( – promoted by buhdydharma )
From School of Americas Watch:
A controversial facility at Ft. Benning, Ga. — formerly known as the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas — is still training Honduran officers despite claims by the Obama administration that it cut military ties to Honduras after its president was overthrown June 28, NCR has learned.
A day after an SOA-trained army general ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint, President Barack Obama stated that “the coup was not legal” and that Zelaya remained “the democratically elected president.”
The Foreign Operations Appropriations Act requires that U.S. military aid and training be suspended when a country undergoes a military coup, and the Obama administration has indicated those steps have been taken.
However, Lee Rials, public affairs officer for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the successor of SOA, confirmed Monday that Honduran officers are still being trained at the school.
“Yes, they’re in class now,” Rials said.Asked about the Obama administration’s suspension of aid and training to Honduras, Rials said, “Well, all I know is they’re here, and they’re in class.”
And, inside Honduras, nothing has changed either:
The ongoing training of Hondurans at Ft. Benning is not the only evidence of unbroken U.S.-Honduran military ties since the coup.
Another piece was discovered by Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch, while on fact-finding mission to Honduras last week.
Bourgeois — accompanied by two lawyers, Kent Spriggs and Dan Kovalik — visited the Soto Cano/Palmerola Air Base northwest of Tegucigalpa, where the U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Task Force-Bravo is stationed.
“Helicopters were flying all around, and we spoke with the U.S. official on duty, a Sgt. Reyes” about the U.S.-Honduran relationship, Bourgeois said. “We asked him if anything had changed since the coup and he said no, nothing.”
Read the whole thing here:
http://www.soaw.org/presente/i…
And the US is still continuing aid to Honduras, according to Narconews:
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that US aid is going to a pro coup candidate’s company.
… escapist anime, because otherwise the sound of my teeth grinding will keep me awake all night and I’ll be terrible in class tomorrow.
I guess we are imprinted by events as we came of age. I was in college when Reagan came to power on the back of a treasonous agreement with a foreign power to keep Americans in captivity for his political advantage, and then financed the Nicaraguan Contra atrocities to generate backdrop for his political theater, though the red in his bunting was the blood of the innocents.
I hate the SOA so much I almost never blog about it, because I cannot string coherent sentences together one after another. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH