School of the Americas

A little documentary on the "School of the Americas"

www.benningmwr.com

School of the Americas Watch - The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the SOA are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians.

America's Terrorist Training Camp What's the difference between Al Qaeda and Fort Benning? By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 30th October 2001 "If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.
Backyard terrorism The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it George Monbiot Tuesday October 30, 2001 The Guardian

Is the US Training Terrorists? By Jordan Green & Chris Kromm The Nation November 27, 2001 Father Roy Bourgeois, the charismatic Jesuit priest who has, since 1990, led the annual protest against against the United States' most infamous military training facility, wasn't sure it would happen this year. But in mid-September he called around to assess the resolve of the movement. Response was unanimous. "It's very important that we be here, because at the very core of this issue is violence," said Bourgeois. "We're going to mourn the thousands killed on September 11, but we cannot forget the 75,000 in El Salvador who were victims of terrorists trained at the School of the Americas."

CIA and School of the Americas by Raymond Ker America's evil actions in the past are backfiring on its own citizens today. The Taliban and bin Laden were the creation of the CIA who in 1979 recruited the most vicious and radical fundamentalist fanatics from Saudi Arabia and other Arab and Muslim countries and utilized the enormous budget allocated by the US Administration to train, arm and finance them. Brzezinski, who was Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor during that era, admitted that the intention was to unleash the mojahedin on the Russians who were supporting the government in Afghanistan. This furthered the Americans' Cold War agenda but resulted in the destruction of Afghanistan. It also illustrates the shear inhumanity, racism and stupidity of US foreign policy. These terrorists soon became autonomous of their US masters and almost immediately started pursuing their own fundamentalist vision in North Africa (assassination of Anwar Sadat), Middle East, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, SE Asia, etc. And then, finally, the World Trade Centre. ... the terrorist training camp in Fort Benning, Georgia, named euphemistically: the Western Hemisphere Institute for Institute for Security Cooperation - WHISC. It was formed in Panama in 1946 and named the School of the Americas (SOA) in 1963 under John F. Kennedy. It was then moved to Georgia in 1984 under terms of the Panama Canal Treaties. This delightful venue has trained 60,000 Latin Americans from whose ranks were spawned the most vicious torturers, homicidal maniacs, state terrorists and despots, who have terrorized and perpetrated genocidal warfare against the civilian populations of Central and South America for five decades. These are the front-line troops enforcing the US "full spectrum dominance" in the economic, political and military arenas. This includes the death or disappearance of 200,000 Guatemalans and innumerable other atrocities.

Backyard Terrorism: The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it - By George Monbiot, The Guardian, 30 October 2001 "If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention. For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government. Until January this year, Whisc was called the "School of the Americas", or SOA. Since 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni. In June this year, Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, once a student at the school, was convicted in Guatemala City of murdering Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. Gerardi was killed because he had helped to write a report on the atrocities committed by Guatemala's D-2, the military intelligence agency run by Lima Estrada with the help of two other SOA graduates. D-2 coordinated the "anti-insurgency" campaign which obliterated 448 Mayan Indian villages, and murdered tens of thousands of their people. Forty per cent of the cabinet ministers who served the genocidal regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt and Mejia Victores studied at the School of the Americas.