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From the article: ‘We want to highlight the fact that El Salvador is a close ally,’ said a senior defence official traveling with Gates. ‘It certainly has helped the United States in Iraq and the Middle East. It’s obviously a country that punches way above its weight, considering its size.’
(snip) Absolutely screams for preople to find out what on earth he means! A good place to start for those who haven't taken the time to read is a crash history on El Salvador's history during the time of Ronald Reagan. Look up "El Mozote" massacre by death squads trained at the School of the Americas. Find out who death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson was. Take time to read about Bishop Romero. Here's a short reference: Romero was originally considered a conservative Vatican appointment, but by 1980 he had become outraged by the spiraling violence directed against reformers, radicals and the poor. He used his immensely influential sermons to try to avert the coming civil war.
"The peasants you kill are your own brothers and sisters," Romero admonished the military in a sermon broadcast on radio just days before he was killed. "When you hear the voice of the man commanding you to kill, remember instead the voice of God. Thou shalt not kill."
Romero was assassinated in the middle of conducting a mass. At his funeral, in front of the cathedral where his body now lies, army snipers opened fire on a weeping crowd of 100,00, killing 40. Within weeks, all-out war was on. By the end of the decade, 75,000 were dead, 600,000 had been displaced inside the country, and more than a million had gone into exile.
(snip/...) http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/elections/elsalvador/Look at the photos, click on the thumbnails, investigate the articles surrounding these photos, some of them showing people carrying little boxes. What are they doing? They are carrying the remains of their loved ones slaughtered in the El Mozote massacre.  http://images.google.com/images?q=El+Mozote&ndsp=18&svnum=10&hl=en&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-37,GGLD:en&start=0&sa=NEl Mozote Massacre
The evening before
On the afternoon of December 10, 1981, units of the Salvadoran army's Atlacatl Battalion (named after a famous indigenous fighter that battled the Spanish troops for El Salvador) arrived at the remote village of El Mozote after a clash with guerrillas in the vicinity. The Atlacatl was a "Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion", specially trained for counter-insurgency warfare. It was the first unit of its kind in the Salvadoran armed forces and was trained by US military advisors at the School of the Americas (today known as WHINSEC) at the beginning of 1981. Its mission, Operación Rescate ("Operation Rescue"), was to eliminate the rebel presence in a small region of northern Morazan, where the FMLN had a camp and a training center. El Mozote consisted of about twenty houses situated on open ground around a square. Facing onto the square was a church and, behind it, a small building known as "the convent", used by the priest to change into his vestments when he came to the village to celebrate mass. Near the village was a small schoolhouse.
Upon arrival, the soldiers found not only the residents of the village but also campesinos who had sought refuge from the surrounding area. The soldiers ordered everyone out of their houses and into the square. They made them lie face down, searched them, and questioned them about the guerrillas. They then ordered the villagers to lock themselves in their houses until the next day, warning that anyone coming out would be shot. The soldiers remained in the village during the night.
December 11 and 12
Early the next morning, the soldiers reassembled the entire village in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked them in separate groups in the church, the convent, and various houses.
During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture, and execute the men in several locations. Around noon, they began taking the women and older girls in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them after raping them. Girls as young as 12 were raped, under the pretext of them being supportive of the guerillas. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the church and its convent were shot through the windows. After killing the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings.
The soldiers remained in El Mozote that night. The next day, they went to the village of Los Toriles, 2 km away. Several of the inhabitants managed to escape. The others — men, women and children — were taken from their homes, lined up, and shot.
(snip/...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacreALFREDO CRISTIANI
President of El Salvador
General Hernandez Martinez's 1932 anti-communist purge, was carried out on behalf of El Salvador's rich coffee oligarchy, the so-called "Fourteen Families". New president Alfredo Cristiani is a member of those same " Fourteen Families", and his ARENA party is linked to brutalities surpassing Hernandez Martinez's. Cristiani is moderate-sounding, schooled in Washington D. C., and indebted to the military for power. As puppet - president, he yielded to ARENA founder Roberto D'Aubuisson, whom a former US Ambassador called a "pathological killer". D'Aubuisson, a former Army Major with ties to Jesse Helms and the US right, studied unconventional warfare in the U S and Taiwan. According to D'Aubuisson, "the Christian Democrats (Ex-President Jose Napoleon Duarte's party) are communists, but Jesuit priests are "the worst scum of all". US State Department cables indicate D'Aubuisson "planned and ordered the assassination of the late Archbishop Oscar Amulfoo Romero". It's believed he was behind the White Warriors Union (UGB), whose slogan was "Be patriotic-kill a priest". In 1989 six priests were slain and Cristiani soon admitted his US trained soldiers had committed the murders. Yet, although assassinations of priests are notable, 70,000 other civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military and the death squads since 1980.
(snip/) http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html |
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