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Kizzume
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Joined: 31 Dec 1969
Posts: 2787
Location: Tacoma, WA USA
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 Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 7:50 am Post subject: Shutting down a school of assasins? |
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I've been reading a number of articles about protests demanding that a school ran by the U.S. for Latin America that teaches assassin tactics be shut down. I wanted to see if there was any validity to the whole thing, whether it was useless or not. There have also been people trying to get congress to end the funding to that school. That makes more sense than protesting to have the school taken down--because if that happened, the funding would probably go up for the school so they could just rebuild it somewhere else.
Here's a clip from an article entitled:
"Letter: Congress: End funding to School of the Americas "
http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071204/OPINION/112040031/1006/NEWS01
| Quote: | Bishop Oscar Romero, who was working for peace in San Salvador, was murdered while conducting Mass in 1980. Two of his three identified assassins were graduates of a military school called the School of the Americas.
The School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is a military training facility in Fort Banning, Ga.
It?s suspected of training Central and South American soldiers in several unethical means of maintaining control over the people of their countries. For example, a manual used by the school released in 1996 taught motivation by fear, false imprisonment, torture, execution and kidnapping.
Some graduates of this school have been found responsible for some of the worst human rights violations in Central and South America, including the rapes, murders and kidnappings of hundreds of thousands of innocent peoples.
Several corrupt dictators have graduated from this school. Under their rules, many civilians have been killed by the military.
Opposition to the existence of this school led to a congressional vote in 2007 to cut funding, but failed by only six votes. I recently went to a protest against the school at Fort Benning. The experience is one I will never forget.
Some protesters so strongly believed in closing the school that they decided to take their message one step further, literally ? a step that could land them up to six months in prison. These 11 protesters crossed the line onto the base to be arrested. |
I went to the official site for this school. I don't recommend going here without something like NoScript running--they have something very strange going on on this page--just be aware of it--it may be just poorly written, but it could be something else too: https://www.infantry.army.mil/WHINSEC/academics.asp?id=14
| Quote: | Courses range from 2 to 49 weeks. The standards, doctrine, and content for each course is comparable to similar courses throughout the Department of Defense. All of the courses offered are also valued by the American Council on Education for academic credit at the baccalaureate or graduate level.
Courses are taught primarily in Spanish (one presently in English) by a mix of civilian U.S. academicians, officers from three branches of the U.S. Armed Forces and the U.S. Department of State. Highly qualified and carefully selected military officers and civilian professors from Latin American defense ministries, police, and civilian colleges and universities complete this robust faculty. |
The part that's important to read is "each course is comparable to similar courses throughout the Department of Defense". If that school gets closed even because of funding, they're STILL going to get taught it somewhere else.
And when I go here, still part of that same site:
https://www.infantry.army.mil/WHINSEC/democracy.asp?id=95
| Quote: | | The mission of WHINSEC is to educate and train military, police, and civilians within the context of the democratic principles set forth in the Charter of the Organization of the American States (OAS). |
So then I decided to look up OAS, and it was so filled with fluff, and I could find anything about terrorism or torture or detainees or assasins or any of that--all I could find was this tidbit that doesn't really mean anything:
http://www.oas.org/juridico/English/charter.html
In Article 2:
| Quote: | | h) To achieve an effective limitation of conventional weapons that will make it possible to devote the largest amount of resources to the economic and social development of the Member States. |
Now--if people aren't able to use weapons, what kind of tactics does that leave people? Okay, so maybe that's a stretch.
Nothing on their main site says anything except for that little bit about the courses being similar throughout the Department of Defense.
What do you think about this?
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