UK Guardian: Masters of deceit

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1013789,00.html

The announcement that Admiral John Poindexter's latest brainwave - to encourage betting on the likelihood of a terrorist attack - had been terminated was characteristically bland. It began: "The Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced today that DARPA's participation in the Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) program has been withdrawn"

The language does not betray the repugnant nature of the project, but then Poindexter is expert at disguising repugnant projects in bland language. He came to prominence in the Reagan administration, where the word "freedom" was used to justify renewed support for Latin American military dictatorships guilty of some of the most egregious human rights abuses on the planet. President Jimmy Carter had frozen them out, but Ronald Reagan's election meant a renewed round of invitations to Pentagon cocktail parties for Latin American torturers.

In El Salvador, there was a leftwing insurgency that needed to be repressed, but there were congressional restrictions on the numbers of US military personnel the president could send. Old friendships, though, are worth a lot. The Argentine generals were happy to lend some spare killers to help out in El Salvador. (Washington was so grateful that the generals thought it would not object to their invading the Falkland Islands - but that's another story.)

In Honduras a local band of killers was doing a good job under the protection of John Negroponte, then US ambassador in Tegucigalpa, now US ambassador to the United Nations. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas had overthrown the US-backed Somosa dictatorship and had gone on to consolidate their power by winning an election. The problem was that Congress had voted the Boland amendment, which banned the administration from funding their favourite Nicaraguan terrorists, the Contras, who had been engaged to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

[westerby]

1. That editorial could have been written by Chomsky.

It sounds like some chapters of "Manufacturing Consent".

[Judi Lynn]

2. Beautifully done.

Thank god there are some writers who aren't afraid to tackle the criminality of the Reagan/Bush regime.

So glad to read this author for the first time. Hope she'll not meet any rough intrusion in her life from the sinister people she has rebuked.

(snip) In Washington, under this administration, the crimes of the past have been the passport to power; the methods, far from being discarded, have merely been refined. (snip)

Thanks a lot, Thankfully_in_Britain. Hope a lot of DU'ers see your article.

[otohara]

3. Dupe

please continue here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=5005&mesg_id=5005