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Edited on Sat Jun-17-06 11:52 AM by Tom Rinaldo
First and foremost, within your many links and quotes you do include this comment by Clark:
"If you find anything in that curriculum material or anything that's taught there that looks in any way remotely connected with human rights abuse or torture, you let me know, and I promise you, we'll close the School of the Americas when I'm president," he said.
Has the United States ever had a President, Democrat or Republican, make a statement like that one? I don't think so, correct me if I am wrong. I would absolutely love having each and every Presidential candidate going on record with a statement like that one by Clark. It would either mean a commitment to real progress or it would be the hammer we needed to expose the hypocrisy of allowing torture techniques to be taught, if in fact they were continued to be allowed.
It is very dangerous to an honest discussion to not include specific time frames when referencing statements about activities at that School and the successor to it. We might just as well attempt to equate the policies of the U.S Justice Department under RFK with what was practiced under Nixon's John Mitchell, or equate the Justice Department under Janet Reno with the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales. Same institution, different agenda, both overt and covert.
Since the modern era of the National Republican Party began under Nixon/Kissinger (as opposed to Republicans like Ike), the School of the Americas and the successor "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" established in 2001, have been operated under Republican Administrations for 26 years compared to oversight by Democratic Administrations for 12 years, and that shows in it's record. You said above (about Clark):
"... Utterly disingenuous, the entire point of the operation (as patently stated by the manuals) was to destroy left wing and peasant resistance via the use of torture, oppression, economic torture, and murder.
In 1996 shortly after the Pentagon's admission re torture manuals Clark went to the SOA to give a commencement address, do you think that was wise? would YOU speak at an organization which has admitted to training torturers?"
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about those "torture manuals" and the timing involved in their use and exposure:
"The Torture manuals was a nickname for seven training manuals which had excerpts declassified to the public on September 20, 1996 by the Pentagon.
These manuals were prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). The manuals were also distributed by Special Forces Mobile Training teams to military personnel and intelligence schools in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. <1>"
The key points: The manuals were used between 1987 and 1991, under Republican Administrations. They were declassified in 1996, under a Democratic Administration. While your comments which I quote from are technically not untrue, they are very misleading in that they imply that Clark had knowledge that such manuals were in use in 1996 when he gave that commencement address, which is absolutely false. Their use was stopped by the time Clinton gained control of the Defense Department, five years prior.
Still you seem to imply, Why on Earth would General Clark speak at a commencement for such an institution? The answer is more simple than sinister; General Clark was briefly assigned to be Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, from June 1996 to July 1997, and during that period the S.O.A. fell under his overall command, as did hundreds of other facilities and institutions within the Southern Command. Clark's commencement address was given in 1996 during that exact period, commiserate with the responsibilities of Clark's post. Technically one can say a ten year old event happened a few years ago I suppose, which is how you phrased it, but usually "a few" means three to five years ago to most people, so I think it worth noting that Clark did not speak at that program during Bush's Administration.
Under Clinton's Administration efforts began to institute reforms to the institution, reforms that many now believe were inadequate, but Clark's short involvement with the S.O.A. was one supportive of human rights reforms at the institution, which was Congressionally mandated and Congressionally funded under military policies determined by Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, and Bill Clinton's appointed Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Far too many graduates of that program have been implicated in very serious anti human rights abuses and anti Democratic activities, but it is worth noting that the military in South America, prior to the commencement of the School of the Americas, already had a very long and very deep history of repeated serious anti human rights abuses and anti-Democratic activities. This did not originate with the S.O.A. Batista and Somoza and a host of others clearly predated the S.O.A. By the early 1960's a pattern or repeated military coups and repressive juntas was the norm, not the exception, in most South American nations. A primary official stated rational for the S.O.A. was to further the American model of military respect for civilian constitutional rule, and progress has occurred in Central and South America over the last few decades in that regard, whether or not any credit can be given to the S.O.A., despite serious abuses by some graduates of that program.
Again, I think it is noteworthy to consider that Republicans have controlled operations of that program for 26 out of the last 38 years. Look at any agency of government. The Environmental Protection Agency under George W. Bush as compared to under Bill Clinton never changed it's stated official mission, but many of us feel that Clinton's EPA actually worked to protect the environment while Bush's EPA far too frequently works to enable the polluters. Same thing for the FBI or CIA. There are many powerful forces represented inside America's ongoing government, many of which don't make me proud to be an American, but we can not make them go away with the stroke of a pen. We can not abolish those powerful interests by act of Congress. Congress abolished legal intervention in Nicaragua during Reagan's Administration, so Reagan simply set up his own illegal operation, using Ollie North, to get around that. If we cut off funding for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation via a Democratic Congress in 2007, a Bush/Cheney Administration will find the means they need to keep pursuing their covert agenda. Direct aid to South American Death Squads in the 70's and 80's was coordinated by the CIA and other secret special Ops units, not run by the SOA (which of course does NOT CONDONE torture having been taught there under Reagan and Bush One).
My personal position is that I want the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation closed down regardless of how clean their official curriculum is now or becomes later. There has been far too much water under that bridge, a clear message being sent by shutting it down now would be a very positive and important message to send. But Wes Clark is not the bogey man in this story. Democratic majorities in Congress kept voting to refund the S.O.A. through out all of its worse years. On paper it's mission may well be a positive one. I am willing to believe that many of the people who have participated in that program, in one way or another, believed in the stated open, rather than degraded covert, mission of that program. I just hate it when the politicians sitting in Congress, who actually have the power to start and end programs like the SOA, men and women on both sides of the aisle, are given a free pass on moral responsibility for their actions in voting to appropriate operating funds for it. Meanwhile someone like Wes Clark, who had no power to either continue or shut it down, who actually took steps while serving under Clinton to help clean up the program, keep getting all the blame for it. Wes Clark repeatedly and forcefully argues against the torture policies of Bush's regime. He stands up for the Geneva accords, and America's obligations under international law, all of which has been pointed out above.
I repeat, it would please me no end to have all those seeking to become President minimally make a statement like the one you quoted from Clark:
"If you find anything in that curriculum material or anything that's taught there that looks in any way remotely connected with human rights abuse or torture, you let me know, and I promise you, we'll close the School of the Americas when I'm president".
If Clark gets elected I will gladly join with you in holding him accountable to that statement.
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