Face it, you and your ilk would rather rationalize torturing, fighting, and killing our "enemies"; than to admit that we created this problem, that we have the tools to fix it, and yet we refuse to be the better people and reach out to end this nonsense. You just cling to the myth that "they hate us for our freedoms." No, they hate us because of people like YOU.

I politely disagree with your assertions as they are emotion based opinions rather than facts. America did not create 'a problem'. Hostile terrorists existed long before the US was settled. The US is not a worse people for trying to defeat terrorists. That is an value based opinion subject to debate. And terrorists hate anyone/anything that is convenient to thier cause du'jour. Pinning that sort of moving target onto ideas you disagree with politically is spurious.

As far as 'reaching out' being the solution to 'the problem'? In a remarkably short period of time, Barak Obama has very effectively proven that reaching out is an incredibly ineffective tactic. Reaching out efforts from Barak Obama have been rejected by France, Germany, England, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuala, Nicaragua, Hamas, Al Quieda, and Somali pirates. Why should I ascribe to the notion that 'reaching out' is going to decrease hostility when all factual examples contradict that concept? For example, Clinton 'reached out' to terrorists and a fat lot of good it did him in Mogudishu.

Mr. Reich never was charged with any crime...the line about convictions does need to go under poindexter.. but hey, if I say it enough it will become true anyway, right.. but I'm ok with just this info:

From 1983 to 1986, Reich established and managed the inter-agency Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean. He was accused by Congress of engaging in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" in his efforts to promote the Reagan administration's policies toward Nicaragua.

The OPD declassified Central Intelligence Agency information and disseminated it to influence public opinion and spur Congress to continue to fund the Reagan's administration's campaign against Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

The OPD was highly controversial and was criticized by numerous government sources, including a staff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which characterized it as a domestic political and propaganda operation.

The OPD also violated “a restriction on the State Department’s annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress.”

He also helped terrorist Orlando Bosch gain entry into the U.S. after being imprisoned in Venezuela for bombing a Cuban airliner, killing its 73 passengers. Bosch spent time in a U.S. prison for attacking a Polish merchant vessel bound for Cuba. Thirty countries have refused Bosch asylum because of his criminality.



You saw the part of : "Abrams was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush " .. not too shabby a deal. then his son could hire him!

and re: Poindexter "The convictions were reversed in 1991 on technical grounds ". which means what it says... technicality, not that he wasnt actually a scumbag liar.

So, go ahead and apologize for these liars. I'm sure they can't get enough republican hugs and free jobs.

http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/Central_America/Iran-Contra_Felons_Get_Good_Jobs_from_Bush

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/11-bush-appoints-former-criminals-to-key-government-roles/

http://www.libertyforlife.com/eye-openers/iran-contra-us-criminals.htm

Now, remember, my mistake immediately means GWBUSH never appointed any criminals. That's logical. I guess not getting caught = good behavior in your book, too...

Countries in North America = 23:

Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Clipperton Island, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Navassa Island, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States, U.S. Virgin Islands


Leave Sarah Palin alone! She's my hero.

Well, I lived in Maine, which is right next to Canada and on the east coast. So I'm an expert in Relations with Canada, England Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland, Greenland, Finland, Italy, Greece, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Cuba, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and OH, what do you know? Russia is on the Atlantic too, so count that one in there. Then add Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra-Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Guyana, Suriname, Guyane, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize.

And that's just the Northern Atlantic.

Well, and Of course I was in Japan, Korea, Iraq and Kuwait, so add those and all surrounding countries.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to use my new-found skills to disssolve the DMZ and instill peace in the Koreas, Stop the mini wars in Africa, get the Columbian government to stop all drug trafficking into the U.S., convince Israel to calm down, get the Kurds, Sunnis and shiites to stop fighting and work together, Convince Iraq, Saudia Arabia and Kuwait to give half their oil to the U.S. for free, and Iran to stop all the "naughty business" with nuclear research.

You would think after all that, and with all my foreign relations skills I could convince MINK to stop being a douche. Well, I'm not God, you know.

It'll be a busy day.

Most of what Wright said at the press club was right. The wrong parts were all the stuff about God, the presumption that the attack on him had anything to do with an attack on the black church as a whole, and the lowbrow delivery.

Most of what Wright is being attacked for is just saying the same things about foreign policy that Ron Paul and retired generals have been saying all along -- that muslim hatred of the USA is blowback from US foreign policy of the past (such as the CIA-backed coups in Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, etc., and uncritical US support of Israel's land grab).

^deedub:

The American government is like any other government in the world: it acts in its own self interest. The US is in Iraq to establish an American friendly regieme, gain a secure source of oil and a stronger presence in the middle east. It was a sound (at the time) long term strategic decision that even the dems backed.

Just like in Vietnam, just like in Nicaragua, just like in Iran, it was NEVER about what THEY wanted; It was always about WE wanted. It doesn't matter if US backed regiemes were tyrants that murdered their own citizens, it's cool as long as they're American-friendly.

Yes the US does many great things for the world, but those are peanuts compared to what it can do. If the US was actually in it for the altruism, it'd be liberating North Korea and sending troops to Darfur.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'mccain, reagan, iran contra, iran, nicaragua, terrorism, american terrorism' to 'mccain, reagan, iran contra, iran, nicaragua, terrorism, american terrorism, jed report' - edited by kronosposeidon

Clam down MG, Eklek is from Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada (French-speaking), Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Faroes, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, or Vietnam, so it's okay for him/her to use this convention.

I asked the internet.

Iran (from History Channel, found on yt):
part 1
part 2

Iran (Democracy Now, found on yt):
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4

History Channel account of Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988)
_____

Country: Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire 1971-1997)
Overthown: Patrice Lumumba
What happend to him: kidnapped and killed January 17, 1961
Who was put in charge: eventualy Joseph Mobutu aka Mobutu Sese Seko
For how long: November 24, 1965 – May 16, 1997
And what happend to him: overthrown, fled to Togo, died in exile in Morroco same year
And the man who took over: Laurent-Désiré Kabila
Video


Some other historical events CIA had its dirty hands in:

Laos 1962

Indonesia 1965

Bolivia 1967

Afghanistan 1979

Nicaragua 1981

Panama 1989, part 1

Panama 1989, part 2

^HOLD IT! why would a conservative group attack Ron Paul :-) lol. sheesh, who won't they attack?

I think you overstate your case. I look into the validity of the claims being leveled before I see who it's coming from. Does who it comes from make a difference? yea, sometimes it does, but the truthfulness and validity of the claims should come first.

With statements like this from Rumsfeld I can see how you would be fooled into believing the WMD lies.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

SEC. RUMSFELD: …We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat....I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don't know that. But it's way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting. (why hasn't this been sifted?)

Bush Administration Caught Contradicting Itself on WMD's
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bush-Administration-Caught-Contradicting-Itself-on-WMDs

Closed Room Plans Reveal Attempt to Dupe Public
http://www.videosift.com/video/Olbermann-Closed-Room-Plans-Reveal-Attempt-to-Dupe-Public

Interesting how each of the Intelligence Committee members voted, considering what Sen. Durbin claims they knew:(thanks FLETCH)

http://intelligence.senate.gov/members107thcongress.html
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00237

I personally could see why you would take Rumsfeld at his word about Iraq's WMD's with this knowledge of history (too bad the wmd ingredients we supplied them had such a short shelf life, or perhaps we would have found them in iraq)

Donald Rumsfeld -Reagan’s Envoy- provided Iraq with chemical & biological weapons December 20, 1983.

July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops.

January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of “dual-use” export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application.

March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq’s use of these weapons.

May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax.

May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq.

March, 1987. President Reagan bows to the findings of the Tower Commission admitting the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Oliver North uses the profits from the sale to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.

Late 1987. The Iraqi Air Force begins using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq.

February, 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the “Anfal” campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages.

April, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas.

August, 1988. 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas.

September, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq.

September, 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: “The US-Iraqi relationship is… important to our long-term political and economic objectives.”

December, 1988. Dow chemical sells $1.5 million in pesticides to Iraq despite knowledge that these would be used in chemical weapons.

also kinda newsworthy this clips is.

The USA just appointed an interesting choice as ambassador to Nicaragua.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stephen_kinzer/2008/01/contratemps.html

here are some items that you may have overlooked in the article about thimerisol.(that have nothing to do with wakefields paper)

1.) In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

2.) Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours."

3.) During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison."

4.) In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants.

5.) The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."

6.) Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 99 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

7.) Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.

But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.

9.) In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"

10.) the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines.

There is nothing wrong with a little long term thinking Gunrock. Some of our previous efforts in 'regional stability' have resulted in the rise of Saddam and Osama and the deaths of many hundreds of thousands (probably a whole lot more) innocent civilians.

Short term goals are important, but without long term thinking, you get the disastrous FP of Reagan and Bush. (Google Reagan's relationship with Osama and Saddam for anyone in the dark on this.)

As an aside, Republicans are allowed to support world peace too you know. Just because the lefties say potato doesn't mean you have to say paTAHto (or would that be potatoe?).

Faux News has tried to label the left anti-war, but the reality of the matter is that most of us are merely anti-short-sighted-poorly-planned-war.

Revolutionary war? Sure. Civil? Had to do it. WW2? Natch. Vietnam? bzzzt. Nicaragua? No dead nuns for me thank you. Iraq? Not so much. Iran? It couldn't get much more short-sighted-poorly-planned than that.

pax

From Six Questions for Greg Grandin on Che’s Legacy:

Forty years ago this month, Che Guevara was captured and executed as he tried to lead a guerilla insurrection deep in the Bolivian jungle. Despite questions about his sometimes violent tactics and effectiveness as a revolutionary leader, Che remains an iconic symbol—even though he’s now been dead longer than he was alive. Che’s popularity in this country might stem more from how he looks on album covers and T-shirts than from his ideas or actions, but in Latin America, Che is remembered for his willingness to stand up to the United States. Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, is the author of several books on American influence in Latin America, most recently last year’s Empire’s Workshop.

1. How is Che currently viewed in Latin America and how different is his image there than it is here?
There are those in the U.S. who see Che as a generic symbol of rebellion against power and some who even think seriously about his political legacy, but he is more readily available as a pop and commercial icon. His image has been co-opted, following in the tradition of Warhol’s silk-screened Mao. In Latin America, some of this banalization exists, but the popularity and understanding of Che goes well beyond that. I was living in Guatemala a decade ago when peace accords ended that country’s 36-year civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died. Suddenly Che’s image was everywhere. One street vendor told me that during the first three months after the war ended she sold more images of Che than she did of pop stars or the Virgin Mary. So Che–who was no fan of free speech–became a symbol of exactly that in a country long repressed. Throughout the region, Che remains a multifaceted symbol of reform, embodying anything from anti-imperialist resistance to revolutionary purity. And of course it doesn’t hurt that he is so good looking—I.F. Stone said that he was the first man he had ever met who he thought not just handsome but beautiful. In recent years, a number of admirers have been elected leaders of a number of countries: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner all have embraced Che. Even more cautious reformers like Brazil’s Lula feel compelled to pay homage to his legacy.

2. How has his image evolved over the last four decades in Latin America?
His popularity has increased since his death. When he was alive, the Cuban Revolution, of which he was one of the most visible spokesmen, represented a divide between Latin America’s old, reformist, Communist Party Left, and a new, insurgent left. Today, those debates are largely the stuff of history and his appeal is practically universal save among the most hidebound. Look at Bolivia to get a sense of just how much his reputation has evolved–it was there, in the remote village called La Higuera, that Bolivian forces, aided by CIA agents, executed Che. His Bolivian expedition was a complete failure and his capture had much to do with the fact that he didn’t receive much support from either the Bolivian Communist Party nor from peasants. But today Che’s image is everywhere in Bolivia and he is particularly esteemed by that country’s powerful peasant and indigenous movement. President Morales is reported to keep a picture of him in his wallet and just last year, upon winning the presidency, he participated in an unofficial inauguration, where he claimed Che as a patron saint of indigenous rights, saying, “The struggle that Che Guevara left uncompleted, we shall complete.”

3. What do you say to those who object to this canonization of Che, claiming that he’s nothing more than a totalitarian murderer?
I’d say tell it to the millions of Latin Americans, many of them at the margins of society, fighting for a just, truly democratic world, who still find inspiration in his struggle and image. To them, there is no confusion. Do our political commissars, always on the hunt for any whiff of residual sympathy for the militant New Left, really want to dismiss those people out of hand as irrelevant or misguided? Over the last two decades, social movements inspired by Che have fought against free-market orthodoxy. Those movements are bearers of the social-democratic tradition and are seeking to advance democracy.

4. The vision Che had for Cuba and the Third World in general did not develop. How does that effect his legacy?
You could argue that the failure of the Cuban model has actually benefited Che’s legacy, which has evolved from the specific political project he was associated with. Forty years ago. Che died trying to export the armed tactics of the Cuban Revolution elsewhere. There were many reasons why the Left by that time had embraced violent insurrection as a strategy, not the least of which was the refusal of the region’s elites, fortified with support from Washington, to give up even the slightest of its privileges. Since then, the Latin American Left has evolved. Today it is profoundly peaceful and democratic, despite having adopted an icon of insurrection as its talisman.

5. What are some of the common misperceptions about Che in the United States?
My guess is that the American public knows very little about Che. If they saw the movie Motorcycle Diaries, they may have learned that he was Argentine, not Cuban. But few know that just after that tour around Latin America, where he first began to develop a pan-American consciousness, he wound up in Guatemala, a country that at the time was undergoing a profound democratic revolution. Che practiced social medicine in the country’s rural highlands, ministering to the country’s most marginal. He was in Guatemala during the CIA’s 1954 coup that ended that country’s democracy, and he saw firsthand the U.S. role in restoring a regime that would go on to kill hundreds of thousands of its citizens. He always cited his experience in Guatemala as a turning point. Prior to the coup, the Latin American left, including Communist groups, still believed it was possible to work with a country’s national bourgeois to achieve social democratic reform. Afterwards, it was increasingly difficult to do so. Che himself would go on to taunt the United States, saying “Cuba will not be another Guatemala” to justify the restrictions of civil liberties in Cuba, since it was through the subversion of the press, the Church, and independent political parties that the CIA did its work in Guatemala, and subsequently elsewhere.

6. How have American policies in Latin America following Che’s death impacted his image in the region?
Che was executed in 1967, and some of the worst interventions by Washington in Latin America were still to come. Most people are aware of the CIA’s involvement in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and Reagan’s wars in Central America in the 1980s. Less known is U.S. involvement in, or at least sanctioning of, coups in Uruguay in 1973 and Argentina in 1976. Following the demise of the Soviet Union, Washington moved away from its reliance on repressive Latin American proxies, banking instead on its ability to project its power through elections and economic pressure. This worked throughout the 1990s, as heavily indebted countries governed by centrists submitted to the command of the IMF. Over the past few years, roughly since Chávez’s landslide victory in 1998, the system has started to break down. The “Washington consensus,” as this set of policies came to be called, proved an absolute disaster. Between 1980 and 2000, in per capita terms, the region grew cumulatively by only 9 per cent. Compare that with the 82 per cent expansion of the previous two decades, and add to it the financial crises that have rolled across Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina over the past 15 years, sweeping away accumulated savings, destroying the middle class, and wrecking the agricultural sector, and you will get a sense of why Evo Morales is calling for the completion of Che’s struggle.

-- continued.

One year after the US-instigated coup, President Gerald Ford - in the oval office thanks to some domestic White House "black ops" that garnered unfavorable attention in the imperial homeland (Watergate) - claimed that US actions in installing Pinochet were "in the best interests of the people of Chile and certainly in our own best interests."


Historical Connections

Twenty-eight years to the day after Chile's 9/11, the world witnessed a different, more spectacular form of unimaginable violence, broadcast live on national TV, with different ideological and geo-political parameters. The culprits were almost certainly based in the extremist Islamic terror networks of the Middle East.

There are some interesting, dark connections, however, between these two Nine-Elevens. The US policy of deterring democracy and social justice in the perceived interest of US multinational corporations and world capitalism was hardly restricted to Chile and the official Cold War era (1945-1991). In pursuit of the same basic goals that informed the US/Pinochet coup, the US has supported and in some cases conducted anti-democratic coups against excessively (from a US perspective) "left" governments (any state that proposed to encourage development of its sovereign territory in significant autonomy from the US-dominated world capitalist economic system) in Syria (1949), Iran (1953), Iraq (1963), Indonesia (1965), and Greece (1967). It provided massive economic and military assistance to authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes that suppressed democratic and left opposition and kept their domestic economies open to foreign and especially US corporate penetration and domination. It armed Israel, waged war and enforced a deadly, decade-long sanctions campaign against Iraq, stationed troops indefinitely in the Islamic Holy Land, and provided cover for Israel's prolonged, racist annexation of Palestinian territory. The US funded the Arab far-right, supporting arch-reactionary Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden, valued as weapons in the same Cold War that provided cover for the US campaign to crush national self-determination, democracy, and social justice in places like Iran, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Chile.

By largely eliminating the left, undercutting democracy, and generally subjecting regional developments to imperial fiat both during and after the official Cold War, the US shrunk the available space for "normal" (Western-style/parliamentary) airing of social, political and related international grievances in the Middle East. This, in turn, brought "blowback" (an internal CIA term for the unintended consequences of secret US foreign policies) from America's imperial periphery to the skies and streets of New York City and Washington DC, where Pinochet's henchmen (part of a CIA-sponsored team of international assassins code-named "Operation Condor") killed a former Allende supporter and his American driver (Olando Letelier and Randy Moffit) in 1976. How darkly appropriate, then, that George W. Bush attempted to put Kissinger, a leading perpetrator in the state-terrorist events of 9/11/73, at the head of a federal commission to investigate US security lapses prior to 9/11/2001, which opened the door for new levels of US and US-sponsored state terrorism.


Worthy and Unworthy 9/11s

Of course, only a tiny percentage of the US population knows about Chile's 9/11, for reasons that go beyond obvious gaps of time, geography, and language. A relevant explanatory text here is the second chapter, titled "Worthy and Unworthy Victims," of Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of The Mass Media (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1988), published as the Cold War was nearing its partial conclusion with the collapse of the Soviet deterrent (itself part of the context for 9/11/2001) to American global ambitions. "A propaganda system," the authors noted, "will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy." Identified with the official US Cold War "enemy" force of socialism or Marxism - really social egalitarianism and national self-determination (still the basic adversaries of US policy in the "post-Cold-War era") - Pinochet's victims have only recently attained a small measure of historical worthiness in dominant US corporate-state media. This slight retrospective legitimacy comes far too long after the terrible facts. It is no match for the worthiness bestowed on the most officially precious victims in US History: the Americans who died on the only 9/11 that matters in a nation that drifts through history in a dangerous fog of selective, top-down remembrance.


Paul Street (pstreet@cul-chicago.org) will speak on "State-Run Media" on Friday, September 26, 2003 at a conference titled "Is Our Media Serving Us?" at Columbia College, Hokin Annex, 623 S. Wabash, Chicago, IL, 12:45 PM.


Appendix: Selected Sources on US Involvement in 9/11/73 and Related Developments in Chile

US Senate, Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1975); United States Congress, Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 94th Congress, 1st Session, November 10, 1975 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1975); William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History (London: Zed, 1986), pp. 232-243; Seymour M. Hersh, "The Price of Power: Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile," Atlantic Monthly, 250 (1982), no. 6, 21-58; Poul Jensen, The Garotte: The United States and Chile, 1970-73 (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1988); Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (New York, NY: Verso, 2001), pp. 55-76; "Why Is the U.S. Mum About Pinochet?," CNN.com (November 25, 1998), available online at http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9 811/25/pinochet.us/; National Security Archives, The Chile Documentation Project (2000-2001), available online at http://www.gwu.edu/~ nsarchiv/latin_america/chile.htm.