Dark Reagan legacy in Central America

[Say_What]

<clips>

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Ronald Reagan has drawn glowing praise world-wide since his death but in Central America many remember the former U.S. president as a Cold War radical whose support for right-wing leaders and rebels cost tens of thousands of lives.

The impoverished countries of Central America erupted in violence in the 1980s when Reagan was president, and his administration spent millions of dollars in vicious civil wars.

In the name of fighting communism in America's "back yard," Reagan supported Contra rebels against the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua and helped prop up repressive leaders that faced leftist insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Since Reagan's death on Saturday, the reaction in Central America has been mixed.

"We don't celebrate any death, but we must be honest, we will not start saying now that President Reagan respected international law, that he treated Nicaragua well. We're not going to lie," said Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista president who led Nicaragua during the war against the Contra rebels.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=525034§ion=news

[Barrett808]

1. Glad somebody brought this up -- too bad no mention of Negroponte n/t

[sonias]

2. Yep Reagan was a war criminal

And I for one will not forget it. He is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Central America as well as contributing to thousands of deaths here at home as well.

May he go straight to hell and pay for his sins.

Sonia

[Judi Lynn]

16. He fully funded these right-wing murderous dictators

I'm sure you'll be completely familiar with the material, but it will be surprising to see how deeply involved he was in so many pure hells created on earth for the benefit of the right-wing elite, at the expense of the helpless: death squads, massacres, entire villages destroyed. Sad, sad, sad.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/CentralAmerica.html

[Just Me]

3. Cool. A reuters piece. Well-written in my view. n/t

[htuttle]

4. They forgot to mention the World Court ruling against us, too

The US laid mines in Sandino harbor in Nicaragua. Nicaragua took the US to the Hague about it, and the US lost.

Reagan ignored the verdict. We still ignore it, to this day.

[Say_What]

21. "Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua"

<clips>

The U.S. accepted the Court's compulsory jurisdiction in 1946 but withdrew its acceptance following the Court's judgment in 1986 that called on it to "cease and to refrain" from the unlawful use of force against Nicaragua. The US was "in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another state" and was ordered to pay reparations (see note 2) , although it never did. Other examples of cases include:

http://why-war.com/encyclopedia/organizations/International_Court_of_Justice/

---

<clips>

It is now a long tradition that international law does not apply to the United States. During the Reagan era the United States even vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on countries to abide by international law. When in 1986 the International Court of Justice found that this country had engaged in the “unlawful use of force” against Nicaragua and should pay reparations, the United States ignored the Court; the New York Times condemned the Court as a “hostile forum” and supported the U.S. position that the court could be disregarded. So did the liberal law professor Thomas Franck, who wrote in the NYT, July 17, 1986 that this country must retain the freedom to act as world policeman—it “needs the freedom to protect freedom,” as it had done in Guatemala, Chile, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.

The U.S. uses the law and the UN when they serve its interests, and ignores them when they interfere (for numerous illustrations, Phyllis Bennis, Calling the Shots; Noam Chomsky, Rogue States). As Madeleine Albright said in 1993, the United States will act “multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally as we must.” When it acts multilaterally and uses legal processes, the multilateralism is usually nominal only, and the legal processes are bent to a political end with little regard for substantive due process.

http://zmag.org/ZMag/Articles/dec01herman.htm

[goforit]

5. Don't forget the #1 advisor to this.........Poppy Bush/Kissinger!!!!

Poppy Bush has left his finger prints all over these
freek paranoid malitias wars all in the name of
"Stupid White Men Supremacy".....

They have always wanted to keep third world countries...
third world countries!!!!


They never wanted them to prosper!!!

[Say_What]

6. RayGun and the School of the Americas

<clips>

U.S. Policy in Central America: 1980-1991:

When the Reagan Administration came into office in 1981, one of its top priorities was ending the guerrilla war in El Salvador. A second priority was to aid the contra guerrilla war against the Sandanistas in Nicaragua. Honduras, a small country located between El Salvador and Nicaragua, became the U.S. base for American efforts in Central America, and will be the focus for this section of the Report.

In 1980, Colonel Gustavo Alvarez became the head of the police in Honduras. According to a top U.S. official who was in Honduras at the time, who declined to be named, the pattern of human rights abuses was in full swing by February of 1981. In a meeting with Col. Alvarez in 1981, this official was told that U.S. insistence on legality and human rights would not succeed, and that the Argentine model of eliminating subversives should be followed.

In 1982, Alvarez was promoted to general and named commander of the army. That same year Battalion 316, a secret army intelligence unit in Honduras trained and supported by the CIA, came into existence. Battalion 316 became notorious for committing human rights abuses.

Atrocities committed by Honduran death squads were reported by James LeMoyne, former El Salvador bureau chief for The New York Times, on June 5, 1988. In his article, LeMoyne told the story of Florencio Caballero, a self-confessed interrogator in a Honduran army death squad. Caballero says he was trained in Texas by the Central Intelligence Agency.

According to Caballero, who sought exile in Canada, he and 24 others were taken to Texas between 1979 and 1980 to be trained by the army and the CIA. Caballero says that, in Texas, the Americans taught "interrogation in order to end physical torture in Honduras. They taught us psychological methods - to study the fears and weaknesses of a prisoner. Make him stand up, don't let him sleep, keep him naked and isolation, put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, serve him dead animals, throw cold water on him, change the temperature." 3

http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/soakennd.html

[0007]

9. Some things can't be forgotten

"... President Carter had stopped intelligence training in Latin America because of the escalating reports of human rights abuses. Carter was reportedly concerned that the training and the abuses were linked. It was also their understanding that it was a top priority for President Reagan to reinstate intelligence training in Latin America immediately."

[Say_What]

22. Jennifer Harbury's "Dirty Secrets" on Free Speech TV

Free Speech TV's schedule on Dish Network. They're airing Dirty Secrets throughout today and probably longer. I saw it last night. Jennifer Harbury's courageous search for her missing husband reveals the dark legacy of decades of CIA complicity in Guatemalan human rights abuses.

http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/fscm2/genx.php?name=fstv_schedule

Also the book Bridge of Courage.

---

Some background for those not familiar with her:

<clips>

Jennifer Harbury, American wife of a Guatemalan freedom fighter who was tortured for two years and then killed, spoke on behalf of the many who have suffered the same fate at the hands of the CIA and Latin Americans trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.

4:00 Jennifer Harbury spoke. She is the American wife of the tortured and slain Mayan peasant Efrain Bamaca Velasquez of Guatemala. Jennifer described how her husband was captured and held for two years, repeatedly and horribly tortured, confined in a full body cast, and finally killed either by being thrown from a helicopter or by being chopped to pieces.

Efrain grew up in the mountains of Guatemala under conditions of extreme deprivation. For 17 years he fought as a guerrilla before being captured in 1992 -- during the Clinton administration and exactly 500 years after the landing of Columbus in the New World. The CIA knew within 6 days of Efrain's capture where he was, but this information was withheld from other parts of the government. In fact, the story was put out that he had committed suicide to avoid capture.

To substantiate this story, members of the death squad took another young Mayan peasant, an 18-year-old who had been forcibly conscripted into the Guatemalan Army, tied him up, and brutally killed him -- his face and skull kicked and smashed in until he was unrecognizable.

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/ftaa/miami2003/jennifer_harbury.htm

[struggle4progress]

7. He had a nice voice & smile but he supported thugs.

[schultzee]

8. PIG Reagan led the way for the Bushits and neo-cons

[gvi]

10. Communism is bad

This article lacks any mention of what the Sandinistas and communism were doing to the country. The tens of thousands of lives include contras, sandinistas, and civilians. Our country as a whole opposed communism. Democrats and Republicans fought the cold war.

Gvi

[Laughing Mirror]

11. What right did our country have meddling in the affairs of another

Country that might have preferred communism to what they had?

[mitchtv]

12. they were opposed by many.

Communism was a label to throw about. We were wrong in Nam when we confused a war of national liberation with Communism. The same is true in many aspects with our support for the worst sort of post colonial governments while opposing popular will- very un anerican stuff was going on then. South America, too.

[Say_What]

13. The RayGun Doctrine aka the Third World Rollback

*communism* was the excuse RayGun used to bring murder and mayhem to hundreds of thousands around the globe. *terrorism* is the excuse Bush uses to bring murder and mayhem to hundreds of thousands in the Middle East. I didn't buy that "bear in the woods" bullsh*t then and I certainly don't buy the *terrorist under every bed* today.

---

<clips>

...What isn't so easy to forgive is the Reagan Doctrine, sometimes known as Third World Rollback. Rollback was the American end of the proxy war fought between the two superpowers for power and influence in the developing world. The basis was childishly simple: my enemy's enemy is my friend.

To that end the Reagan administration insisted on recognising the deposed Khmer Rouge government in exile at the UN, mostly because it was the pro-Soviet Vietnamese that had done the deposing. This recognition helped maintain a civil war in which many Cambodians were killed and many thousands of landmines were laid.

In Central America the doctrine required supporting the "contra" rebels in Nicaragua, and backing for the Guatemalan government which - during the Reagan era - may have killed more than 100,000 Mayan Indians. Reagan described the contras as being like America's "founding fathers" and Guatemala's hard man, Rios Montt, as "a man of great personal integrity".

Over the Atlantic and down a bit, and we have Reagan welcoming Jonas Savimbi of the Unita organisation to the White House and speaking of his murderous outfit in Angola winning "a victory that electrifies the world and brings great sympathy and assistance from other nations to those struggling for freedom". Actually what Savimbi was doing was prolonging a civil war in which the UN estimates that 300,000 children died directly or indirectly during the Reagan years, and Angola was covered in landmines. Human Rights Watch reports that Unita's indiscriminate use of landmines, caused there to be more than 15,000 amputees in the country by 1988, ranking the country alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia in the league of blown-off limbs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1233817,00.html

[Blue Gardener]

15. So Communism in China is Good?

We don't seem to have problems with that country since we seem to be shipping so many of our manufacturing jobs over there. I guess as long as they can flood the USA with a bunch of cheaply made crap and increase profits of big corporations it's okay, and the hell with their human rights record.

[wicket]

19. Um

Yes, communism is bad, but so is propping up far right leaders that led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people, which is what Reagan did in South America.

[rastignac5]

23. You could count the number of communists in Central America on one hand

Reagan didn't side against communists -- he sided against the poor.

[Judi Lynn]

14. More from your leading Reuters article, hard to disguise information

Miguel D'Escoto, the former Sandinista foreign minister, added: "There is not the least doubt that President Reagan did Nicaragua much harm, caused many deaths."

An estimated 300,000 people died in Central America's civil wars, about half during Reagan's two terms in office. Many were civilians tortured and murdered by army troops or death squads linked to armed forces that received heavy U.S. support, human rights groups say.

"A lot of extremely nasty things were going on ... and the Reagan administration really defended and even actively supported some of the worst human rights violators in the hemisphere," said Daniel Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch in New York.
(snip)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Those numbers are fiendish!

This info. has been here from the first, but few people stirred themselves to read about it or think about it.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

17. Reagan's Iran/Contra introduces CRACK COCAINE to american children........

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm


The Contras, Cocaine,
and Covert Operations

An August, 1996, series in the San Jose Mercury News by reporter Gary Webb linked the origins of crack cocaine in California to the contras, a guerrilla force backed by the Reagan administration that attacked Nicaragua's Sandinista government during the 1980s. Webb's series, "The Dark Alliance," has been the subject of intense media debate, and has focused attention on a foreign policy drug scandal that leaves many questions unanswered.
This electronic briefing book is compiled from declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, including the notebooks kept by NSC aide and Iran-contra figure Oliver North, electronic mail messages written by high-ranking Reagan administration officials, memos detailing the contra war effort, and FBI and DEA reports. The documents demonstrate official knowledge of drug operations, and collaboration with and protection of known drug traffickers. Court and hearing transcripts are also included.


Special thanks to the Arca Foundation, the Ruth Mott Fund, the Samuel Rubin Foundation, and the Fund for Constitutional Government for their support.


Contents:

Documentation of Official U.S. Knowledge of Drug Trafficking and the Contras
Evidence that NSC Staff Supported Using Drug Money to Fund the Contras
U.S. Officials and Major Traffickers:

Manuel Noriega

José Bueso Rosa

FBI/DEA Documentation
Testimony of Fabio Ernesto Carrasco, 6 April 1990
National Security Archive Analysis and Publications
Click on the document icon next to each description to view the document.



Documentation of Official U.S. Knowledge of
Drug Trafficking and the Contras
The National Security Archive obtained the hand-written notebooks of Oliver North, the National Security Council aide who helped run the contra war and other Reagan administration covert operations, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 1989. The notebooks, as well as declassified memos sent to North, record that North was repeatedly informed of contra ties to drug trafficking.
In his entry for August 9, 1985, North summarizes a meeting with Robert Owen ("Rob"), his liaison with the contras. They discuss a plane used by Mario Calero, brother of Adolfo Calero, head of the FDN, to transport supplies from New Orleans to contras in Honduras. North writes: "Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S." As Lorraine Adams reported in the October 22, 1994 Washington Post, there are no records that corroborate North's later assertion that he passed this intelligence on drug trafficking to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

In a July 12, 1985 entry, North noted a call from retired Air Force general Richard Secord in which the two discussed a Honduran arms warehouse from which the contras planned to purchase weapons. (The contras did eventually buy the arms, using money the Reagan administration secretly raised from Saudi Arabia.) According to the notebook, Secord told North that "14 M to finance came from drugs."

An April 1, 1985 memo from Robert Owen (code-name: "T.C." for "The Courier") to Oliver North (code-name: "The Hammer") describes contra operations on the Southern Front. Owen tells North that FDN leader Adolfo Calero (code-name: "Sparkplug") has picked a new Southern Front commander, one of the former captains to Eden Pastora who has been paid to defect to the FDN. Owen reports that the officials in the new Southern Front FDN units include "people who are questionable because of past indiscretions," such as José Robelo, who is believed to have "potential involvement with drug running" and Sebastian Gonzalez, who is "now involved in drug running out of Panama."

On February 10, 1986, Owen ("TC") wrote North (this time as "BG," for "Blood and Guts") regarding a plane being used to carry "humanitarian aid" to the contras that was previously used to transport drugs. The plane belongs to the Miami-based company Vortex, which is run by Michael Palmer, one of the largest marijuana traffickers in the United States. Despite Palmer's long history of drug smuggling, which would soon lead to a Michigan indictment on drug charges, Palmer receives over $300,000.00 from the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Aid Office (NHAO) -- an office overseen by Oliver North, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, and CIA officer Alan Fiers -- to ferry supplies to the contras.


and soooo much more......

[bobthedrummer]

18. Union organizers and supporters are called "terrorists" in Colombia

and are beaten, tortured, raped and murdered by SOA trained deathsquads.
http://www.populist.com/02.7.Hirsch.html

President Reagan had a lot of worker's blood on his hands.

:grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr:

[Say_What]

20. What happened in Central America is now happening in Colombia

and the press prints NOTHING about it.