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Americas Terrorist Crimes
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
"THEY ARRIVE at an undefended village, assemble all the residents in the town square, and then proceed to kill, in full view of the others, all persons working for the government-including police, local militia members, party members, health workers, teachers and farmers."
This is not a description of the terrorism that George W Bush says he is at war with. It is a description of the terror campaign organised by people in Bush's administration. The quote is from Edgar Chamorro, a spokesman for the Contra terror group, describing how they operated.
The Contras were created, trained, armed and financed by the US, and unleashed on the Central American country of Nicaragua in the 1980s. The US, under President Ronald Reagan, waged a war of terror through the 1980s which saw tens of thousands of people slaughtered in Central America. Key figures behind the terror are now at the heart of George W Bush's regime. They include George Bush Sr, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, US ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte, and George W Bush's "human rights specialist" Elliot Abrams.
In 1979 the US-backed dictator in Nicaragua, Antonio Somoza, was overthrown by a popular revolution. The revolution shocked the US rulers. A US propaganda film summed up their fear: "What is at stake is more than the oilfields of Guatemala and Mexico, more than the natural resources. Today El Salvador and Guatemala. Tomorrow Honduras, Costa Rica, Belize, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the United States."
After the election of Reagan in 1980 the US decided to crush the rebellion. Reagan ordered the CIA to recruit and train a terrorist organisation, the Contras, to wreak havoc on Nicaragua.
The US also imposed an economic blockade on Nicaragua-and used terror to enforce it. In 1984 US forces mined Nicaraguan harbours to prevent anyone trading with the country. The CIA guidelines to the Contras advised them to learn from terror methods used by Hitler's Nazis: "Remember that infiltration and subversion allowed them to penetrate target countries."
The horror of the Contra terror caused outrage across the US, and forced the US Congress to vote to cut off military funding in 1984. But key figures in the US state organised to secretly continue funding the Contras, using money laundered from drug-running. Among those directly involved were Richard Armitage, now US Deputy Secretary of State.
Colin Powell, now US Secretary of State, was one of those who tried to cover up the scandal. The secret funding allowed the Contras to keep up their terror campaign. The Guardian reported the results of a Contra raid on one village: "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their testicles cut off and their eyes poked out. They were then killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."
The Contra campaign cost at least 17,000 lives directly, with many thousands more maimed.
1983-the US invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada to overthrow a government it saw as hostile to its interests.
1984-US warships shelled Beirut in Lebanon, killing hundreds of people, in revenge for an attack on US troops.
1986-the US, with British support, bombed the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Hundreds of people died as the bombs fell on residential areas and hospitals.
1989-the US invaded Panama in Central America to overthrow its ruler and former US ally General Noriega. Noriega had been involved in the Contra drugs and arms scandal, and was a former CIA employee.
Throughout the 1980s the US helped arm the right wing UNITA force in Angola, which waged war on the elected government. In 25 years over one million people have been killed.
Key members of George W Bush's Republican Party also financed the brutal Renamo group in Mozambique.
A UNITED Nations commission report identified military officers responsible for some of the worst atrocities in El Salvador in the 1980s. They had all graduated from the US's School of the Americas (SOA) training camp in Georgia.
Among the 57 named SOA graduates in the UN report on El Salvador were:
Mario Arevelo Melendez: involved in the murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989.
Armando Azmitia: involved in a notorious 1981 massacre of hundreds of civilians at the village of El Mozote.
Luis Colindres Aleman: involved in the killing of four US nuns in 1980.
Roberto D'Aubisson: "organised El Salvador's death squad network".
Colonel Jose Godinez Castillo: involved in 1,051 summary executions and 318 torture cases.
Carlos Medina Caray: involved in the 1981 El Junquillo massacre, in which troops raped and murdered children as young as 12.
For full list see www.soaw.org
NICARAGUA WAS only one target of the US campaign. In the 1980s the US intervened to crush revolt in El Salvador. Its favoured tools were death squads linked to the El Salvadorean military. Anyone who opposed the regime became a target. The country's Archbishop Romero was gunned down on the steps of his cathedral in 1980.
The man who organised Romero's killing was Robert D'Aubisson, a military officer and leader of a fascist party. He was a graduate of the US's School of the Americas training camp. The US backed him during the 1980s when he became president of El Salvador. US citizens who had gone to El Salvador for humanitarian reasons were also targets. Four US nuns were raped and murdered in 1980 by death squads.
In the two years to March 1982 some 30,000 people were killed in El Salvador. By the end of the decade 70,000 had been killed.
One report by the Salvadoran Socorro Juridico human rights legal group described how "the corpses appeared scalped, beheaded, with throats cut and dismembered. The heads of the decapitated began to appear hung from trees or impaled on fences."
The US funded, armed and encouraged those responsible. In Guatemala the US backed up death squads and a brutal military regime throughout the 1980s. The US attitude was summed up by Fred Sherwood, then head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala: "Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're bumping off our enemies. I'd give them more power. The death squad? I'm for it!"
The US coordinated the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador from neighouring Honduras, which also had a repressive military regime and death squads. From 1981 to 1985 the US ambassador in Honduras was John Negroponte, now George W Bush's ambassador to the United Nations.
The US paper, Baltimore Sun, uncovered evidence that opponents of the Honduran regime "were kidnapped, tortured and killed by a secret army unit trained and supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency".
This is not a description of the terrorism that George W Bush says he is at war with. It is a description of the terror campaign organised by people in Bush's administration. The quote is from Edgar Chamorro, a spokesman for the Contra terror group, describing how they operated.
The Contras were created, trained, armed and financed by the US, and unleashed on the Central American country of Nicaragua in the 1980s. The US, under President Ronald Reagan, waged a war of terror through the 1980s which saw tens of thousands of people slaughtered in Central America. Key figures behind the terror are now at the heart of George W Bush's regime. They include George Bush Sr, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, US ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte, and George W Bush's "human rights specialist" Elliot Abrams.
In 1979 the US-backed dictator in Nicaragua, Antonio Somoza, was overthrown by a popular revolution. The revolution shocked the US rulers. A US propaganda film summed up their fear: "What is at stake is more than the oilfields of Guatemala and Mexico, more than the natural resources. Today El Salvador and Guatemala. Tomorrow Honduras, Costa Rica, Belize, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the United States."
After the election of Reagan in 1980 the US decided to crush the rebellion. Reagan ordered the CIA to recruit and train a terrorist organisation, the Contras, to wreak havoc on Nicaragua.
The US also imposed an economic blockade on Nicaragua-and used terror to enforce it. In 1984 US forces mined Nicaraguan harbours to prevent anyone trading with the country. The CIA guidelines to the Contras advised them to learn from terror methods used by Hitler's Nazis: "Remember that infiltration and subversion allowed them to penetrate target countries."
The horror of the Contra terror caused outrage across the US, and forced the US Congress to vote to cut off military funding in 1984. But key figures in the US state organised to secretly continue funding the Contras, using money laundered from drug-running. Among those directly involved were Richard Armitage, now US Deputy Secretary of State.
Colin Powell, now US Secretary of State, was one of those who tried to cover up the scandal. The secret funding allowed the Contras to keep up their terror campaign. The Guardian reported the results of a Contra raid on one village: "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their testicles cut off and their eyes poked out. They were then killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."
The Contra campaign cost at least 17,000 lives directly, with many thousands more maimed.
1983-the US invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada to overthrow a government it saw as hostile to its interests.
1984-US warships shelled Beirut in Lebanon, killing hundreds of people, in revenge for an attack on US troops.
1986-the US, with British support, bombed the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Hundreds of people died as the bombs fell on residential areas and hospitals.
1989-the US invaded Panama in Central America to overthrow its ruler and former US ally General Noriega. Noriega had been involved in the Contra drugs and arms scandal, and was a former CIA employee.
Throughout the 1980s the US helped arm the right wing UNITA force in Angola, which waged war on the elected government. In 25 years over one million people have been killed.
Key members of George W Bush's Republican Party also financed the brutal Renamo group in Mozambique.
A UNITED Nations commission report identified military officers responsible for some of the worst atrocities in El Salvador in the 1980s. They had all graduated from the US's School of the Americas (SOA) training camp in Georgia.
Among the 57 named SOA graduates in the UN report on El Salvador were:
Mario Arevelo Melendez: involved in the murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989.
Armando Azmitia: involved in a notorious 1981 massacre of hundreds of civilians at the village of El Mozote.
Luis Colindres Aleman: involved in the killing of four US nuns in 1980.
Roberto D'Aubisson: "organised El Salvador's death squad network".
Colonel Jose Godinez Castillo: involved in 1,051 summary executions and 318 torture cases.
Carlos Medina Caray: involved in the 1981 El Junquillo massacre, in which troops raped and murdered children as young as 12.
For full list see www.soaw.org
NICARAGUA WAS only one target of the US campaign. In the 1980s the US intervened to crush revolt in El Salvador. Its favoured tools were death squads linked to the El Salvadorean military. Anyone who opposed the regime became a target. The country's Archbishop Romero was gunned down on the steps of his cathedral in 1980.
The man who organised Romero's killing was Robert D'Aubisson, a military officer and leader of a fascist party. He was a graduate of the US's School of the Americas training camp. The US backed him during the 1980s when he became president of El Salvador. US citizens who had gone to El Salvador for humanitarian reasons were also targets. Four US nuns were raped and murdered in 1980 by death squads.
In the two years to March 1982 some 30,000 people were killed in El Salvador. By the end of the decade 70,000 had been killed.
One report by the Salvadoran Socorro Juridico human rights legal group described how "the corpses appeared scalped, beheaded, with throats cut and dismembered. The heads of the decapitated began to appear hung from trees or impaled on fences."
The US funded, armed and encouraged those responsible. In Guatemala the US backed up death squads and a brutal military regime throughout the 1980s. The US attitude was summed up by Fred Sherwood, then head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala: "Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're bumping off our enemies. I'd give them more power. The death squad? I'm for it!"
The US coordinated the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador from neighouring Honduras, which also had a repressive military regime and death squads. From 1981 to 1985 the US ambassador in Honduras was John Negroponte, now George W Bush's ambassador to the United Nations.
The US paper, Baltimore Sun, uncovered evidence that opponents of the Honduran regime "were kidnapped, tortured and killed by a secret army unit trained and supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency".
0
Comments
Youve listed some of the awful things that America has done in the past so does this mean that 7000 innocents deserved to die in the WTC and Pentagon?
You can produce an article like this for every single country on this planet. Just because a government commits some crimes does not mean that the civilians of that country deserve to die.
It never fails to amuse me that people like you are perfectly happy to say that the Americans deserved it for their past crimes but then you argue that we shouldnt hold the people of Afghanistan responsible for the actions of their govt. Amazing hypocracy.
No matter what America has done in the past the American people DID NOT DESERVE to be massacred.
You have some seriously fucked up morals. I guess its ok that Americans get killed because their govt did some bad things in the past. You disgust me Steelgate
"Let's roll......" Todd Beamer, American Hero
More US terrorism...at its best.
Diesel
88888888
steelgate, no nation is entirely innocent, nor entirely guilty. we all have to live with that (god knows, we argue about it enough on thesite!), and not let it colour our judgement of other nations.
i do agree that some US actions in the cold war were deplorable, and perhaps mis-directed. but, the UK is hardly any better.
at the time those incidents took place, they were perceived to be militarily necessary, or at least strategically beneficial to the US. but the time for those operations is over, the threat has changed. we have to move on. staying stuck in the past will get us nowhere. tackling the problems for tomorrow, now that is the way forward.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
Or is this more evidence of the glorious socialist future where the elite live off the work of others?
(funny, doesn't that sound just like the world today too?)
Oh, by the way I am already aware of atorcities commited by the US. I have an education too. Why not comdemn other countries for the acts they carried out? Perhaps we should look at the acts of the Mongol hordes, or the scandanavians for the Viking invasions?
I think Balldog gave you the best response - your hipocracy - wilst you accuse others of the same thing. If the Afghans cannot be held responsible for the actions of their Government, then neither can the US or the UK.
"Perhaps my best years are gone, but I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now." - Samuel Beckett
do the words traitor and treason mean anything to you?
I hope the government decides that the few people demonstrating against the war are not acting in the best interests of the country and you are arrested for inciting violence, and for crimes against the state.
Now that would be worth a look.
because this war is about freedom and democracy isn't it? so best to imprison all those that use their freedom of speech to question those in power...
hmmm - smell that freedom!
I'm all for freedom. But I think freedom of speech is sometimes taken to the extreme, do you not agree? Do you feel the same way about Nazis? Or should they be locked up for inciting hate?
I think there are some people who take liberty a bit too far, and I think this is one of those cases. The left wing activists on this board have harped on about how futile a war will be, but they and you have still failed to come up with a viable alternative. Howabout instead of bombing the Taliban we let them come over here and join in one of your protests, we may as well as to the outside world it seems they have an open invitation.
Go into your local town and shout out 'I hate negros' or 'I hate pakis' and you will be arrested.
Of course youre allowed to shout out your hatred of Americans cos theyre white and therefore fair game.
Free speech is a fine line though. Theres worms like Steelgate who stand outside arms fairs and achieve nothing which is fine with me. Then theres people like that Muslim cleric in London who calls for people to murder Brits and Americans..That is going too far and they should be arrested.
"Let's roll......" Todd Beamer, American Hero
Then I'm afraid we will just have to disagree. I think society has become too liberalised, I think freedoms such as freedom of speech are being abused by a small minority of people. As soon as the state steps in and removes the trouble makers then I'll be happy.
iS IT TRUE
yOU HATE THEM ALL
Sorry - caps on!
Why would you want to have the freedom to do it?
who, me?
I'm not a protestor of any sort. I'm happy with my lot, and miffed that other people see fit to speak in my name.
They were examples. I wouldnt say such things...BUT banning the personal opinions of unpopular people is just one small step away from banning personal opinions fullstop.
There should be NO LIMIT to freedom of speech unless it endangers peoples lives or encourages crimes.
"Let's roll......" Todd Beamer, American Hero
At the moment there is a concerted effort to stop people having a go at muslims. That's fair enough and I have no problem about that, until you hear certain members of the muslim community uttering racist overtones about the US and the UK, and inciting an uprising in this country, without censure.
THAT is why Balldog is trying to get at. He doesn't WANT to say those things, in the same way that he doesn't believe that we should be subjected to racism from a certain Muslim cleric in London. Either racism is wrong, or it isn't...
"Perhaps my best years are gone, but I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now." - Samuel Beckett