George “the Torturer” Bush

for borrowing from my comment elsewhere, but the torture issue is not new, not at all.

It’s just that they finally got busted.

The current torture manual was literally written in Honduras, in Spanish:

A newly declassified CIA training manual details torture methods used against suspected subversives in Central America during the 1980s, refuting claims by the agency that no such methods were taught there.

“Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual — 1983” was released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The Sun on May 26, 1994.

The CIA also declassified a Vietnam-era training manual called “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation — July 1963,” which also taught torture and is believed by intelligence sources to have been a basis for the 1983 manual.

Torture methods taught in the 1983 manual include stripping suspects naked and keeping them blindfolded. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, dark and soundproof, with no toilet.

 Torture was taught by CIA; Declassified manual details the methods used in Honduras; Agency denials refuted

Like everything else the School of the Americas (SOA) did, the governing manual from the original Honduran torture laboratory was written in Spanish:

The School of the Americas (“SOA”) is a training facility financed and operated by the United States with the mission of training Latin American soldiers. However, the SOA has also received infamous recognition for the great number of SOA graduates who have committed human right abuses.  Besides the El Mozote massacre, SOA graduates have played key roles in nearly every coup and major human rights violation in Latin America in the past fifty years.  In fact, Latin American nations with the worst human rights records have consistently sent the most soldiers to the SOA.  Martin Meehand, a Congressman from Massachusetts, has noted “if the SOA held an alumni association meeting, it would bring  together some of the most unsavory thugs in the hemisphere.”  There have been so many despots trained at the SOA that it has earned numerous nicknames including “School of Coups,” “School of Assassins,” and “School of Dictators.”

How many people came from there?

Since the SOA opened, 55,000 military officials and 4,000 policemen and civilians from over twenty-three different countries have trained at the school. Half the students who attend the SOA come from five primary countries – Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, and Panama. Even though the United States Army offers training of foreign soldiers at other locations, the SOA trains most of the Latin American military students who come to the United States because the courses are primarily taught in Spanish. Candidates for the school are selected by foreign military officials and then approved by the United States embassies in Latin America. Both United States and Latin American military personnel teach courses at the SOA, with civilians teaching some of classes.  According to the Pentagon, “the mission of the school is to train the armed forces of Latin America, promote military professionalism, foster cooperation among multi-national military forces, and to expand trainees’ knowledge of United States customs and traditions.”

Hold that thought about “foster cooperation among multi-national military forces” and think back to Michael Moore’s satirical look at the “coalition of the willing.”  Honduras?  El Salvador?  Nicaragua?  Well… guess who made the payroll?  The same people who were trained to do the filthy work of Iran-Contra era.

It turns out that this “coalition of the willing” is well-peopled by nations which have had armies trained at US taxpayer expense – most likely trained by SOA grads who have gone on to replicate themselves internationally courtesy of US expense:

The U.S. government is training soldiers in upwards of 70 countries at any given time. The most transparent, and consequently well known of these training programs is the Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Recent graduates as well as soldiers soon to be trained by this program come from countries at war or with horrific human rights records, including Indonesia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Cote d’Ivoire.  [source a must-read for any who want to know the extent of US involvement in not only arming but training armies throughout the world]

My conclusion?  The chief mission of the “coalition of the willing” is to get these 100’s of thousands, maybe millions of mercenaries onto the national payroll.  

Oil schmoil, sure that’s a background concern but the US gets most of its oil from Canada and Mexico (cheaper if you don’t push it across an ocean).

The US has created a monster killer army of international proportions.

Good for you for demanding answers of the torture issue.  But we need to remember that it started in the bogus name of “fighting communism” under the aegis of the Iran/Contra affair.