Human Rights Watch has repeatedly linked U.S.-trained Colombian army officers to paramilitary groups and the massacres they have perpetrated. Many of these troops received training at the U.S. army's School of the Americas, originally located in the Panama Canal Zone, but moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984. According to Human Rights Watch, Colombian officers "were students at the school at the time its curriculum included training manuals recommending that soldiers use bribery, blackmail, threats, and torture against insurgents."
In February 2002, the Bush administration requested $98 million in aid to create, arm and train a Colombian army brigade whose primary purpose would be to protect the risky business investments of a U.S. corporation in Colombia. Specifically, its mission would be to defend the Caño Limón oil pipeline used by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum from leftist guerrilla attacks.
Not surprisingly, Colombian officers and soldiers are currently among the School's leading recipients of training. According to SOAW, two million Colombians have been killed or displaced by SOA graduates who used violence that targeted the civilian population. The number of Colombian SOA graduates who have been linked to human rights abuses by human rights organizations, the Colombian government and the U.S. State Department is staggering.
The United States has a long history of supporting state-sponsored terrorism in Latin America, which the Bush White House intends to continue. For those of us unwilling to tolerate the use of our taxpayer dollars to support state-sponsored terrorism in Colombia, the time has come to issue our own ultimatum to lawmakers in Washington: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
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