Reply #36: Most of us have to learn history one bit at a time, as it sure as hell

[Judi Lynn]

doesn't get dealt with honestly during our public educations, does it?

I had no idea John Kerry was involved as prominently as he was in trying to relieve the suffering in Central America. That would make him even more an enemy of the rightwingers:

"You're not always measured by the things that you have a bill named after you for -- sometimes you're measured by stopping really bad things from happening, like when I stood up and helped stop Ronald Reagan's illegal war in Central America," Senator Kerry declared on a recent campaign stop in Wisconsin.

In 1986, John Kerry, then a freshman senator, was a persistent critic of the Reagan-Bush policies in Central America. Drawing parallels to his experience in Vietnam, Kerry called for an end to the contra war in Nicaragua and was a critic of U.S. policy in El Salvador. Kerry gained both admirers and enemies when he chaired the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, which reporters quickly dubbed the "Kerry committee." Kerry's investigation of the then-obscure Colonel Oliver North eventually helped to uncover the Iran Contra scandal. Kerry's supporters admired his maverick spirit and courage; conservatives attacked him for playing into the hands of communists in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

President George W. Bush recruited many Reagan/Bush-era veterans of the Central American wars to serve on his foreign policy team. Despite objections from Democrats in Congress, Bush's déjá vu appointments have included Eliot Abrams (who pled guilty to two counts of lying to Congress during the Iran Contra hearings), Richard Armitage, John Poindexter, Roger Noriega and Otto Reich. Most recently, John Negroponte was appointed ambassador to Iraq. Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras under George H.W. Bush and was criticized by human rights organizations for not doing enough to stem death squad activity there.

The relationship between today's President Bush and El Salvador's conservative ARENA party government is one of mutual gratitude. Consider it payback.
(snip/...)

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/elections/elsalvador/



In Aceituno, Rudy Betriz
brought his seven-year-
old son to see the graves
of his cousins. Betriz said
he believes he survived the
1981 massacre in his village
because he left early for
school that day.