% of all graduates were later charged at some point in their life of committing atrocities, how would the reader react? Especially if the backdrop of the story was that culturally, atrocities have been committed in these very same cultures for centuries. Then to top it off, because 90% were following the newer rules, overall atrocities in the region had been lowered over time, wouldn't that also influence the reader? But that didn't happen. The author painted a picture that supports their beliefs at the expense of the whole truth. Again, that's my point.
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CaptainLucid6 months, 1 week ago
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There is also nothing wrong with Al Quaida training camps by that standard. And yes I am against the military establishment and former general and president Eisenhower warned us about the military idustrial complex. We spend very little on defense. We spend a crapload on offensive war to oppress people so we can support dictators who will keep their people in poverty in return for American protection to fleece their resources. Anyone want to play W's bullcrap democracy bit on Kuwait or the Saudis who were the real source of the 9/11 terrorists? We never gave a crap about getting the people who attacked us. It was just an excuse to try to set up a puppet regime in the second largest oil country and was all planned before 9/11. It was all about stealing the oil and the chimp couldn't even get any oil other than what we smuggled out.
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