Very sensationalistic, Ray, but personally, I try to be careful about expending my personal capital on topics that sort of dry up and blow away under stronger scrutiny.
For example, D'Aubisson studied radio operation at the School of the Americas.
www1.cnn.com
Some more stuff counter to the left-wing party hook, line, and sinker you seem to have swallowed:
>>It's easier to believe a priest than a man in an Army uniform. But that doesn't mean that we should.
Fort Benning, Ga., is the home of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). The school originated in Panama in 1946 to
provide military training to Latin American nations. As part of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, the school was relocated to the
Army base in Georgia. U.S. embassies in 21 Central and South American countries select students and send them to the school
for courses to train Latin American military and police forces. Courses range from two weeks to nearly a year. Maryknoll priest
Roy Bourgeois and his "School of the Americas Watch organization call it a school for assassins.
During the last 10 years, Bourgeois has worked to shut down the school, blaming it for teaching Latin Americans how to
commit human rights abuses. The accusations are horrific: Graduates commit massacres and lead bloody coups; they slaughter
innocents and clergy; arid they rape, torture and mutilate. Churches and other organizations across the country have jumped on
the anti-School of the Americas bandwagon, mailing letters to legislators and marshaling contingents of placard-carrying
demonstrators. This month a national protest was held in Washington, D.C.
This seems like an irresistible cause. Murder and mayhem are bad. Anti-militaristic clergy must be good. But in this case, it may
be a mistake to automatically assume the good guys are the ones wearing the Roman collars.
Bourgeois and other detractors use church publications and Internet sites to denounce the school. Accusations, some of them
markedly bizarre, like hints of Army-sponsored chambers where torture techniques are perfected, are presented as
unquestioned truth, often without the benefit of names, dates and facts to back them up. Asking for proof from clergy seems
somehow bad-mannered, so few media and taxpayers have looked for corroboration. <<
carlisle-www.army.mil
carlisle-www.army.mil
>>The leader of the grassroots opposition to the SOA is Father Roy Bourgeois, a 61-year-old Catholic priest who has spent nearly his entire life protesting U.S. foreign policy. Father Roy, whose missionary work in Latin America once included patrols with the FMLN, El Salvador’s leftist guerrilla movement, denounces what he views as the government’s self-interest and callous disregard for the poor in Latin America. He even wants to see Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan, among other U.S. officials, prosecuted by an international tribunal for what he calls "their crimes against humanity."
But his bread-and-butter issue, of course, is the School of the Americas. "What this school is about," says Father Roy, whose tan skin, thick biceps, and active blue eyes give him the look of a far younger man, "is control. It’s about defending a socio-economic system that keeps the power, land, and guns in the hands of a small elite—all while victimizing the poor."
Situated directly across the street from the entrance to Fort Benning, Father Roy’s small home/office is spruced up with the classic adornments of left-wing activism. A poster of Rigoberta Menchu hangs in the kitchen, the Noam Chomsky Reader sits prominently on the bookshelf, and pictures of the countless rallies, protests, and vigils he has masterminded are proudly arranged on the walls. Father Roy is meticulously neat, and his organizational skills have no doubt been instrumental in building up the membership of his group, SOA Watch, to over 20,000 people nationwide.
Father Roy and his people harp incessantly on the "torture training" they claim was once standard at the SOA. In fact, the only credible evidence of any wrongdoing on the school’s part concerns the use of four outdated Army manuals in two military-intelligence courses offered in the early l990s. In 1992, a Department of Defense report acknowledged that the manuals contained two dozen passages "inconsistent with U.S. policy"; they included references to blackmail, false imprisonment, physical coercion, and the use of truth serum in interrogation. These so-called "torture manuals" have furnished SOA Watch with a wealth of rhetorical ammunition. What Father Roy and his group neglect to mention, though, is that the manuals were distributed to only 48 students at the school before they were withdrawn.
Since the discovery of the manuals in 1991, the SOA curriculum has been scrutinized in over twelve separate investigations conducted by, among others, the Department of Defense, the General Accounting Office, and even an independent consulting firm. No evidence of further wrongdoing has ever been found. And despite the emphasis his promotional materials place on the manuals, even Father Roy admits that he doesn’t believe torture is taught at the school.
Instead, he and his followers pursue a second line of attack, which consists of blaming the school for the misbehavior of its graduates. For example, an SOA Watch fact sheet asserts that "hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, massacred, and forced into refuge by those trained at the school." The group’s website lists over 500 SOA graduates implicated in human-rights abuses— including such villains as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and 19 Salvadoran soldiers accused of murdering six Jesuit priests in 1989.
In many cases, it’s unclear exactly how SOA training affected later behavior. Consider the example of Roberto d’Aubuisson, the Salvadoran death-squad leader who is often cited by the school’s opponents. D’Aubuisson did indeed attend the School of the Americas, in 1980—but only for a six-week-long course in radio maintenance and repair. Blaming the school for d’Aubuisson’s later misdeeds makes about as much sense as blaming Stalin’s seminary instructors for the Gulag Archipelago.<<
carlisle-www.army.mil |
