Four dead Americans in Benghazi

Your president Obama is a LIAR .

the Obama poll numbers are skewed because most americans are still tickled pink that we elected a man with light brown skin, they like him and they like him in the chair. he gets far worse opinion on the quality of his work.

Q: Changing topics, in general do you think the federal government is doing more to (protect) the rights of average Americans or more to (threaten) the rights of average Americans?

Detailed View
PROTECT 38%
THREATEN 54%
No opinion

And you know **** from shinola!

I would expand on this question and ask, "what rights has been threatened?"

CIA confirms Bush lied about WMDs

What rights were threatened or eliminated during the Bush, Bush, Reagan, or Ford administrations.

US support for Indonesia

from the book

East Timor: Genocide in Paradise

by Matthew Jardine




America stands as it always has, against aggression, against those who would use force to replace the rule of law.

US President George Bush, 1990, referring to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

When I think of Indonesia -- a country on the equator with 180 million people, a median age of 18, and a Muslim ban on alcohol -- I feel like I know what heaven looks like.

Coca-Cola President Donald R. Keough, c. 1992


It's clear that the US knew about the upcoming invasion [of East Timor by Indonesia in 1975] and avoided taking any action that might have stopped it. In August 1975, Australia's ambassador to Indonesia cabled the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra (Australia's capital), as follows: The United States might have some influence on Indonesia at the present as Indonesia really wants and needs US assistance in its military re-equipment program.... But [US] Ambassador Newsom told me last night that he is under instructions from [US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger personally not to involve himself in discussions on Timor with the Indonesians on the ground that the US is involved in enough problems of greater importance overseas at present....His present attitude is that the US should keep out of the Portuguese Timor situation and allow events to take their course.

US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were in Jakarta visiting Indonesian President Suharto the two days before the invasion. There's little doubt that Ford gave Suharto the green light to invade. Kissinger told reporters in Jakarta that "the US understands Indonesia's position on the question" of East Timor, and Ford said that, given a choice between East Timor and Indonesia, the US "had to be on the side of Indonesia." (US support for the invasion was important to Suharto because ABRI (the Indonesian military) relied heavily on US weaponry, which US law states can only be used for defensive purposes.)

In early 1976, the US voiced its defacto recognition of Jakarta's annexation of East Timor. An unnamed US State Department official explained: "In terms of the bilateral relations between the US and Indonesia, we are more or less condoning the incursion into East Timor."

These US actions weren't surprising, given the history of business relations between the two countries. By the end of World War I, the US and Japan supplied almost a third of the Dutch East Indies' imports. In turn, US-based corporations located there supplied the US with tin, rubber and oil. By 1939, the Dutch East Indies were supplying the US with over half of its needs for "no less than fifteen distinct commodities."

W.W.II radically changed the map of the Pacific, with the US emerging as the region's dominant power. US policymakers recognized that the region held great promise:

These areas not only offer many markets for American products but are substantial producers of raw materials useful to our economy....Our merchant marine and commercial firms should be given the opportunity to take over a large portion of that trade formerly handled by the Japanese and their vessels.

George Kennan, Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department, noted that the US had "about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 % of its population," and offered this advice: Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on.

Indonesia, with its fertile soils, wealth of natural resources and strategic location, is certainly an important area to "control or rely on." In a 1965 speech in Asia, Richard Nixon argued in favor of bombing North Vietnam to protect the "immense mineral potential" of Indonesia, which he later referred to as "by far the greatest prize in the southeast Asian area."

To protect its prizes, the US eventually killed over four million people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 1965 and 1975. In South Vietnam alone, the war resulted in a million widows and 879,000 orphans. It destroyed 9000 out of 15,000 hamlets, almost 40,000 square miles of farmland and 18,750 square miles of forest. Such carnage indicates what the US would be willing to support in Indonesia and East Timor.

In the late 1940s, US government and corporate leaders decided to support Indonesian independence over the continuing instability of Dutch rule (as mentioned above). To their chagrin, however, the new Indonesian government became highly nationalistic, anti-imperialist and non- aligned. Worried that the area might move beyond its control, Washington began (in the 1950s) to curry favor with the Indonesian army, through military assistance and training programs.

The US soon reaped the benefits of this policy. In 1965, using an alleged Communist plot to overthrow the government as an excuse, pro-US General Suharto assumed control of the military and launched "one of the great slaughters of our time." Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were killed, mostly landless peasants and members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (many of whose names had been supplied to the army by the US Embassy in Jakarta) .

Suharto's government repealed the previous regime's "extremely restrictive" investment laws and paved the way for large-scale foreign investment. By the 1970s, the US was investing more in Indonesia than in any other Southeast Asian country, even the Philippines. Part of that trade was arms-the State Department estimates that US companies supplied about 90% of the weapons used during the invasion of East Timor.

The Suharto regime's support for US and Western political objectives, its liberal investment climate and its repressive labor conditions-the minimum wage is less than $2 a day-make it very attractive to Western companies. Under Suharto, Indonesia has developed into a major center for international business operations. Extensive mining, logging and oil extraction takes place there, as does manufacturing by a wide variety of US companies, including Nike and Levi Strauss.

Support for Indonesia's actions in East Timor and elsewhere is a small price to pay for the investment opportunities (and political support) Indonesia offers. So the US not only refused to condemn the invasion, but sharply increased aid to Indonesia since then.


In the year following the invasion, the Ford administration more than doubled its military assistance to Indonesia (to $146 million). In late 1977, when it looked as if Indonesia might run out of military equipment, the Carter "human rights" administration authorized $112 million in commercial arms sales to Jakarta, up almost 2000% from the previous fiscal year. US military sales peaked during the Reagan administration, exceeding $1 billion from 1982 to 1984. Over 2600 Indonesian military officers have received training in the US since the invasion of East Timor, under the International Military Education and Training Act (IMET).

As a State Department official explained shortly after the invasion: "The United States wants to keep its relations with Indonesia close and friendly. [It's] a nation we do a lot of business with. "

Because the corporate media tend to follow the lead of their governments, people in the West learned almost nothing about Indonesia's brutal invasion and the ensuing war. When political parties in East Timor were working toward independence from Portugal (in 1975), a number of US newspapers reported on the process. But after the invasion, news of East Timor largely disappeared from the Western press.

The Los Angeles Times is a typical example. From August 1975 until the invasion on December 7, it ran sixteen articles dealing with East Timor. But from March 1976 to November 1979-during a time when Indonesia's occupation was described (in a report to the Australian parliament) as "indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history"-East Timor wasn't mentioned once. This neglect by the US media continued throughout the 1980s.


from the book
East Timor: Genocide in Paradise
by Matthew Jardine

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/genocide_Odon.html

School of the Americas:
School of Assassins, USA





The School of the Americas


World War II was the "good war". After that conflict, most Americans believed that US intentions in the world were noble -- the US was the punisher of aggression and a warrior for freedom. This image was for generations of Americans the measure by which they judged their country in world affairs. The war in Vietnam ended the illusion that America was always on the "right side". Today, America's image as a defender of democracy and justice has been further eroded by the School of the Americas (SOA), which trains Latin American and Caribbean military officers and soldiers to subvert democracy and kill hope in their own countries.

Founded by the United States in 1946, the SOA was initially located in Panama, but in 1984 it was kicked out under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty and moved to the army base at Fort Benning, Georgia. Then-President of Panama Jorge Illueca called it "the biggest base for de-stabilization in Latin America," and a major Panamanian newspaper dubbed it " The School of Assassins."

Today, SOA instructors and students are recruited from the cream of the Latin American military establishment. The School trains 700-2,000 soldiers a year, and since its inception in 1946, more than 60,000 military personnel have graduated from the SOA.

If the SOA concentrated its training on protecting country borders from foreign aggression or safeguarding citizens from invasion by outside enemies, it would be considered an exemplary institution, worth the cost of American tax dollars and US prestige. But, the SOA has very different goals. Its curriculum includes courses in psychological warfare, counterinsurgency, interrogation techniques, and infantry and commando tactics. Presented with the most sophisticated and up-to-date techniques by the US Army's best instructors, these courses teach military officers and soldiers of Third World countries to subvert the truth, to muzzle union leaders, activist clergy, and journalists, and to make war on their own people. It prepares them to subdue the voices of dissent and to make protesters submit. It instructs them in techniques of marginalizing the poor, the hungry, and the dispossessed. It tells them how to stamp out freedom and terrorize their own citizens. It trains them to destroy the hope of democracy.

The School of the Americas (SOA) has been given other names -- "School for Dictators", "School of Assassins", and "Nursery of Death Squads". And, countries with the worst human rights records send the most soldiers to the School.

Countries / Graduates (since 1946)

Argentina / 931
Bolivia / 4,049
Brazil / 355
Chile / 2,405
Colombia / 8,679
Costa Rica / 2,376
Dominican Republic / 2,330
Ecuador / 2,356
El Salvador / 6,776
Guatemala / 1,676
Honduras / 3,691
Nicaragua / 4,693
Panama / 4,235
Paraguay / 1,084
Peru / 3,997
Uruguay / 931
Venezuela / 3,250

When they return to their home countries, graduates of the SOA hold a rather unique and peculiar view of their countrymen. They look upon priests, social workers, journalists, and liberal intellectuals, not as assets to their societies, but as dangerous subversives, working to undermine the system that keeps these soldiers, army officers, and their sponsors in power.

Graduates of the SOA have been among the most repressive tyrants in Latin America, and their actions have been some of the most cruel and violent. In El Salvador, in 1989, a Salvadoran army patrol executed six Jesuit priests as they lay face-down on the ground at Central America University. According to the United Nation's Truth Commission Report on El Salvador in 1993, 19 of the 27 officers who took part in the executions were trained at the SOA.

In 1990, in El Salvador, populist Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated. Three-quarters of the Salvadoran officers implicated in the killing were trained at the SOA. Roberto D'Aubuison, the late leader of El Salvador's Death Squad, was implicated in the plot to assassinate Archbishop Romero. He also participated in numerous murders, including a massacre in the village of El Mazote, where more than 900 men, women, and children were killed. He graduated from SOA as well.

The U.N. Truth Commission's statistics reveal the extent of the School's murderous role in El Salvador .


Romero assassination 3 officers cited --- 2 were SOA graduates
Murder of US nuns 5 officers cited --- 3 were SOA graduates
Union leader murders 3 officers cited --- 3 were SOA graduates
El Junquillo massacre 3 officers cited --- 2 were SOA graduates
El Mazote massacre 12 officers cited --- 10 were SOA graduates
Dutch journalist murders 1 officer cited --- he was an SOA graduate
Las Hojas massacre 6 officers cited --- 3 were SOA graduates
San Sebastian massacre 7 officers cited --- 6 were SOA graduates
Jesuit massacre 26 officers cited --- 19 were SOA graduates

In other Latin American countries, graduates of the SOA have been equally prominent enemies of human rights. Former dictators Omar Torrijos of Panama, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, all overthrew constitutionally elected governments in their countries. Leopoldo Galtieri, the former head of the Argentina junta defeated in the Falklands War, was responsible for thousands of "disappeared" citizens who supported freedom and democracy in Argentina, and paid the ultimate price with their lives. He was an SOA graduate.

In Honduras, General Humberto Ragalado Hernandez, was trained at the SOA at the same time that he was linked to Columbian drug cartels, and the highest ranking officers in the Honduran Death Squad were trained at SOA as well.

In Peru, the most senior officers convicted of the February 1994 murder of nine university students and a professor, were graduates of the SOA. In Columbia, a 1992 human rights tribunal cited 246 officers for crimes against the people of Columbia. 105 of the officers were trained at the SOA. In Panama, ex-dictator Manuel Noriega, formerly on the CIA payroll, graduated from the SOA. He is now in a US prison, convicted of trafficking in drugs.

In Guatemala, a country of 10 million, the indigenous Mayan population of 6 million have endured the greatest suffering in Latin America. During more than 30 years of civil war, tens-of-thousands have been slaughtered, with the total killed estimated to exceed 200,000. Most of the ranking generals involved in the numerous coups and acts of terror and murder during this period were trained at the SOA.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, in Guatemala, thousands of political activists and opponents of government policies were assassinated. General Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas, Chief of Army Intelligence at the time, was cited by the UN as the individual responsible for most of those murders. He graduated from the SOA. One of the most vicious tyrants in recent Guatemalan history is Jose Efrain Rios Montt. General, dictator, and a former president from 1982-83, Rios Montt was proud of his political philosophy of "beans for the obedient; bullets for the rest". He was also a graduate of the SOA.

The impact of SOA graduates on Latin American freedom has been devastating. Armed with sophisticated training, modern weapons, and up-to-date techniques of control and surveillance, graduates of the SOA have terrorized their own countrymen for a generation.

In the name of its citizens and using American taxpayer dollars, the United States, the most-democratic of countries, has for decades been training some of the most anti-democratic leaders in the world. Administrations that have decried terrorism abroad, have encouraged terrorists right here at home -- at the SOA.

Our country, for generations, a beacon of liberty and democracy to the world, should play no part in subverting democracy and killing hope in other countries. Americans who condemn world terror should condemn just as strongly America's training of Third World terrorists. It is time for all of us to demand that the School of the Americas be closed.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/SOA.html