El Salvador condemns attack on its troops in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

How do idiots like this end up running a county? Do they have Diebold in El Salvador too or something?

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04422511.htm

SAN SALVADOR, April 4 (Reuters) - El Salvador Defense Minister Juan Martinez on Sunday condemned what he called an "unjustified" attack on Salvadoran troops in Iraq which he said left one soldier dead and 12 wounded..

The violence in Kufa, near Najaf, began after protesting militiamen marched on a Spanish-run military base to denounce the arrest of an aide to a radical Shi'ite cleric and the closure by U.S. officials of a militant Baghdad newspaper.

"Personnel of the Cuscatlan Battalion were unjustly attacked by armed groups attempting to enter the encampment," Martinez told a press conference.

Martinez identified the dead Salvadoran soldier as Natividad Mendez, born in the western province of Ahuachapan. He said three other Salvadoran soldiers were injured on Friday while on patrol in Kufa.

more

[Mattforclark]

1. I guess they expected

that they could send soldiers into a warzone and not have them be attacked.

"Personnel of the Cuscatlan Battalion were unjustly attacked by armed groups attempting to enter the encampment," Martinez told a press conference.

Yeah, well war doesn't have much to do with justice.

[displacedtexan]

2. Huh?

That article makes El Salvador's Defense Minister sound learning impaired.

It's a war... begun by our pResident's illegal invasion of a sovereign nation. And El Salvador's government decided to join in.

Maybe we'll see another regime change soon.

[saigon68]

5. El Salvador's Defense Minister= clueless + witless

What business does El Salvador have in Iraq, by helping the corporate criminals?

If it was part of the U.N. mission to stop the War I would agree.

But to help a Thug Corporation Oil War----sorry

[Freddie Stubbs]

13. El Salvador just had an election

The ruling party won by a wide margin.

[brads]

15. Bush Admin Tainted Recent Salvadoran Election

It's true that the ultra-rightwing ARENA party won the Salvadoran presidential election on March 21 (ARENA has held power since 1989 and was known as the founders & leaders of the paramilitary death squads during El Salvador's civil war from 1980 - 1992). The question is why they won and who helped them. The answer is the Bush administration.

The left wing FMLN has been steadily gaining power since converting from a guerrilla movement to an electoral party in the 1992 peace accord that ended El Salvador's civil war.

The FMLN currently governs the capital city and the capital cities of almost all of El Salvador's 14 departments. They have governed most major cities for up to 7 years consecutively (some for almost 10 years). The FMLN is the largest party in the Legislative Assembly. They FMLN looked poised to win this year's presidential election. But then...the Bush administration sent high level officials and 'friends' down there during the months leading up to the election, and then ratcheted up their threats in the days before the election. They threatened to cut ties to El Salvador if the FMLN won, and they threatened to cut off money that Salvadorans in the US send to their families in El Salvador. They said this repeatedly and it was blared on the headlines in El Salvador every day before the election. Mind you, this is in a country where that money sent from Salvadorans in the US is the largest part of the economy and is the only thing keeping most people in El Salvador out of complete misery.

These threats, coming in the weeks after the Bush admin overthrew the Aristide gov't in Haiit, and in the midst of the ongoing BUsh attempt to overthrow Chavez in Venezuela, made it clear enough to Salvadoran voters that they weren't just voting for the party they like best. Because if that were the case the FMLN probably would have won (based on the fact that the majority keeps electing them to the mayors' offices and the Legislative Assembly). Instead the US turned the election into a referendum on whether people wanted to continue to get money from their families in the US or not; and whether people wanted to risk the US trying to subvert their economy and overthrow their government if the FMLN won. Coming just 12 years after a brutal US-sponsored civil war in which 75,000 people died and about 1 million fled the country, people were not ready to possibly return to US-sponsored civil chaos and counterinsurgency. The majority voted for ARENA this time, but I would contend that that is not because they support ARENA's rightist politics.

[Judi Lynn]

16. You're right on target. Bush's Reich and Noriega got very dirty, as usual.

(snip)
... U.S. regional policy makers—namely Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Roger Noriega and White House advisor Otto Reich—on a number of occasions, didn’t hesitate to express their alarm over the possibility of a FMLN victory, accompanied by barely veiled threats of retaliation if such an outcome would have come to pass.
(snip)

Otto Reich, the main architect of the skewed U.S. policy toward the region said, “We (the U.S. government) could not have the same confidence in an El Salvador led by a person who is obviously an admirer of Fidel Castro and of (Venezuelan president) Hugo Chávez.” Such outrageously interventionist language (the same that he also used regarding recent elections in Bolivia and Nicaragua) as well as similar comments by State Department and embassy officials throughout the region echoed mounting anxiety on Washington’s part over the rising tide of opposition to U.S. neo-liberal economic policies, especially its trade policies, and diplomacy. Consequently, Otto Reich has just been stood up by Paraguayan President Duarte on a trip to Asunción, after the Paraguayan leader had emphasized his country would not send troops to Iraq and that there were doubts whether Paraguay would use its seat in the UN Human Rights Commission to vote against Cuba.

Reich’s words, certainly had great meaning to the highly vulnerable 2 million-member Salvadoran community during Handal’s visit to the United States in September, 2003 when he was warned by those in his audience not to weaken U.S.-Salvadoran relations if he was elected. They feared deportation due to a potential termination of their temporary work permits. Obviously their concerns were shared with relatives back home. Although they cannot easily vote, the large Salvadoran diaspora in the U.S. remits more than $2 billion to their relatives in El Salvador.

Such ominous threats resonate with some of the more condemnable aspects of U.S. policy in the region over the years. Salvadorans are mindful of the 1990 Nicaraguan presidential election in which the U.S.-backed Violetta Chamorro won with the help of upwards of $17 million in U.S. funds. These contributions were covertly funneled through the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute, along with CIA and USAID channels, amidst threats that the proxy war against the Nicaraguan people by the U.S.-financed and armed Contras would be resumed if the Sandinistas were victorious at the polls. Salvadorans are wary of the enormous economic power the U.S. wields over them, if nothing else, than through remittances from family members residing in the U.S. and prospects of enhanced bilateral trade by billions of dollars.
(snip/...)

http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.16_El_Salvador_Elections.htm

It's GREAT to see your comments, brads. Welcome to DU! :hi: :hi: :hi:

[daleo]

3. Now they know what an invasion feels like

"Personnel of the Cuscatlan Battalion were unjustly attacked by armed groups attempting to enter the encampment."

[Judi Lynn]

4. "Do they have Diebold in El Salvador too or something?"

I'll bet they do. I read months ago they are going to be in Venezuela before the next election.

Here's why you might wonder even more:

El Salvador to remain U.S. ally, president-elect says
But Saca is noncommittal on Iraq troop deployment

Originally published March 25, 2004

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - President-elect Tony Saca has vowed to
continue his predecessor's brotherly relationship with the United States, but that might not assure that El Salvador remains in the Bush administration's military coalition in Iraq.

The token unit of 370 Salvadoran troops serving in the Middle East has become all the more important symbolically after Spain and Honduras said they probably would not renew their troop deployments in June. Nicaraguan troops pulled out last month.

Saca, candidate of the right-wing ruling party, was noncommittal in his first remarks about the Iraq troop issue after his victory Sunday, when he defeated a leftist who had promised to withdraw the troops immediately.

Analysts say Saca's stance reflects not only the intense public opposition to the deployments across the region but also logistical problems that have cropped up and frustrations that the payoff for committing troops has not been greater.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.hoot25mar25,0,65858.story?coll=bal-iraq-headlines

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So _Bush is paying every country he can to send its youths, and is willing to find a way to send wildly expensive mercenaries, and run up an astronomical bill for reworking support for Iraq as long as he can keep from hacking off the public by having to resort to the draft. Is that correct?

Unbearable.

Congrats to Volcano Jen for finding that timely "Mission Accomplished" photo. This is the perfect day to see it!

[DulceDecorum]

6. You gotta hand it to Falluja

They have just about every one of the bribed and the bullied members of the Coalition of the Billing wildly upset over their payback.

One town against the entire might of the US and its allies
and the town is NOT the one doing the screaming.
Bring it on?

[saigon68]

10. A Hot time in the Old Town Tonight

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/photo/2004/04/01/2003117893

[Aidoneus]

11. poor al-Fallujah.

they're out of the news now. Just when they had their moment in the sun, Sadr's people had to thrown into the spotlight.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. "Unjustly attacked"??? Excuse me, Juan, but your troops have...

...joined the U. S. in illegally invading and occupying another sovereign country. What did you expect, Juan...rose petals thrown at your troops' feet?

[Aidoneus]

8. that's what they get for "unjustly" assisting an unjust occupation

don't want them attacked, then don't act like a lackey to the invaders. Spanish & El Salvadoran occupation forces carried out this massacre, and they got off light for it. They have no idea what their actions have provoked.

[Crunchy Frog]

9. When is El Salvador going to express

the same level of remorse and outrage over the thousands of Salvadorans who were killed by death squads?

Are their lives less important than the life of one soldier who got killed in a war zone in a foreign country?

[NNN0LHI]

12. I think El Salvador would do well to get its own house in order

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/612925.stm

El Salvador mass grave found

Amnesty for war crimes by military was "needed for stability"

By Mike Lanchin in San Salvador

The authorities in El Salvador have uncovered the remains of 17 people, mostly young women, allegedly killed by the army nearly 20 years ago during the country's bloody civil war.

This is a first of a series of exhumations that human-rights groups in El Salvador have been pressing for.

It comes amid a renewed controversy over an amnesty law that proscribes prosecution of cases of human-rights abuses committed during the civil war.

In three days of digging in a clearing in dense woodland, officials have found pieces of bones, the odd tooth, bits of jewellery and rags of the clothing belonging to 17 different people.

None of the skeletons is complete, but from the clothing, investigators say that all but four are women, one of whom is said to have been pregnant.

more

[Judi Lynn]

14. So they have learned to bend the truth as well as Republican politicians

Grotesque info. from the article:

Identifying those responsible for these death, or for the 75,000 other killings estimated to have occurred during the fighting, would be a mammoth task and even then, an amnesty law passed at the end of the war proscribes such prosecutions.

Late in 1999, the inter-American human rights commission declared the law in contravention of international legislation, but the Salvadorian government has refused to heed the decision, arguing that an amnesty was necessary for post-war stability.
(snip/)

I'm so glad you and Crunchy Frog saw behind the posturing!

Here's a little something additional which throws some light on the strangeness of it all:

Anyone who thinks that former President Ronald Reagan deserves to be put on a dime or have his face chiseled into Mt. Rushmore needs to read a book called Lost History by Robert Parry. Robert Parry was an AP and subsequent Newsweek reporter who caught a considerable amount of flak from his editors and Reagan officials like Oliver North and Elliott Abrams for his efforts to tell the truth about Reagan's policies in Central America.

Robert Parry was far from the only reporter to suffer this fate. Raymond Bonner of the New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of the Washington Post received enormous criticism for their coverage of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador in 1982. They were accused of lying or at least greatly exaggerating the extent of the atrocities at El Mozote, where over 900 men, women and children were slaughtered by the US-trained Atlacatl battalion. Many years later, when US goals in defeating the insurgency in El Salvador had been accomplished, forensic scientists dug up the bones at El Mozote, noticing the skeletons of men, women and children and the bullet holes in the skulls and machete marks on the bones. Raymond Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto had been right all along. Only this new information was buried on the back pages of newspapers and ignored by the television networks, so few people would notice.

A similar thing happened when Reagan first took office in 1981. Four American churchwomen had been raped and murdered by the military in El Salvador. Reagan's ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick excused the murders by saying that the nuns had been political activists involved in leftist causes and insinuating that this justified their fate. Reagan's first Secretary of State Alexander Haig went even further, suggesting that the nuns had been carrying guns and may have run a roadblock, leading to an exchange of gunfire. Nuns packing heat-certainly not a very likely scenario.

Reagan knew on coming into office that his administration was going to wage an unrelenting war against leftists all over the planet. After all, he considered them to be part of the "Evil Empire." I guess those people who want to redistribute land to poor, starving peasants so they can grow food or want unions so people don't need to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for wages that wouldn't keep a bird alive are by definition evil devils that require elimination. The Reagan administration wanted to limit public knowledge of the more unsavory aspects of this war against leftists. They even had a euphemism for it - perception management. When the North Koreans did it, it was called brainwashing. Of course, when done by the United States, it is known as perception management. Just like napalming Vietnamese villages was called "pacification" and now the terminology for civilian casualties from US bombing is "collateral damage." The Nazis called their mass slaughter of the Polish intelligentsia "Extraordinary Pacification Action" or shooting people on the spot as being "summarily sentenced." It seems that fascists love euphemisms to disguise their atrocities.
(snip)

http://www.ntimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=324&topic=miscellaneous

[Judi Lynn]

17. El Salvadorian politicians could have spent more time thinking

about the well-being of their countrymen, and less about trying to
get close to our ignorant, self-centered power grabbing idiots in Washington.


El Salvador conflict failed to end poverty
Years after civil war, quality of life is dismal for many, prompting talk of new unrest.


By Richard Boudreaux
Los Angeles Times
March 28, 2004

(snip)...... But while the peace treaty made it possible for Cold War enemies to share political power in a tiny, crowded Central American nation, after a war that cost 75,000 lives, it has failed to relieve the extreme rural poverty that helped generate the conflict.

El Salvador's Jesuit-run Central American University says more than 3 million of the country's 6.5 million people cannot afford a basic diet.

According to the university study, the richest 20 percent of the population controls 58.3 percent of the wealth; the poorest 20 percent has only 2.4 percent. The gap has widened since the war, the study says.

"We chose to end the war because our people were tired of suffering, but I would say that now, 12 years later, the causes for a war still exist," said Manuel Ortega, a 39-year-old community leader here. "If things do not get better for our children, we might have to prepare them for a new one."
(snip/...)

http://www.indystar.com/articles/8/133197-3248-010.html