A US diplomat tells it like it is.
Have our values been so twisted by our adversary concept of politics...? Is it conceivable that we are so obsessed with insurgency that we are prepared to rationalize murder as an acceptable counter-insurgency weapon? Is it possible that a nation which so revers the principle of due process of law has so easily acquiesced in this sort of terror tactic?
Sorry ... told it like was.
This statement was regarding the US policy in Guatemala and was made by Viron Vaky in 1968. (via the American Prospect)
Today Somerby links to this story in the New York Times, which he terms a must read. While it is an important story, the following passage by author Anthony Lewis demonstrates that even the American "left" need to brush up on its history a bit ... or a lot.
At a minimum, the treatment [torture] of Mr. Kahtani [an al Qaeda suspect held in Guantanamo) was an exercise in degradation and humiliation. Such treatment is forbidden by three sources of law that the United States respected for decades - until the administration of George W. Bush.
I gotta tell ya, I'm getting pretty tired of such drivel coming from those who should know a little bit of the history of US foreign policy. (especially when one considers their role in Latin America)
I mean "respected!?" My god, could Lewis really be that dim?
The main difference between the Bush crime family and former US administrations is that now it's out in the open, pictures and all, with the Bush administration having far fewer qualms about carrying out the torture themselves. But, before Bush the United States government had respected the international laws against torture for decades? On exactly what planet would that be?
Really you could start in so many places and the pattern is consistent throughout the last century. There's Vietnam of course. Or El Salvador. Or Chile. Or Indonesia. Or Nicaragua. Or Colombia. Hell, in Latin America the list of countries that did NOT undertake US sponsored terror is far far shorter. Just to throw out a couple of the hundreds of easily found examples, from Haiti:
(19)86-93 INS DATABASE ON ALL ASYLUM INTERVIEWS AT GUANTANAMO. INS, ON DEMAND, GAVE STATE DEPT UNRESTRICTED ACCESS TO ALL INTERVIEW FILES. U.S. OFFICERS HAND HAITIAN AUTHORITIES COMPUTER PRINT-OUTS OF NAMES OF ALL HAITIANS BEING REPATRIATED. CIA FUNDED SERVICE INTELLIGENCE NACIONALE (SIN) WHO'S DE FACTO PRIMARY FUNCTION WAS A WAR AGAINST POPULAR MOVEMENT - INCLUDING TORTURE AND ASSASSINATION - A FACT ADMITTED BY A CIA OFFICER TO AN OFFICIAL IN ARISTIDE'S GVT. U.S. SHARES "ANTI-NARCOTICS INTEL" WITH HAITIAN MILITARY. THE PROGRESSIVE 4/94 21
Or Honduras.
Jose Barrera gulped down a double shot of Sambuca before he began to talk about his past as a torturer and murderer.
He recalled how he nearly suffocated people with rubber masks, how he attached wires to their genitals and shocked them with electricity, how he tore off a man's testicles with a rope.
"We let them stay in their own excrement," he said, his gold front tooth reflecting the dim lamplight. "When they were very weak, we would take them to disappear."
Images such as these cast a shadow over the lives of Barrera and other men who served in Battalion 316, a CIA-trained military unit that terrorized Honduras for much of the 1980s...
...the former battalion members said the CIA knew of their use of torture. When a CIA officer visited one of the battalion's secret jails, he saw evidence of torture and did not protest, the battalion members said.
"The Americans knew everything we were doing," Caballero said. "They saw what condition the victims were in -- their marks and bruises. They did not do anything."
And one of the US Ambassadors to Honduras was John Negroponte, the current Director of National Intelligence. (and that's a whole other equally shameful story). So not only has the US government supported torture or years, past involvement seems to be good for the career.
And Henry Kissinger actually gave verbal support to the insanely cruel and bloody campaign in Argentina.
...At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody ''dirty war'' against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that ''we would like you to succeed,'' a newly declassified U.S. document reveals. The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or ''disappearance'' of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983.
Former US ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador, Robert White, sums up the current detachment from reality nicely.
"We are living an illusion if we think these practices (the torture at Abu Ghraib) are unique," said Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador. "What is unique is the graphic pictorial evidence that drives it home. But that the United States has been complicit with torture in Vietnam and Latin America, there can be no doubt. It may be sinking into the public consciousness for the first time, but expressions of shock from people whose business is foreign policy are quite hypocritical."
And with White being an ambassador to El Salvador he most certainly would know.
The United States government has a long history of condoning torture, the only requirement being that the torturers are on their side. It is disgraceful that those who do or should know better don't acknowledge this.
With all of this said, I will restate that it certainly does appear that the Bush clan is much more directly involved. But, damn, people must understand that the roots are long and deep.
(oh, and yes, Nazi Germany was much much worse ...and so was Stalin ...and Saddam...)
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