Thank you, Vets

[Kudabux]

To all you Vets out there, a big thanks from me, for making it possible for us to speak our mind, no matter how dimwitted it may be. :D

[robb]

As a Vet, I thank you for your kind words. I proudly severed in the US Air Force form 1986 to 1990 at Edward's AFB, CA -- and loved every minute of it.

-r

[new century heretic]

what the military is doing is Iraq, today, is a Copy of what was done in Central America- under Negroponte's control - in the 80's. - here is a summary of the tactics used to "elect" the new leaders. - step back in time and recognize the duplication of the Reagan Plan by mr. bush.
(the "new leaders" are Collaborators who choose to kill their own people for control)
.................................................. .................................................. ......
A closer look helps us understand what is meant by "democracy" in the political culture. The November elections were effectively restricted to the two traditional parties. One candidate was from a family of wealthy industrialists, the other from a family of large landowners. Their top advisers "acknowledge that there is little substantive difference between the two and the policies they would follow as president," we learn from the press report that hails this milestone in the progress of democracy. Both parties represent large landowners and industrialists and have close ties with the military, the effective rulers, who are independent of civilian authority under the Constitution but heavily dependent on the United States, as is the economy. The Guatemalan Central America Report adds that "in the absence of substantial debate, both candidates rely on insults and accusations to entertain the crowds at campaign rallies and political functions" -- if that sounds familiar to a U.S. audience, it is not mere coincidence. Popular participation was limited to ritual voting. The legal opposition parties (Christian Democratic and Social Democratic) charged massive electoral fraud.

Human rights abuses by the security forces escalated as the election approached. In the weeks before the election, there were attacks with bombs and rifle fire against independent political figures, journalists, and union leaders, condemned as a plan to repress popular organizations by the head of the Coordinating Committee of Popular Organizations, ex-rector of the National University Juan Almendares. In preceding months, the armed forces conducted a campaign of political violence, including assassination of union leaders and other extrajudicial executions, leaving tortured and mutilated bodies by roadsides for the first time. The human rights organization CODEH reported at least 78 people killed by the security forces between January and July, while reported cases of torture and beatings more than tripled over the preceding year. But state terror remained at low enough levels so as not to disturb U.S. elite opinion.

Starvation and general misery are rampant, the extreme concentration of wealth increased during the decade of "democracy," and 70% of the population are malnourished. Despite substantial U.S. aid the economy is collapsing, with capital flight and a sharp drop in foreign investment, and almost half of export earnings devoted to debt service.

Even El Salvador and Guatemala, murderous gangster states run by the U.S.-backed military, are considered democracies. Elite opinion expresses considerable pride in having established and maintained these charnel houses, with "free elections" permitted after a wave of slaughter, torture, disappearance, mutilation, and other effective devices of control. Physical destruction of the independent media and murder of editors and journalists by the security forces passed virtually without comment -- often literally without report -- among their U.S. colleagues, among many other atrocities.

Occasionally, one hears an honest comment. Joachim Maitre of Boston University, one of the leading academic supporters of Reagan administration policies in Central America, observes that the U.S. has "installed democracies of the style of Hitler Germany" in El Salvador and Guatemala. But such candor is far from the norm.

Nicaragua, however, was different, because of the threat of independent nationalism and social reform, heightened by the loss of U.S. control of the security forces, a problem that has arisen elsewhere as well, and a serious one, because the standard device for repressing and eliminating undesirable tendencies is then no longer available.
In the case of Guatemala and Chile, it was necessary to resort to economic strangulation, subversion, and military force to overthrow the democratic regimes and establish the preferred regional standards. In the case of the Dominican Republic in 1965, direct invasion was required to bar the restoration of a constitutional regime.

Throughout Central America,an unprecedented campaign of international terrorism along with unremitting economic and ideological warfare -- again, surely not motivated by the reasons advanced in the official government-media line, which are hardly credible. Other cases require different measures, including Panama, another long-term target of U.S. intervention, to which we turn directly.