Bush Sr. and El Salvador

[EFerrari]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dezo8Ds3DDE&feature=player_embedded

Bush: The question is, why are we supporting El Salvador?

Lady in audience: No, the question is, why are we killing priests in El Salvador?

Bush: The answer is, we're not. Now, you be quiet. President Cristiani is trying to do a job for democracy and the left wing guerrillas must not take over El Salvador.

* * * *

November 16, 1989

6 PRIESTS, 2 OTHERS SLAIN IN SAN SALVADOR

FIGHTING INTENSIFIES FOR CONTROL OF CAPITAL

By Lee Hockstader and Douglas Farah Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, November 17, 1989 ; Page A01

SAN SALVADOR, NOV. 16 -- SAN SALVADOR, NOV. 16 -- Six prominent Jesuit priests, including the rector and vice rector of El Salvador's most prestigious university, were killed early today along with two other persons at the house where they slept in the capital.

The priests were the most prominent victims of Salvadoran violence since 1980, when eight leftist politicians were gunned down by the military, three American nuns and a lay worker were shot dead and archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated as he said mass.

Today's execution-style slayings, which may have been preceded by torture, took place as the government armed forces unleashed heavy air and artillery attacks on strongholds established by leftist guerrillas in the massive offensive they launched last Saturday.

The attacks also appeared to cause more casualties among civilians in besieged residential neighborhoods. Fighting also was heavy in eastern and central El Salvador, where the guerrillas have taken positions in major cities.

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/WPnov16.html





********************

1988 Feb 16
1st documented combat action by US military "advisors" in El Salvador.

1989 Feb 1
In his first diplomatic mission of the Bush administration, Vice President Dan Quayle began a trip to Venezuela and El Salvador.

1989 Feb 13
Salvadoran army attacked Encuentros hospital where they raped and killed patients.


1989 Mar 19
Alfredo Cristiani of the right-wing ARENA party was elected president of El Salvador, defeating Fidel Chavez Mena of the Christian Democratic Party.


1989 Oct
In El Salvador the CIA station in San Salvador began providing the Salvadoran security forces with money to the resettle Marxist guerilla turned informer, Pedro Antonio Andrade Martinez (aka Mario Gonzalez), in the US. He had been recently captured and became a highly paid informer for the Salvadoran armed forces. Information from Andrade later led to the capture, torture or disappearance of some 200 guerrillas. In 1996 he was arrested in the US for failure to renew his visa. In 1997 the Clinton administration sought to deport him.


1989 Nov 16
In El Salvador 6 Jesuit priests and two other people were slain by uniformed gunmen at the Jose Simeon Canas University in an attack later blamed on army troops. Later 19 Salvadoran soldiers, trained at the US Army School of the Americas, were linked to the killing. In 2006 US police in Los Angeles arrested a Salvadoran ex-lieutenant convicted of killing the 6 Jesuits. In 2009 a Spanish judge opened an investigation into 14 ex-Salvadoran military officials and considered indicting them over the killings. In 2009 the 6 Jesuits were decorated with the country's highest honor.


1989 Nov 19
Funeral services were held in El Salvador for six Jesuit priests slain by uniformed gunmen.

1989 Nov 23
Lucia Barrera de Cerna, a housekeeper who said she had witnessed the slaying of six Jesuit priests and two other people at the Jose Simeon Canas University in El Salvador, was flown to the US under heavy security.
Links: El Salvador, USA

1989 Nov 26
El Salvador broke relations with Nicaragua after a weapons-loaded plane from that country was downed in El Salvador.
Links: El Salvador, Nicaragua

1989
El Salvador’s right-wing ARENA party began to be supported by the US government.
Links: El Salvador

http://timelinesdb.com/listevents.php?subjid=34&dayinhist=0&date1=-99999999999&date2=99999999999&words=&title=El%20Salvador&fromrec=0

************************

The Salvador Option

The Salvador Option was a term quoted in a January 8, 2005 article in Newsweek<1>. This phrase was used to refer to options then being intensely debated in Pentagon and Iraqi government circles for dealing with the rapidly growing insurgency movement in Iraq, drawing an explicit analogy to the U.S. military involvement in El Salvador, in which quasi-official death squads were instrumental in bringing a decade-long war against FMLN to a close. The article quoted anonymous military insiders, and did not specify the precise origin of the phrase "Salvador Option", or explicitly say that those words were actually used by Pentagon sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Option

[leftstreet]

1. And they gave this sick fuck a medal

:puke: :puke: :puke:

K&R

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

2. The bloods on our hands.

[Bucky]

76. Agree. The price of living in a republic is that even if you disagree, it's your gov't too.

We're supposed to control our government. We haven't. Or rather, the people who want to use our government, our power, and our tax dollars to turn a profit off the Third World have done a better job at wresting the control of government from those of us who want to live by international law.

[RainDog]

3. the face of empire n/t

[enough]

4. And now a nice Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama to round out his career.

Many thanks for putting this post together, EFerrai

[Sonoman]

10. Huh? Did Bush actually get the MofF?

Please tell me 'No'.

Wow...

Sonoman

[enough]

40. Yes.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-17/buffett-to-receive-presidential-medal-of-freedom-highest-civilian-honor.html

[Lucky 13]

59. You betcha. You can thank Obama for that.

[eleny]

5. He's a freak

[scarletwoman]

6. Thank you. This is so important! We must never let the true history be forgotten!

We must never forget that our elites have the blood of millions on their hands.

[EFerrari]

7. Empire's Workshop, Greg Grandin

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/168873

Greg Grandin talked about his book, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, published by Metropolitan Books. He discussed U.S. relations with Latin America, explaining that the U.S. has intervened in Latin America repeatedly from Thomas Jefferson's presidency to the current Bush administration. At this event he focused on the Reagan administration's involvement in Central America during the 1980s, when it backed the Salvadoran government in a civil war and the Nicaraguan Contras against the Sandinista regime. After his presentation he responded to audience members' questions.

I hr 4, transcript at link.

[Solly Mack]

8. I'm so glad you did this!!

K&R

[EFerrari]

22. "The Salvador Option" is Poppy's brainchild.

It comes straight out of what he did under Reagan and later, on his own.

Ethinic cleansing, death squads, torture, Poppy.

[Solly Mack]

23. I've been reading your posts on other threads and was hoping you'd do an OP

It needed to be done. I thought you would be the best one to do it.

People (choose to) forget...or they never bothered finding out. Some folks have short - expedient - memories. Forgetting what is comfortable and convenient for them to forget. (pretending to forget is more like it)


blm needs to do one on BCCI.


Too many lies and too much whitewashing of America's history. You give someone like Poppy Bush an accolade and people start thinking he was an OK guy...and then they stop thinking....stop asking...stop learning.

[EFerrari]

27. He provides so much material, it's hard to drill down.

But the snapshot is, you can't really deal with the Salvador Option in Iraq if you don't know what the term means in the first place.

Poppy Bush, under Raygun and later on his own, decided that you could turn a country to your will with ethnic cleansing, death squads, bribes and torture WHILE you dressed it up for the American people with evangelism, "democracy" and free trade.

We're still right there. That man's face is our time warp. He's exactly the point at which we have to dissociate in order to keep believing we are moral leaders in a barbaric world, isn't he?

[Solly Mack]

28. True! You need that background to understand precisely

what Shrub did in Iraq. The full extent of the news articles coming out about the death squads in Iraq. The name Negroponte connected to Iraq should have been a clue for many. Negroponte was the ambassador to Iraq.

And (from more recent news)...the ideology behind the CIA sponsoring Nazis and their collaborators - so-called "anti-communists" - into America plays into everything. Nazis and their collaborators weren't merely "anti-communists"/anti-liberal - they were fascists....with everything that implies.

And then people need to connect that with everything America did in Central America. (and throughout Latin America)

Lot of the same players - and always the same ideology. Propping up the right-wing authoritarian /fascists regimes.

Again...Thank you!

[Enthusiast]

39. Nice post.

You are exactly correct.

[leveymg]

64. G.H.W.Bush, Bill Casey, Donald Gregg, John Negroponte, others named here>

G.H.W. Bush was CIA Director when Plan Condor and the Salvador Death Squads were first organized, and at the time of the Letelier assassination in Washington, DC. (Operation Condor), Wiki:

On 25 November 1975, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met, with Manuel Contreras, chief of DINA (the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially creating the Plan Condor.<7> However, cooperation between various security services, in the aim of "eliminating Marxist subversion", previously existed before this meeting and Pinochet's coup d'état. Thus, during the Xth Conference of American Armies held in Caracas on September 3, 1973, Brazilian General Breno Borges Fortes, head of the Brazilian army, proposed to "extend the exchange of information" between various services in order to "struggle against subversion".<8> Furthermore, in March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police and co-founder of the Triple A death squad, to implement cooperation guidelines in order to destroy the "subversive" threat represented by the presence of thousands of political exilees in Argentina.<8> In August 1974 the corpses of the first victims of Condor, Bolivian refugees, were found in garbage dumps in Buenos Aires.<8>

Negroponte, in particular, was the State Dept. guy in charge of managing the diplomatic front for U.S.-led death squad operations in South America in the 1980s, and later as US Ambassador in Iraq. Hence, the name for the Iraqi death squads, "The Salvador Option." Here is the story of its genesis:

http://www.nthposition.com/homelandinsecurity.php .

The CIA underwent a major reorganisation in 1974 after William Colby fired counter-intelligence chief James Angleton, and exposed the CIA's "family jewels" at a Congressional Hearing conducted by Representative Otis Pike (D-NY). Chaos became the International Terrorism Group (ITG), and the repository of some of the "hip pocket" operations that forced Angleton from the Agency. The ITG remained buried in the bowels of the CIA until it was resurrected as Howard Bane's Office of Terrorism in late 1977. The Iran hostage crisis and the disaster of Desert One enabled Ronald Reagan to steal the presidency, denounce Carter's Human Rights crusade, and initiate a new foreign policy based on combating terrorism.

In 1981, Reagan's Director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, saw the political possibilities of turning Bane's Office of Terrorism into a "back-channel" mechanism, like Chaos under Angleton and Richard Ober <2>, for conducting secret "hip pocket" operations outside the normal chain of command. Casey replaced aging Howard Bane with CIA officer William Buckley, a special warfare expert who had managed the CIA's Counter-Terror Program in Vietnam from 1969-1972. Buckley renamed Bane's unit the Office of Domestic Terrorism, and the ODT became the official manifestation of the off-the-shelf Enterprise formed by Bush père, while he was Director of Central Intelligence (Jan. 1976-Jan. 1997), and his anti-terrorism guru, the CIA's Assistant Deputy Director of Operations, Theodore Shackley <3> in mid-1976 <4>

The ultimate object of Reagan Administration policy was the destruction of the Soviet Union through the application of "low-intensity warfare" in Afghanistan; counter-terror in the Middle East; and pro-active terror in Latin America. Effecting this policy involved a number of illegal covert actions, and so Casey had to run his Counter-Terror Network outside the CIA itself, through a cabal of secret agents throughout the government, acting under his direction through a group of veteran CIA officers who embrace the same essentially fascist world view. Like Chaos, the Counter-Terror Network had a secure communications system, as Peter Dale Scott observed, "that excluded other bureaucrats with opposing viewpoints."

As Scott notes, "The counter-terrorism network even had its own special worldwide antiterrorist computer network, codenamed Flashboard, by which members could communicate exclusively with each other and their collaborators abroad."

Casey laid the groundwork for this Counter-Terror Network in 1981, when he appointed David Whipple as the CIA's National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for counter-terrorism. A veteran CIA officer with extensive service in the Far East, Whipple had been serving as the CIA's station chief in Switzerland, where he'd conducted successful counter-terror operations, before being summoned back to headquarters to take on the job as Casey's NIO for counter-terrorism.

According to Whipple, Casey's staff consisted of 16 NIOs, eight of whom were responsible for geographical divisions, while the other eight were responsible for issues, such as narcotics, counter-intelligence, nuclear weapons, economics, and in Whipple's case, counter-terror. Under Casey's direction, every government agency established a counter-terror office as part of this secret apparatus. Whipple as NIO co-ordinated them all, collating all the information they provided at CIA headquarters. In consultation with Casey, Whipple assisted the CIA's division chiefs, making sure their station chiefs were properly handling counter-terror issues in their designated areas.

Whipple monitored Buckley's Office of Domestic Terrorism, and its staff that included an operations chief, intelligence analysts, photo interpreters, and several case officers. Because it had the authority to access any division's files and to co-opt its most precious penetration agents, the ODT was resisted by the divisions -- especially by the Near East Division, which was on the front lines of the war against terrorism. Thus in 1983 Casey sent his pet, William Buckley, to Beirut to personally oversee counter-intelligence operations there. And he conscripted Oliver North, a doe-eyed Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council, as his penetration agent inside the NSC. Notably, Whipple served as North's case officer in this monumental misadventure.

North was a Vietnam veteran, cut from the same ideological mould as G. Gordon Liddy (the deranged former FBI agent who, as one of Nixon's infamous Plumbers, burglarised the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist) and William Buckley. How he got the job has never been explained, but in1982 North was named the NSC staff co-ordinator for crisis management. Vice President Bush was in overall charge as chair of the cabinet-level Crisis Management Committee. Starting in February 1983, North, according to Scott, developed a secret Crisis Management Center, and "a plan (REX 84) to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a US military invasion abroad."

Sound familiar? In light of the recent national emergency, it is not surprising that North's plan called for "the round-up and internment of large numbers of both domestic dissidents (some twenty-six thousand) and aliens (perhaps as many as from three to four thousand), in camps such as the one in Oakdale, Louisiana." And just as the vast majority of Congresspersons went along with the draconian anti-terror legislation passed on 29 October, Senator Daniel Inouye in 1986 cut off all debate about North's plan to suspend the Constitution when Congressman Jack Brooks raised the issue during the televised Iran-Contra Hearings.

North next formed a personal relationship with Vice President Bush in the winter of 1983, when they inspected El Salvador's death squad commanders. After that North's stock soared, and in April 1984 he created the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TWIG) specifically to rescue several American hostages, including Buckley, held in Lebanon. North became TWIG's chairman, and in October 1985 he managed its first successful operation -- the capture of the hijackers of the Achille Lauro.

A few months earlier, in June, after the hijacking of a TWA Flight 847 to Beirut, Bush created the Vice President's Task Force on Combating Terrorism. According to Scott, as the NSC's liaison to the Task Force, "North drafted a secret annex for its report which institutionalized and expanded his counter-terrorist powers, making himself the NSC coordinator of all counter-terrorist actions."

On 20 January 1986, North's efforts were crowned with National Security Decision Directive 207, making him chief co-ordinator of the Administration's counter-terror program, and providing him with a secret office and staff known as the Office To Combat Terrorism. Working through the inter-agency Operations Sub-Group (OSG), North co-ordinated the secret Counter-Terror Network and retired Air Force General Richard Secord's Enterprise in a series of mind-boggling illegal operations, including illegal arms sales to Iran through Israel's counter-terrorism expert Amiram Nir; illegal Contra drug smuggling by through CIA asset Manuel Noriega in Panama, by a group of anti-Castro Cubans, all of whom were directly connected to Bush through his chief of operations, Donald Gregg, via Rudy Enders and Felix Rodriguez (all Phoenix Program <5> veterans); illegal arms supply operations to the Contras through right-wing domestic terror groups; and the repression of domestic dissent on a massive scale unmatched until the recent assaults mounted on the civil liberties of American citizens by fundamentalist Attorney General John Ashcroft and the US Congress.

As Scott notes, "the Office to Combat Terrorism became the means whereby North could co-ordinate the propaganda activities of Carl "Spitz" Channel and Richard Miller (and) the closing of potential embarrassing investigations by other government agencies."

The ranking members of this Counter-Terror Network included: Donald Gregg (Bush's National Security Advisor); CIA officer Charles Allen (Whipple's replacement as Casey's Counter-Terror National Intelligence Officer in 1985); Robert Oakley at the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism (a former CIA officer with experience in political operations in Vietnam, Oakley co-chair of North's Operations Sub-Group until mid-1986); Richard Armitage (a member of the Enterprise) at the Defense Department, Lt. Gen. John Moellering at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FBI Counter-Terror Chief, Oliver Revell, and, wonder of wonders, Michael Ledeen at the National Security Council.

[EFerrari]

69. Excellent. Thanks.

[northoftheborder]

9. Bush 1 was, at best, a very mediocre president.

But the other scandals, never proved against him, such as above and Iran/Contra, October surprise, etc. still remain to question his record. In my opinion, he has not done anything worthy of earning a medal of honor, but then there are others equally non worthy who have been given one, especially by Bush 2.

[EFerrari]

11. I provided a link to video of him defending the Cristiani government

in the OP.

Not proven? My bald headed, Salvadoran granny.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

48. "... never proved against him..."

:wow: One what planet??

[EFerrari]

50. To be fair, that is the image cultivated for this man in the media.

He was sort of a bumbler, not smooth or charming like Raygun, couldn't even buy groceries on his own. Very deliberate. They went the same way with Little Bush.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

54. I iknow, it was so odd that --

someone who headed the CI Frickin' A was supposedly such a weak, "bumbler". NOT.

[seafan]

88. As an ex-prez, he still receives the CIA's daily briefings. Always, always lurking in the shadows.

While maintaining the 'I'm just an old geezer' facade.

[leveymg]

70. A mediocre President, G.H.W. Bush was a world class criminal.

From 1974 on, anywhere that there was a massive banking system ripoff or mass political murder and resource grab, George H.W. and his merry band of intel-pirates were right behind the curtain, handing out the hit lists and smoothing over the repercussions. An extraordinary record of accomplishment. An historically significant and a first-rate klepto-intelligence chief extraordinaire.

[karynnj]

75. In addition to those, he forced the first Gulf war that is likely the root of

both the current Iraq war and possibly Al Qaeda's attacks on Americans. It was a war to control oil - as even Dick Lugar, not a flaming leftist says.

Not to mention, it seems that simply being President is enough not to need a different award.

[chill_wind]

12. K & R.

[formercia]

13. The goal was the destruction of Liberation Theology

The Jesuits were teaching the peasants how to have a voice in and control over their own lives. The ruling families saw this as a threat to their power base. The families also wanted to clear their lands of squatters for the purpose of development. Due to traditional laws that went back to the Colonial Period, there was no legal way to remove the squatters, thus the use of Death Squads. The priests were defending the squatters and had to be removed. From personal observation, the Death Squads were in operation in 1982 and probably earlier. By October of 1982, operations against Nicaragua had gone from the planning stage to operational status.

[EFerrari]

21. It had been fifty years, it was time to kill a bunch of people again.

The way is used to work was, the women stayed on, year round, on the plantations and the men would moved around the country working the harvests. So, yeah, there were families living on these plantations since their inception. That's how they got the crops in.

You're right. These men were defending a mostly helpless populace and for that, they had to go. They were much more dangerous than the guerillas because they encouraged the people to stand up for their rights en mass.

Bush and his motherf#ckers are responsible for untold deaths all over Central America in those years. El Salvador and Nicaragua but also, attrocities in Honduras and Guatemala, too. Panama -- a bunch of innocent deaths there, too.

He's a real gem, Poppy.

[formercia]

43. Poppy freed a lot of people

from their earthly bounds.

He was in charge of the Central America Task Force. He was the ramrod behind all of it, along with his buddy and KOMer Bill Casey.

Poppy was made an Honorary Knight of Malta for his 'Good Works.' Fits right in with his 'Medal of Freedom.'

Preserving the status quo for the Elites in Central America and elsewhere.

The FMLN was just a defensive reaction to the Death Squads, one reason they were pardoned by Bill Clinton.

[bluesmail]

52. The killing is generational. The newest generation has no idea of the history

from generations before them. There's a reason they want to make it so difficult to get educated. Generational.

[katandmoon]

14. Why does Obama give Medals of Freedom to terrorists like Bush?

[Enthusiast]

42. It's another Republican ass to kiss.

He doesn't miss many.

[Lucky 13]

60. Because he's not at all who we thought he was.

Simple as that.

[EFerrari]

66. It's more the way of our political elites than about Obama, imo.

I was too young to know what Kennedy or LBJ did but Bill Clinton has the same habit. It's like an expectation of their class and one I have no problem criticizing because it's corrosive for our democracy.

[Tatiana]

15. He's responsible for so much murder and destruction.

Ask Pappy's former best buddy Manuel Noriega what happened to William Drummond in Panama.

Pappy used el CIA to support murdering political dissidents in Chile.

Pappy's CIA supported the assassination of Salvador Allende.

And this is just my own opinion, but I'd bet anything that Pappy had something to do with JFK's assassination as well.

He's the LAST person that should ever have received a Presidential Medal of "Freedom" when he spent a good portion of his life ensuring that latin american citizens knew subjugation under brutal dictatorial regimes, rather than actual freedom.

[WinkyDink]

19. I agree with ALL your points. And he almost succeeded to the Presidency via assassination. J/S.

[mrs_p]

16. thanks for posting this

[Bluebear]

17. Why is Obama honoring this?

[David Zephyr]

18. EFerrari, thank you for this single polaroid from a toxic family album.

K&R.

[annabanana]

20. This was an unfortunate choice on Obama's part. . . . kick, n/t

[EFerrari]

24. You know what I don't understand?

Why not the editor of that New Orleans paper that stayed to report the disaster?

Or, one of the 9/11 rescuers who is still struggling to get care for their dying lungs?

Or one of the torture whistleblowers or one of the Wall Street whistleblowers?

Or any number of people who did something, something real, mining families that risked their jobs to report dangerous conditions or scientists that bucked the Bush crackdown on science or, heaven forbid, ACORN, who kept helping people fight illegal foreclosures even while the rabid right was falsely smearing them all over the world.

I don't understand it.

[me b zola]

33. You are not alone

Thank you for this thread :grouphug:

[Overseas]

79. Good questions! //nt

[Starry Messenger]

25. Thank you. Recommend.

[jonnyblitz]

26. k & r. nt

[knitter4democracy]

29. Sr. Dorothy Kazel, we need you to pray for a smackdown.

I taught two years in the high school Sr. Dorothy Kazel taught in before going to El Salvador and getting abducted, raped, murdered, and left in a ditch with the other two American churchwomen. She's a saint, as far as I'm concerned.

Bush I is a monster.

[H2O Man]

30. Recommended.

I have some disturbing photographs from El Salvador in the 1980s. They are from rural Indian communities, where the US-trained military practiced genocide. I'll never forget what Bush Sr. planned and financed there.

[EFerrari]

32. One of my teachers was working with the Miskitu on the Atlantic coast

of Nicaragua during those years. She was from Oklahoma.

She told me that the families she talked to reported that the Contras had come into their villages and taken their men away. Later, she was able to track some of them to camps over the border in Honduras. Government holding camps. The men in those camps had been told that their villages had been destroyed by the Sandinistas so my friend put away her original mission to try to help these families re-connect with each other.

It was a very bad time.

[FarLeftRage]

31. he's a monster...

There's no way around it... pure and simple, an inhuman monster that served the elites' lust for absolute power very well.

And now he's about to be rewarded for that.

[Solly Mack]

34. kick

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

35. America need not got abroad in search of monsters. K&R

With apologies to John Quincy Adams.

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. John Quincy Adams

[SoCalDem]

36. Don't forget about that rampage through Panama too

Totally unnecessary:grr:

[EFerrari]

37. Yep. And then Little Bush recycled almost exactly the same story to invade Iraq

as Poppy used to go into Panama, down to he cr@p they supposedly found on Noriega's/Saddam's desk, porn, drugs, booze and cigars. Another DUer said they probably have all that stuff sitting in packs at Langley, ready to go.

The thing that's special about El Salvador and Poppy, though, is that BushCo thought it was such a success, the place name became proverbial for a way to subdue a population. That they are reviled there to this day doesn't mean anything to them and doesn't tarnish their "success" in the least.

[Enthusiast]

38. Treasonous!

No better than his son. Worse even. Besides, I believe he bailed out on his wounded comrades in WWII leaving them to spiral to their deaths.

[TBF]

41. That is the picture of a war criminal. nt

[era veteran]

44. EFerrari, you know we have differences but not on this.

FYI, I can't help my looks & I looked like a warrior then, in the 80's not long out of the service, I was approached to go to El Salvador on a safari. Care to guess what the game was? I tried to contact the FBI and they blew me off. I am an American but can claim Panamanian citizenship. The extremes on both sides are further ruining Latin America. The Great Coca-Cola Republic of the North should quit supporting the far right there.

[EFerrari]

58. That's horrible but not surprising.

I had extended family and friends on both sides during the war. Stopped dating one person because we were at a family party and he said, the solution to this is to go up into the hills and "clean out the Indians". He was talking about people as if they were vermin. I never spoke to him again. But that dehumanizing attitude was common enough. It split my family right in two and Mom and I avoided a whole wing of our family for years so the topic could not come up.

[era veteran]

73. What do you think will happen in the next years?

Socialism would seem to me the best thing. The Oligarchies ruling now have had power a long time. Lots of it preserved by totally misguided US policy. I got this straight from WIKI: "Athenian techniques to prevent the rise of oligarchy:

Especially during the Fourth Century BC, after the restoration of democracy from oligarchical coups, the Athenians used the drawing of lots for selecting government officers in order to counteract what the Athenians acutely saw as a tendency toward oligarchy in government if a professional governing class were allowed to use their skills for their own benefit. They drew lots from large groups of adult volunteers as a selection technique for civil servants performing judicial, executive, and administrative functions (archai, boulē, and hēliastai). They even used lots for very important posts, such as judges and jurors in the political courts (nomothetai), which had the power to overrule the Assembly."
Be good here too. I have always advocated that police be drafted as well as a no deferment draft so the rich have their sons in war too. May stop some of the military adventuring that Jefferson warned us about. Peace RFL

[EFerrari]

74. The very first Communist sweep of elections in this hemisphere

was in El Salvador in late 1931 or so. None of those winning candidates were seated and the oligarchy re-asserted itself with the massacre of 1932 while our gunboats monitored the situation off shore.

This won't be popular but, where Bush largely stayed out of Latin American to service the neocon Middle East compulsion (with a few exceptions), Obama's government has gone back in with redoubled effort to service our oligarch's holdings there.

The question seems to be, did the years of Bush "neglect" give Latin American democracies enough of a head start to weather renewed US "interest". I hope so.

[leftstreet]

83. I say yes, an excellent head start

The question seems to be, did the years of Bush "neglect" give Latin American democracies enough of a head start to weather renewed US "interest". I hope so.

:thumbsup:

I hope so, too. The Oil Wars have exhausted the coffers and things aren't looking good at home. The Empire is down to 'reasserting' in SA by funding nutz like Rick Warren. How lame is that?

[EFerrari]

93. What is that grifter doing in SA?!

[myrna minx]

45. K&R. *This* is who Obama is celebrating. *This*

:puke:

[Tatiana]

46. Kick

:kick:

Because education is a good thing and blind support is not.

[Octafish]

47. America's Himmler doesn't deserve anything more than life imprisonment at hard labor.

Thank you for posting this in memory of the slain in El Salvador, EFerrari.

For those new to the subject, the "once"-head of America's Gestapo, George Herbert Walker Bush, is documented to be a friend of terrorist killers:

Poppy’s CIA warned about terror plots and did not stop them

The guy lied America into attacking Iraq the first time.

He was in Dallas the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

IMO, he doesn't deserve a medal of any sort. He deserves a ball and chain. No tethers.

[EFerrari]

49. The Bushes are the poster for the banality of evil.

Their very banality makes people want to overlook the massive destruction they've visited on everything they touch.

[Octafish]

55. The Right is their metastasization. Remember how The New York Times buried 'El Mozote'?

The Truth of El Mozote



Poppy may've been VP to Pruneface, but Ronnie gave him a lot of authority in the wetwork areas: Reagan Was the Butcher of My People

[EFerrari]

56. Mark Danner's work is immensely valuable.

He made it impossible to continue the cover up.

:thumbsup:

[fascisthunter]

51. anyone who thinks this man is a swell guy is a sychopantic dumbass

[nashville_brook]

53. k and r!

[Lucky 13]

57. +1 million. But what the hell, give the bastard a Medal of Freedom!

To see the roaches crawl out of the woodwork here in an attempt to defend Obama by defending this monster tells you a lot...

GHWB, Obama, and all the apologists can go fuck themselves over this little doozy.


:grr:

[EFerrari]

62. Latin America is not reported well up here, to put it mildly.

I put up this thread in part because some people who were minimizing this choice didn't seem to know the back story of how El Salvador became code for brutality among the hawks.

[Lucky 13]

63. Didn't seem to know or are conveniently forgetting?

Seems to me that the apologists will rationalize ANY decision made by this President, no matter how heinous.

[EFerrari]

71. DU is a big board.

I honestly believe that most active posters here do want information that helps them evaluate our political process.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

:)

[superduperfarleft]

61. K&R. Unfortunately, the people that need to read this probably won't. n/t

[walldude]

65. K&R.. a much needed history lesson

especially today....


And I know the Obama defenders want to defend this MOF, I've already seen it, but please, just give it a rest. Admit it, this was really, really fucking stupid.

[TheWatcher]

67. And NOT A PEEP from the Posters who were questioning yesterday about "What did Poppy Do Wrong?"

Admit it kids, you really don't care, have no use for the truth, and simply dont want or care to know, do you?

As long as the "Football Team" Looks Good, Hell, maybe you could even be convinced Stalin and Mao were just "misunderstood."

Viva "Bi-Partisanship!"

Viva War Criminals!

Viva The Homeland!

VIVA FREEDOM!

VIVA POPPY BUSH! Harbinger of Freedom and All that is right and good!

[suffragette]

68. Very timely post

H&R

[EFerrari]

72. The best revenge is living well: FMLN wins presidential election

Amy's report on that election: :party:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3EEWq8UGfw

El Salvador election: Former guerilla party FMLN wins presidency
By Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent 3:14PM GMT 16 Mar 2009

A moderate former journalist has brought his left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) party of former guerillas to power for the first time since the end of El Salvador's brutal civil war.



The people of El Salvador have sorted out their priorities. They even had hearings to reconcile war crimes, just as South Africa did. We can do our part by owning it and that includes not letting Poppy off the hook, medal or no medal. Oh, and by keeping our hooks off of El Salvador's democracy although, old habits die hard.

lol

[leveymg]

77. Practically all of Latin America has a Left-wing gov't at this point, except Colombia

which is still ruled by Esquedrones Muertes and drug kingpins. Mexico, increasingly so. Crime and Fascism. Funny coincidence, that.

[EFerrari]

78. Colombia. Peru, whose military aid we increased the same week

the government killed indigenous people protesting the mining industry which is dominated by foreign interests, US and Canadian. Honduras where we enabled the ouster of a democratically elected president and the Pentagon gave one of their companies, Harris, a sweet contract in the aftermath.

The Ecuadoran president, Rafael Correa, was almost killed in the last coup attempt denied strenuously by the English language media despite the fact that two of his body guards were killed trying to get him to safety. This in the context of an internal report that found Ecuador's security forces, police, national guard and military, thoroughly infiltrated by CIA. The war on democracy in Ecuador is definitely on.

Things have heated up since our last presidential election. But in a way, that was to be expected when Obama gave his first major speech to Latinos at CANF, a radical right-leaning anti-Castro Miami group that has sponsored bombings and assassinations right there in Florida, let alone in Havana.

Interesting times.

[leveymg]

86. Does BHO even know the history of the Cold War? Or, perhaps, he just doesn't give a

sh-t? Or, maybe this is just 8-Dimensional Chess and he'll let the CANF people overplay their hand, and leave them stranded on the beach after the Joint Chiefs of Staff promised air support if all the Right-wingers storm the pool bar at the Hilton on the Isla de Margarita?

Free the enslaved Venezuelans. Caracas in chains! Free Margarita Island! Open Bar!

In the end, isn't that what the whole post '45 struggle was all about? He who retires on the nicest beaches wins.

[suffragette]

90. So true, so true

http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/november/02/centralamerica10110203.htm

FMNL Readies for Upcoming Elections

SAN SALVADOR - El Salvador's Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front announced its decision to successfully face the upcoming elections and ensure that the current process of change continues.

The party plans to run in the 2012, 2014 and 2015 elections, general coordinator Medardo Gonzalez said.

The announcement was made as the FMLN held its 26th national convention on Sunday, ending with an internal election aimed at "strengthening the party's determination to work for democracy," according to Salvadoran Vice President alvador Sánchez Ceren, a historic leader of the party.

The FMLN must work toward a truly democratic society, where there is no exclusion or injustice, and poverty is eliminated, Ceren emphasized.

[Solly Mack]

80. This is a very informative thread. I hope more and more members are reading it.

[seafan]

81. EFerrari, thank you for this post.

There is no way on God's green earth we are going to forget what this man and his family have done.


CIA, JFK, Cuba, South America, Pinochet, Iran Contra, Saddam, Iraq, October Surprise, and on and on and on and on.


The one name that resurfaces throughout--- George H. W. Bush.



And now, the Medal of Freedom, that will be pointed to by the usual suspects, to legitimize him.

That one act so heinously disparages those who care about the truth. America has, indeed, gone around the bend.



But, take heart, for the truth is the one thing this criminal fears the most. And he will not be able to escape it.


Thank you again for this thread, EFerrari.




Some very good historical details can also be found at Robert Parry's Consortiumnews Archives.

[EFerrari]

82. Thank you for the link to Parry.

The truth is the best solvent for half hidden, convoluted bs.

:hi:

[Forkboy]

84. K&R

:kick:

[Greyhound]

85. K&R, of course. Giving this criminal scum a medal is spitting on the graves of his victims.

ETA; Do you suppose this was Obama "making his bones" as the final task to an invitation to the club?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

87. I once knew someone who was one of the "military advisers" in El Salvador

He was guilt-stricken about some of the things he had participated in.

[EFerrari]

95. A friend of mine was held for about a year by the guerillas

because they believed he was involved with the US led effort in some way. He wasn't and today, he doesn't hate his captors. He hates "La CIA" whom he calls "esa mierda". He was a philosophy student at the university at the time and two of the slain priests were his instructors. El Salvador is a small place. Just about everybody lost somebody.

[ProudDad]

89. Just another in the line of bush war criminals... (n/t)

[suffragette]

91. El Salvador and Iraq

http://my.firedoglake.com/kgosztola/2010/10/26/iraq-war-logs-reveal-us-chose-el-salvador-option-to-secure-iraq/
What also is apparent is the fact that Col. James Steele was involved in the training of forces, forces that operated like the Wolf Brigade. Journalist Dahr Jamail wrote about Col. Steele a few years ago:

“Retired Col. James Steele, who served as adviser on Iraqi security forces to then-U.S. ambassador John Negroponte, supervised the training of these forces. Steele was commander of the U.S. military advisory group in El Salvador 1984-86, while Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to nearby Honduras 1981-85. Negroponte was accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights in 1994. The Commission reported the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political workers.”

Col. Steele played a role in emboldening the El Salvador death squads. It can be surmised that he played the same role in Iraq. Additionally, details in log entries from 2004 and 2005, according to The Guardian , indicate US infantry raids led to the handing over of detainees to the Wolf Brigade for “further questioning” multiple times. And, New York Times Writer is cited explaining, “US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing.”


More on Steele:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0507-26.htm
When questioned by the Iran-contra independent counsel, Steele maintained that he had limited his actions to providing humanitarian assistance to the contras--an act that would not have violated the prohibition passed by Congress on supplying the contras with weapons. But, as independent counsel Lawrence Walsh later pointed out in his book, Firewall, a lie-detector examination indicated Steel "was not being truthful." Steele's name had also turned up in the private notebooks in which North kept track of his various Iran-contra operations. As Walsh wrote, "Confronted with the results of the lie-detector test and North's notebook, Steele admitted not only his participation in the arms deliveries but also his early discussions of these activities with Donald Gregg and the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Edwin G. Corr."

Walsh's description suggested that Steele tried to lie his way past investigators as part of a larger cover-up. At the time of the scandal, a significant question was how much Donald Gregg knew about the operation in El Salvador, for Gregg's connection to the secret, law-skirting contra-support network implicated Vice President Bush, who was running for president and claiming he had been out of the loop on the Iran-contra affair. (George H.W. Bush's own diaries--which he withheld for several years and did not release until after he had lost his 1992 bid for reelection as president--prove that despite his claim of ignorance he knew about the Iran-contra affair before it became public.) Steele had played the good soldier--that is, he did not tell the truth and kept his mouth shut as long as he could.

Steele escaped indictment and his flunking of the polygraph exam was not revealed until Walsh's book came out in 1997. But he did have to pay for his participation in the North's contra scheme. In 1988, the Pentagon sent to the Senate a list of 50 Army colonels who were up for promotion to brigadier general. An a list of proposed promotions to full colonel submitted at the same time included Lt. Colonel Robert Earl, a North deputy who assisted the contra supply effort and participated in the destruction of records after the Iran-contra scandal exploded. Usually such promotions fly though the Senate with no debate. But aides working for Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, noticed Steele's and Earl's names on these lists, and Harkin blocked these two promotions. "There is no way any of these people is going to get a promotion" without a congressional inquiry, Harkin told The Washington Post. The Army claimed that it had found that Steele had committed nothing wrong. Obviously, it had not looked hard enough, for, as Walsh later determined, Steele had not told the truth.

But misleading congressional and independent investigators didn't fully derail Steele's career. He is once more advising a military unit with a questionable human rights record. Let's hope that if his actions this time around become of interest to government investigators he is truthful when they come knocking.



As long as they aren't held accountable, they are emboldened to keep committing and/or supporting more crimes.

[EFerrari]

92. They become woven into the fabric of our government

Like Negroponte, whom Bush gave the power to grant FEC waivers (what a gas, for a money launderer) and who is now "advising" Hillary Clinton on Latin America.

[suffragette]

94. My mom would have said; "They keep turning up like

a bad penny."

But woven is more apt and harder to remove.

Thanks again for this thread.

It represents the best of DU, the sharing of knowledge, much of which is under-reported or suppressed, and an opportunity to learn for those open to that. And I think there are some people here who genuinely were unaware of these connections and this history.

[bobthedrummer]

96. On his watch, union supporters and organizers&their extended families were tortured, raped, killed

and he gets the Medal of Freedom to add to his collection-the fucking US global fascist POS--he should be tried and executed before he dies of old age along with his male heirs...

[AndrewP]

97. K&R