Honduras Base Shows U.S. Military Role in Drug War

[Judi Lynn]

Honduras Base Shows U.S. Military Role in Drug War
By Guy Taylor | 30 Nov 2011

Increased U.S. funding to fight drugs and organized crime in Mexico and Central America has attracted a good deal of attention in recent years. But flying largely under the radar is the growing role being played in that effort by the U.S. military, most notably now in Honduras, where U.S. Marines are engaged in a joint training exercise with Honduran troops and the Pentagon is financing a new naval base.

“There’s been a noticeable uptick in U.S. military aid and cooperation in Honduras during the past year,” says Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America.

While the United States has a history of coordinating with the Honduran military, Isacson reminded Trend Lines this week that the “spigot of aid” was, for a time, shut off after the June 2009 military coup that ousted former President Manuel Zelaya.

The best illustration that those taps are once again flowing may be the $2 million base slated to open next month on the island of Guanaja, just off the northern Honduran coast east of Belize.

More:
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/10793/honduras-base-shows-u-s-military-role-in-drug-war

[Peace Patriot]

1. Gotta keep those war profiteers' pockets filled. And...

...the illicit drugs just keep on flowing.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[Judi Lynn]

3. It did seem strange when the US looked the other way after the coup, didn't it?

The pattern is repeating now, with the pretension the US is throwing money and resources at Honduras for the "fight against drugs" just as Reagan poured materials and money into Honduras in the 1980's to kill all those terrifying commies. When they felt Reagan had won the world for democracy by telling Gorbachev to take down the wall, then the next excuse for meddling and controlling other countries in this hemisphere became "drug traffickers" even though it's universally recognized the C.I.A. was deeply, and strangely involved in drug stuff itself.

Once again, they've brought out Billy Joya, the leader of the vicious Honduran death squad from Reagan's time, to lead the forces in Honduras against the citizens.

~~~~~

Honduras: The Frontline in the Battle for Democracy
Written by Dick Emanuelsson, Translation: Jessica Shao and Monica Wooters
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 02:46

~snip~
Battalion 3-16

Gloria Esperanza Reyes was one of the women arrested in the 80s, but she was lucky. She wasn't assassinated or forcibly disappeared like 218 and 110 Hondurans (respectively), victims of an order from the military intelligence unit known as "Battalion 3-16." The women were tortured with electric cables applied to their nipples and vaginas. They would start with 110 volts and ramp it up to 220 volts. "The first shock was so strong that you wished you were dead," recalls Gloria. José Barrera, one of the torturers of "3-16" confirmed Gloria's phrase, "They begged us to kill them. Torture is more horrible than death," said the thug on June 13, 1995 in an extended report from the Baltimore Sun daily newspaper in the United States.

What Barrera and the U.S. reporter did not know then was that one of the most hated members of "3-16," its captain Billy Joya, would walk into the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa on June 29, 2009 and sit down beside the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti as his "ministerial adviser." Joya knows how to pull the strings in a coup or a dirty war. He was one of the students "trained" by the Chilean police force during the Pinochet dictatorship.

The CIA Created a Monster

In August 1980, 25 officials from the Honduran Armed Forces landed on an unpaved runway in the deserts of the southwestern United States. They were received by five CIA agents, one of them called "Mr. Bill." Florencio Caballero, one of the 25 Hondurans that would be turned into an expert on "disappearances" in 3-16, told the Baltimore Sun, "We arrived at a military base; everything was private, no television, only video clips."

Battalion 3-16 was created by recommendation of the CIA in the context of the "Preventative War." It was an independent intelligence paramilitary command that with blind hatred executed anyone who smelled of subversion, progressiveness, or people's movements in Honduras. The inspiration and the "professors" came from the CIA and the Argentine military dictatorship, where their "efficiency" was shocking and resulted in 30,000 disappeared. Two Honduran generals, Gustavo Alvarez Martínez and José Bueso Rosa, confirmed that "the United States offered to create a special forces unit."

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2043-honduras-the-frontline-in-the-battle-for-democracy