You mean like the U.S. supported puppet dictators do, eh you hypocrite? Your LIES & HYPOCRISY DISGUSTS ME!!! You represent everything that's ROTTEN with U.S. foreign policies. ROTTEN to the core!!! And you are the reason why the U.S. is heading straight to a disaster and a financial brick wall and the end of U.S. evil, corrupt and rotten capitalism. You mark my words.
GENERAL AUGUSTO PINOCHET
President of Chile
Augusto Pinochet deposed democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973, and buried Chile's 150 year old democracy. "Democracy is the breeding ground of communism", says Pinochet. The bloody coup, in which Allende was assassinated, was carefully managed by the CIA and ITT. Tens of thousands of Chileans have been tortured, killed, and exiled since then, according to Amnesty International. A U.S. congressional delegation was told by inmates at San Miguel Prison that they had been tortured by "the application of electric shock, simultaneous blows to the ears, cigarette burns, and simulated executions by firing squads." Despite Chile's bad human rights record, the U.S. government continued to support Pinochet with international loans. Even the state-sponsored car-bomb assassination of Chile's former Ambassador to the U.S., Orlando Letelier, did not convince the U.S. to break with Pinochet. In 1988 a plebiscite refused to extend Pinochet's rule, so he altered the constitution to reduce the powers of the incoming elected President, and left himself head of the armed forces. All the other South American dictators are gone but Pinochet has found the perfect solution: Chile now has the squeaky-clean sheen of democracy yet he still has his finger on the trigger.
COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia
In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.
GENERAL MANUEL NORIEGA
Chief of Defense Forces, Panama
The US command post for covert Latin American operations is located in the Canal Zone where a series of figurehead presidents, some backed by General Manuel Noriega, had involved Panama in US intelligence operations. General Noriega became commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Panama in 1983, and for the next six years was more powerful than the President. He was the kind of ruthless leader the US favored in the rest of Central America. Noriega first met with then CIA Director George Bush in 1976, while Noriega was collecting $100 thousand a year as a CIA asset. Their friendly relationship persisted even after Noriega's drug dealing was revealed by a 1975 DEA investigation. During the Reagan era, Noriega collaborated with Oliver North on covert actions against Nicaragua, training contras and providing a transshipment point for CIA supported operations that flew weapons to the contras and cocaine into the US.
But he fell foul of the US when he failed to support their plan to invade Nicaragua -- they withdrew aid and imposed sanctions. In 1987, a Miami grand jury indicted him for drug-trafficking, and the CIA tried to destabilize his regime. Noriega warned Bush that he had information which could change the course of the 1988 US elections and the CIA backed off. When Noriega annulled Panama's 1989 elections, citing CIA interference, Bush renewed attempts to unseat his one-time ally. Critics called Bush's failure to support an abortive 1989 coup "indecisive", but his response to that criticism, the December 1989 invasion of Panama, led to world condemnation. Noriega eventually surrendered to face US drug charges. The invasion of 26,000 American troops led to over 4,000 Panamanian deaths and installed a regime with similar close links to drugs, plus a willingness to alter Panama Canal treaties to serve US interests.
Noriega was taken prisoner and stood trial in Miami on charges of drug trafficking and was sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment. He is still in a Florida jail contemplating the irony that he was once also the protégé of the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Meanwhile the legal office of the President the US installed in his place was discovered to have connections with 14 companies that had laundered drug money.
GENERAL EFRAIN RIOS MONTT
President of Guatemala
"A Christian has to walk around with his Bible and his machine gun", said born-again General Efrain Rios Montt, military ruler of Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983. Rios Montt was one in a long series of dictators who ran Guatemala after the Dulles brothers and United Fruit, backed by the CIA, decided that democratically-elected President Jacobo Arbenz was too reform-minded. And so, they overthrew the country's constitutional democracy in 1954. The succession of corrupt military dictators ruled Guatemala for over 30 years, one anti-communist tyrant after another receiving U.S. support, aid, and training. After the 1982 coup that brought Rios Montt to power, the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala said "Guatemala has come out of the darkness and into the light". President Reagan claimed Rios Montt was given "a bum rap" by human rights groups, and that he was cleaning up problems inherited from his predecessor, General Romeo Lucas Garcia. Ironically, Garcia had given $500,000 to Reagan's 1980 campaign, and his henchman, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, the 'Godfather' of Central American death squads, was a guest at Reagan's first inaugural celebration. Sandoval proudly calls his National Liberation Movement " the party of organized violence". Montt simply moved Garcia's dirty war from urban centers to the countryside where "the spirit of the lord" guided him against "communist subversives', mostly indigenous Indians. As many as 10,000 Indians were killed and over 100,000 fled to Mexico as a result of Rios Montt's "Christian" campaign.
MAXIMILIANO HERNANDEZ MARTlNEZ
General of El Salvador
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez seized power El Salvador in a 1931 coup. His philosophy with regard to human rights was clear -- "It is a greater crime to kill an ant than a man," said the General.
Hernandez Martinez initiated an anti-communist purge in 1932 in El Salvador. Subsequent massacres left 40,000 peasants dead and wiped out the country's Indian culture. An uprising, six weeks later, organized by El Salvador's Communist Party founder, Farabundo Marti, failed, and was followed by the crackdown on "communists". Roadways and drainage ditches were littered with bodies. Hotels were raided, individuals with blond hair were dragged out and killed as suspected Russians. Many were executed and then shoved into mass graves they had first been forced to dig. U.S. warships were stationed off-shore, ready to send in Marines to aid the General in case he ran into serious opposition. Hernandez Martinez was run out of the country in 1944, but his memory was celebrated as recently as 1980, when the Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez Brigade carried out a series of death-squad assassinations of prominent Salvadoran leftists. Farabundo Marti, killed during the purge, has also left a legacy -- the rebels who fought the U.S. backed government of El Salvador during the 1980s, call themselves the FMLN, the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front.
FERDINAND MARCOS
President of the Philippines
Ferdinand Marcos began his career with a bang. At age 21, convicted of gunning down Julio Nalundasan, his father's victorious opponent in the Philippines first national elections, he went to prison. He was later release by a Supreme Court Justice who, like Marcos and his father, was a Nazi collaborator. Despite Marcos's record as murderer, fake WWll hero and Nazi agent, he was elected Philippine President in 1965. Under Marcos, the Philippine national debt grew from $2 billion to $30 billion, but US corporations in the Philippines prospered, perhaps explaining why the US didn't protest Marcos's imposition of martial law in 1972. The Marcoses enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle, and they salted away billions of dollars in the course of their US-backed rule between 1965 and 1986.
The Carter Administration engineered an $88 million World Bank loan to Marcos, increased military aid to him by 300%, and called him a "soft dictator". But a 1976 Amnesty International report identified 88 government torturers, and stated that alleged subversives had their heads slammed into walls, their genitals and pubic hair torched, and were beaten with clubs, fists, bottles, and rifle butts. By 1977, the armed forces had quadrupled and over 60,000 Filipinos had been arrested for political reasons. Yet, in 1981, Vice President George Bush praised Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principals and to the democratic processes". Marcos was overthrown in 1986 by followers of Corazon Aquino, widow of an assassinated opposition leader.
Ferdinand and Imelda fled to Hawaii, only to be indicted in 1988 for fraud and tax evasion. Marcos died in 1989. Imelda returned to the Philippines in 1991 and stood unsuccessfully in the Presidential elections of 1992. In 1993 she was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for criminal graft and to other long sentences for corruption. She is still free while she appeals. She was elected to Congress in May 1995. Meanwhile, in it attempts to recover the lost Marcos billions from Swiss bank accounts and other shadier locations the Philippines Government has, after paying its US lawyers, recovered the princely sum of $2,000.
ROBERTO SUAZO CORDOVA
President of Honduras
Honduras was the original "Banana Republic" -- its history inextricably intertwined with that of the US-based United Fruit Company, but in 1979, when Anastasio Somoza was overthrown in Nicaragua, Honduras got a new nickname -- "The Pentagon Republic". In 1978 Honduras received $16.2 million in US aid. By 1985, it was getting $231 million, primarily because President Suazo Cordova, working with the US Ambassador and the Honduran military, allowed Honduras to become a training center for U.S. funded Nicaraguan contras. General Alvarez assisted in training programs and founded a special "hit squad", the Cobras. Victims of the Cobras were stripped, bound, thrown into pits, and tortured. The Reagan Administration claimed ignorance of these human rights violations, but US advisors have admitted knowledge. Alvarez who made enemies among his troops because he pocketed U.S. aid and because he belonged to the "Moonies", a far-right South Korean religious cult, was overthrown by the military in 1984. Suazo's ties to Alvarez cost him his bid in the next election, but death squad activity and US aid to Honduras continued. Many high ranking government and military personnel during and after Suazo's term were drug traffickers, and although the US government denies knowledge of this, there is evidence to the contrary. In fact, the US embassy was renting space from known drug dealers.
VINICIO CEREZO
President of Guatemala
According to Amnesty International, arbitrary arrest, torture, disappearance, and political killings were everyday realities for Guatemalans during decades of US financed military dictatorship. In January 1986, Christian Democrat leader Vinicio Cerezo was elected President and said he had "the political will to respect the rights of man", but it didn't take long to find out that his political will was irrelevant in the face of Guatemala's well-oiled military machine. Hopes for change were dashed when Cerezo announced that Guatemala would continue to provide amnesty for all past military offenses committed from General Elrain Rios Montt's coup in 1982 through the 1986 elections. Although Ronald Reagan's State Department asserted "there has not been a single clear-cut case of political killing, within months of Cerezo's inauguration, opposition leaders attributed 56 murders to security forces and death squads, while Americas Watch claimed that "throughout 1986, violent killings were reported in the Guatemalan press at the rate of 100 per month". Altogether, Americas Watch says, tens-of-thousands were killed and 400 rural villages were destroyed by government death squads during Reagan's term in office. Colonel D'Jalma Dominguez, former army spokesman, explains "For convenience sake a civilian government is preferable, such as the one we have now. If anything goes wrong, only the Christian Democrats will get the blame. It's better to remain outside. The real power will not be lost." Today, the real power still resides with the military.
MOHAMMAD REZA PAHLEVI
Shah of Iran
1953 was a busy year for Allen Dulles. Even as he readied the CIA for a coup in Guatemala, his agents were toppling the liberal left government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq and paving the way for the Shah of Iran. With Dulles' encouragement, the Shah made the Iranian people an offer they couldn't refuse -- join his party or go to jail. Thousands who refused to yield were imprisoned or murdered. During regional elections in 1954, the Shah's agents raided a religious school and hurled hundreds of students to their deaths from the roof. His regime received 100% of the vote that year, in an election which registered more votes than there were voters.
The Shah's subsequent solidification of power led to an iron fisted rule enforced by fear and torture. His secret police agency, SAVAK, was created in 1957 and managed by the CIA at all levels of daily operation, including the choice and organization of personnel, selection and operation of equipment, and the running of agents. SAVAK's torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Iran under the Shah became a devoted US ally and a base for spy operations on the border of the Soviet Union. But eventually, the Shah was overthrown in 1978 by an indigenous people's revolution that held sway until fundamentalist religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile and reasserted his power during the 1979 US hostage crisis.
GENERAL GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS
Prlme Minister of Greece
When President Lyndon Johnson offered a solution to the Greek Ambassador for the dispute between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, the Ambassador protested, saying the solution was unacceptable to the Greek parliament and constitution. Three years later, in 1967, a military coup overthrew the freely elected government of Andreas Papandreou. The coup was headed by CIA employee and ex-Nazi George Papadopoulolis. He had been on the CIA payroll for 15 years when he came to power, and during WW ll he was a captain in the Nazi Security Battalions, whose main purpose was to catch members of the Greek Resistance. Almost anyone who even said the word "communist" was jailed. During Papadopoulos's first month in power, 8,000 so-called "leftist" were imprisoned and tortured. Greece was expelled from the European Commission on Human Rights, but continued to receive US aid. In return, Greece kept the world safe for democracy by housing US military bases. Papadopoulos was ousted in 1973 after falling from grace with the inner clique that helped him rule. When the entire government fell in 1974, he and his comrades were tried for human rights abuses.
TURGUT OZAL
Prime Minister of Turkey
Turgut Ozal was elected prime minister of Turkey in 1983, after several years of harsh military rule. But while free expression in Turkey has opened up somewhat in recent years, torture and long prison terms for political opponents and government critics have remained a way of life. In 1988, according to Amnesty International, "thousands of people were imprisoned for political reasons...and the use of torture continued to be widespread and systematic". Turkey's torturers are ruthless. Says one victim: " I loosened the blindfold and looked around. The scene was horrific. People were piled up in the corridor waiting their turn to be tortured. Ten people were being led, blindfolded and naked, up and down the corridor and were being beaten to force them to sing reactionary marches. Others, incapable of standing, were tied to hot radiator pipes. A man was forced to watch while his children were tortured." Regardless of the repression that a succession of governments have subjected the country to, US-Turkish relations remain cordial. In the past, US officials have even attributed the torture problem to "the violent nature of the Turkish people." Retired Turkish General Turgut Sunalp explains it a different way. "There has been, still is, and will be torture in Turkey because there is torture everywhere in the world," he said. But despite its human rights abuses, Turkey can do no wrong in US eyes, for it is one of the CIA's key listening posts on the Soviet border. Not surprisingly, in 1987, Turkey was the third largest recipient of U.S. aid.
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