When will the victims of El Mozote get a tribute like Reagan?

[Michael Costello]

In December of 1981, a village in El Salvador was massacred by the US trained, US backed military. Reagan's administration put enormous pressure on the New York Times and Washington Post to cut loose from the story, and the pressure helped lead to Ray Bronner leaving the Times. This is the legacy of Reagan - village massacres, mined harbors, arming Saddam Hussein (and Iran - behind the back of Congress), arming Osama Bin Laden and Afghani "freedom fighters".

We hear the people of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and even the French castigated on corporate media every day as evil. On the other hand, this monster who enabled the deprivation of and massacre of peasants abroad, while growing hellish urban ghettos at home will have a week-long tribute by the corporate media. The man was a monster, he was evil, and him and his ilk are the greatest enemy of my and working people's freedom, liberty and happiness in the world today.

How come the people here saying we should not speak bad of Reagan don't stand up and say the same thing when people talk about Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (two people Reagan was friends with and sent arms to incidentally)?

[EdGy]

1. thank you so much for stating these facts

This is not about "celebrating" anyone's death. It is about making sure that people KNOW and REMEMBER the evil that was perpetrated by this man when he was running this country.

The rightwingers will try to whitewash all of this. We cannot allow that to happen.

People need to know the crimes of the Reagan white house.

And there is nothing wrong with pointing out those crimes; in fact it is absolutely necessary to do so ESPECIALLY AT THIS MOMENT!!

[buycitgo]

2. thank you SO much for bringing this up

dozens of villagers slaughtered in a village in ES:

my brother's church has begun over the last several years to help the town, destroyed by government terror squads

they rebuilt a new town, out in nowheresville, and moved everybody there

he's been there every summer for the last three years (he lived in South America, is fluent), brought his daughter twice;

they've provided much of the money used to rebuild the village from nothing, and the people there are very grateful; not that it erases what was done in our government's name
thanks, Ollie, Ronnie, Negroponte, Poindexter, Abrams, and you other thugs.....may you all rot

[gratuitous]

3. Let us remember Big Dog's words about Nixon

He said that Nixon should be remembered and judged by the totality of his record. We should settle for nothing less for Reagan. The entirety of his record, including his days as a stool pigeon, throttler of unions, king of corporate welfare, bankrupter of the nation and the genial face of killer capitalism.

[efhmc]

4. 5 more young Americans died today and many more civilians

because of policies that are still continuing from this horrid man.

[annak110]

5. I remember, the damned thugs! Count in the Knights of Malta

such as J. Peter Grace and Joseph Coors. These were the people who actually ran the Office and who led the way in the attempt to wipe out Liberation Theology and, by extension, Vatican II.

The C.I.A. ran drugs, Ollie North ran deals with the Ayattolah and Jeb Bush ran guns for the so-called "contra", the "national guard units" and assorted other vicious fascists who were trained in "The Scool of the Americas"

[not systems]

6. Ten of thousands died in his secret wars...

if not hundreds of thousands.

He got the "welfare queens" out of the caddies and into the street
dying of aids and smoking crack pipes.

He stood aside well homeless Vietnam Vets died by the score.

Supporting Osama and Saddam are important crimes to remember.

He was a criminal loved by most.

[ugarte]

7. Reagan hid death behind a smile

like a murderer lurking behind one of those laughing theatrical masks. That's why the right wingers deified him. Bush, on the other hand, isn't able to dissimulate half as well and people are able to see for themselves the blood on his hands.

That's why even many on the right dis Bush and long for the folksy ways of Reagan.

[Eric J in MN]

10. Democrats can see that Bush has blood on his hands.

Democrats can see that Bush has blood on his hands.

Republicans can't.

To Republicans, George W. Bush is folksy.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

8. They were talking about the horrible legacy of RR on Air America...

before.

They mentioned in detail RR's secret wars and the thousands that were murdered.

[peacetalksforall]

9. Here's some paragraph excerpts about Central America...

"But the U.S. government continues to conceal its complicity in these crimes, as well as its role in the decades long orgy of murder, torture and rape against hundreds of thousands of civilians who perished in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration even supported the Argentine military as it trained the Nicaraguan contra rebels in Honduras.
Over the past year, however, evidence has dribbled out that the CIA and the Pentagon contributed directly to these and other human rights violations. In January, The Baltimore Sun discovered a 1983 CIA manual that taught psychological torture techniques to five Latin American security forces. "While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we want to make you aware of them and the proper way to use them," the manual coyly advised.

Yet, in the major U.S. media, the CIA's torture manual did not rate as front-page news. The Washington Post stuck its pick-up of the story on A9 and the New York Times ran its version on Al l. Both newspapers played up the fact, too, that the CIA had revised the manual in 1985 to discourage use of these "coercive techniques," although the methods were still described, including how to induce "physical weakness" by subjecting the victim to extremes of heat and cold and deprivation of food and sleep.
But the manual was only watered down in 1985 be cause of a controversy that erupted in October 1984 around stories that I wrote for The Associated Press on the CLA's so-called "assassination" manual for the contras. That "psychological operations" manual advocated "selective use of violence" to "neutralize" civilian opponents and arranging other deaths for political advantage.
The Baltimore Sun's new torture disclosures also follow the Pentagon's admission last year that the U.S. Army's School of the Americas used manuals that advocated torture, murder and coercion. Those Pentagon manuals were prepared in 1982 for training of Latin American officers at the school which has graduated some of the Hemisphere's worst human rights abusers, including El Salvador's "death squad" commander Roberto D'Aubuisson and Panama's Manuel Noriega. Clearly, these manuals were not isolated incidents, or simple "mistakes."

Indeed, the evidence points to conscious U.S. complicity in widespread human rights violations. Yet not a single U.S. official has been held to account for involving the United States in these serious offenses against humanity.

Ronald Reagan remains a Republican political icon, whose name will be affixed to a major new trade building in Washington. Yet, even before his election, Reagan was defending the Argentine military and minimizing its bloody reign. He declared in one radio commentary that President Carter's human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, "should walk a mile in the moccasins" of Argentina's generals before criticizing them.

Once in office, Reagan dispatched senior advisers to coordinate strategies with the Argentine dictators and South Africa's apartheid regime."

Time for a U.S. Truth Commission by Robert Parry from The Consortium Magazine, February 17, 1997

Yep, he did it all with a big smile on his face.