FBI Puts SOA Watch Under "Counterterrorism" Surveillances

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050606C.shtml
FBI Puts SOA Watch Under "Counterterrorism" Surveillances
By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive

Thursday 04 May 2006

The FBI has been keeping tabs on SOA Watch, the human rights group that monitors the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.

In fact, the FBI has elevated its concern to "priority" level, claiming that the group is subject to "counterterrorism" monitoring, according to documents released on May 4 by the ACLU and its Georgia chapter.

SOA Watch was founded by Father Roy Bourgeois back in 1990, and it organizes annual protests at Fort Benning that now draw about 10,000 protesters. (The School of the Americas, in a PR stunt, has changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.)

"Our intentions are peaceful and our commitment unwavering as we nonviolently call attention to a school that has trained some of the worst human rights abusers in this hemisphere,' says Father Bourgeois in the ACLU press release.

Hugging a tree undermines the fabric of this new America.

Is the FBI's concern that these groups are going to commit terrorism by organizational intent, or that these groups are going to be infiltrated in the course of political protests and used as a launch pad for terrorism?

To me there's a pretty huge difference and I'm wondering which it is. Because certainly protests at a military base put human beings in proximity to a military base, duh. Do they feel like that's all the reason they need to treat people like potential terrorists, and being an antiwar group is no "excuse"?

About the School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians. <snip>

http://www.soaw.org/new/

.. exactly where the Administration was headed.


From John King CNN Washington Bureau
Monday, February 23, 2004 Posted: 7:12 PM EST (0012 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" Monday ... http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.terrorist.nea/

They will simply add this hate-speech fuel to the fires roaring away within already.

These _Bush jerks really don't have accidents. They intend every thing they do.

non-violent people who make the pilgrimage to Ft. Benning are being publicly designated as "enemies of the people" by the _Bush administration.

That really sucks.

I'm still trying to get past the fact they imprisoned a nun who was in her NINETIES who made the trip to the protest.

People are learning what they have done, what deep scars they have carved into the human race, how many, many lives they have destroyed.

So protestors are the enemy. Makes perfect Republican sense.