El Salvador's Ex-Defense Minister Indicted In Killing Of Six Jesuit Priests

[Judi Lynn]

El Salvador's Ex-Defense Minister Indicted In Killing Of Six Jesuit Priests
CIARAN GILES 05/30/11 11:46 AM ET

MADRID — A Spanish judge on Monday indicted 20 Salvadorans for the 1989 slaying of six Jesuit priests and two other people during the Central American country's civil war.

Judge Eloy Velasco charged the 20 men, who served as military officials in El Salvador, with terrorist killings and crimes against humanity.

He issued international arrest warrants to Spanish police and Interpol for the 20 Salvadorans, who include former Salvadoran Defense Minister Rafael Humberto Larios and Rene Emilio Ponce, an army general and former defense minister who died May 2.

~snip~
The priests – five of whom were Spaniards – were killed with their housekeeper and her daughter. They worked at the Jesuit-run Universidad Centroamericana and had been suspected of sympathizing with leftist rebels, known as the FMLN.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/30/el-salvador-defense-minister-priests_n_868720.html

[EFerrari]

1. I hope those animals are all found and tried.

In San Salvador, there is a military museum with an exhibit of all the Defense Ministers. I hope these butchers are accurately represented there.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Secret Wars Of CIA Cost U.S. Taxpayers Billions Of Dollars

June 7, 2011 at 01:29:14
Secret Wars Of CIA Cost U.S. Taxpayers Billions Of Dollars
By Sherwood Ross

It's been estimated the Iraq war, besides making that country pretty much unlivable, will flush $3 trillion in U.S. taxpayer dollars down the Pentagon drain. Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, who made that cost estimate, wrote with co-author Linda Bilmes in The Washington Post March 9, 2008, "The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. Economy...you can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home."

The Stiglitz study is well known and is a factor in making many Americans want to get out of Iraq. (A CNN poll this January found two-thirds opposed the war.) But other costly wars have been waged by the White House, Pentagon, and CIA that have been kept largely secret. Their costs ran into the billions of dollars and not only cheated uninformed taxpayers but lacerated innocent nations, turning their populations against us, and ruined for American business countries that should have been harmonious trading partners.

Take El Salvador. President John Kennedy in the early Sixties worked to help El Salvador's military set up ORDEN, a rural paramilitary network, and ANSESAL, an intelligence agency, that were the forerunners of the dreaded Death Squads. Between 1980 and 1992, the U.S. literally waged a war to help the government suppress El Salvador's poverty-struck people. The CIA created right-wing Death Squads to murder labor leaders who fought on behalf of the poor for decent wages. By the time those killer bands had finished their slaughter, 75,000 civilians lay dead and "the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars," according to journalist William Blum's "Rogue State" from Common Courage Press.

"Officially, the U.S. Military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis," Blum writes. "About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well."

More:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Secret-Wars-Of-CIA-Cost-U-by-Sherwood-Ross-110607-246.html

Editorials:
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