Dec 2, 1980 - 4 American missionaries murdered in ElSalvador

Anyone remember this?

I think they were 4 Maryknoll nuns; is this right??

Saw notice of a memorial in a link from the Thomas Merton Center.

On the night of December 2, 1980 Sister Dorthy Kazel, lay missionary Jean Donovan and Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford were abcucted from the La Libertad airport, interrogated, physically and sexually abused, and shot by five National Guardsmen. The next morning they were buried in a common, shallow grave, marked with a cross of two branches.

A critical awarness of the United States' role in Central America, its failure to protect human rights, and its participation in the training of the military arm of oppressive regimes became evident as the circumstances of her death became public. Her death including torture and rape, mirrored that of more than 40,000 Salvadorans, and thousnads of Hondurans, and Guatemalan people.
http://www.ursulinesisters.org/dorothy1.htm

And I find this interesting

West Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 7 The families of four US missionaires murdered 20 years ago in El Salvador plan to ask for a new trial after a jury cleared two former Salvadoran military leaders last week of liability for the killings, their attorney said today.

Garcia and Vides, who both retired to Florida, served as military leaders during El Salvador's 12 year civil war. An estimated 75,000 people died before the war ended in 1992.

Although five soldiers were convicted in El Salvador in the killiings of the churchwomen, the families believed that the soldiers' superiors were involved.
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/elsalvador/retrial.htm

where was the case as of 1998
World: Americas
Release ordered of El Salvador nun murderers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/137381.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/107365.stm

Transcript of Confessions
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/1998/04/980415-salvador.htm

Old Chomsky backgrounder
The Crucifixion of El Salvador
http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/centralamerica/ElSalvador.html

Truth Commission quotes by Kirkpatrick and Haig:

On 16 December 1980, United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said: "I don't think the government (of El Salvador) was responsible. The nuns were not just nuns; the nuns were political activists. We ought to be a little more clear-cut about this than we usually are. They were political activists on behalf of the Frente and somebody who is using violence to oppose the Frente killed them." Tampa Tribune, 25 December 1980, pp. 23A and 24A, col. 1.

Secretary of State Alexander Haig testified as follows before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives: "I would like to suggest to you that some of the investigations would lead one to believe that perhaps the vehicle that the nuns were riding in may have tried to run a roadblock or may have accidentally been perceived to have been doing so, and there may have been an exchange of fire." See Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Year 1982: Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 97th Congress, First Session 163, 1981.
http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/el_salvador/tc_es_03151993_toc.html

The BFEE and its actions in Central America. The BFEE and its illegal wars. The BFEE in action for 40 years now.

In American Foreign Policy class tonight we watched a film about U.S. policy in Latin America from 1954-1990, and they showed the footage of the grave they found the bodies of the nuns in. Then my lefty prof went on an hour long rant about how fucked up our actions there were. :-)

As blm notes above, they've been at it since November 22, 1963. Their main lines of business are Gold, Opiates and Petroleum.

The nuns and lay religious were among the first Americans who died among the 75,000-plus murdered by death squads in El Salvador's civil war. These victims join the millions more killed on behalf of the world's propertied class and the their multinational corporations in Central and South America.

May the loved ones those good women left behind receive God's Peace. For those responsible — the ones the Bush Organized Crime Family toadies for — justice.

From ConsortiumNews.com...


Hyde’s Blind Eye: Contras & Cocaine

By Dennis Bernstein & Leslie Kean

EXCERPT...

Those early suspicions have now been proved out. Last year, CIA inspector general Frederick Hitz issued a lengthy report admitting that drug traffickers permeated the contra movement from its inception in the early 1980s and that contra-cocaine smuggling continued throughout the decade.

According to the CIA inspector general's report, the evidence showed that from the start, the CIA knew the contras were involved in "criminal activities," including terrorist bombings, hijackings and narcotics trafficking.

By 1981, contra operatives had delivered their first shipment of cocaine to the United States, the report revealed. The inspector general also confirmed that drug traffickers from the Medellin cartel secretly collaborated with contra operatives to pump money into the contra war.

We now know, too, that in 1982, Reagan's first attorney general, William French Smith, gave the CIA legal clearance to work with drug traffickers without a requirement to report on their criminal activities.

This so-called "memorandum of understanding" was effectively a carte blanche for the CIA to ignore drug operatives working in the contra movement as well as other CIA-backed projects.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/121499b.html

Those who believe there really is freedom of the press in the United States don't understand how things work. Unless you actually own the press, your story isn't guaranteed of becoming news — even when true. And that's more than a crime, it's un-Constitutional.

Case in point, El Mozote and the Reagan-Bush lickspittles at The New York Times:

The Consortium

Lost History (Part 1): Death, Lies and Bodywashing

EXCERPT...

In early 1982, Bonner also exposed the Salvadoran government's massacre of nearly 1,000 men, women and children at the town of El Mozote in December 1981. After that disclosure, Bonner was targeted by right-wing press "watchdog" groups, such as Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media, and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

In congressional testimony, assistant secretaries of state Thomas Enders and Elliott Abrams disputed Bonner's stories. They insisted that an investigation of the incident had concluded that the El Mozote massacre had never happened.

As pressure built on The New York Times, then-executive editor Abe Rosenthal flew to El Salvador to assess the complaints about Bonner first-hand. Sympathetic to Ronald Reagan's anti-communist foreign policy, Rosenthal began limiting Bonner's role in the Times' bureau in Central America.

Word soon spread that Bonner would be removed. When I was in El Salvador on a reporting assignment in fall 1982, two senior U.S. officials boasted to me about the embassy's success in discrediting Bonner and orchestrating his departure. In early 1983, Rosenthal did recall Bonner from El Salvador and put him on the business desk in New York. Not long after that, Bonner resigned from the Times.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost1.html

PS: Elliott Abrams, a BFEE toad, continues his public disservice as a bigwig in the Chimp's badministration.