After mentioning Luis Posada and the US’s double standard regarding terrorists that it has sponsored in the past, I came across a piece on Salon.com this morning entitled The coddled “terrorists” of South Florida about Alpha 66 which was a very interesting read. It included some rather telling passages as well…
“That’s sheer bullshit,” counters Wayne Smith, who was chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 to 1982, making him the de facto U.S. ambassador to Havana. Smith, who now runs the Cuba Program at the D.C.-based Center for International Policy, invokes the names of two of the most notorious Cuban exiles to argue that the U.S. does, in fact, play favorites. “We are certainly not applying these laws objectively in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and a whole lot of others who have been involved in terrorist activities. We say that countries must take action against terrorists, but we’re clearly not. And I think it’s because we’re sympathetic to their actions.”
In the case of Posada there are contradictions that are important to observe. The first is that he was trained by the United States. The second is that he was a CIA asset and worked on various agency-sponsored initiatives in Latin America, including operations in Nicaragua under Ollie North. These facts, given his activities, raise questions as to what the CIA knew of them, or was informed of by way of various organizations with known connections to the CIA, such as the Cuban American National Foundation.
That said; it should come as no surprise that since his illegal arrival in the United States, and following a brief incarceration and various legal proceedings, he is currently a free man.
One government’s revolutionary is another’s terrorist, and visa versa, making the hypocrisy of those that claim to be combating terrorism abroad all the more profound.
In Addition
Edited for purposes of content correction on January 16th at 12:10 AM PST.
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Nothing shines a brighter light on US hypocrisy than the Posada situation. The United States are collectively bankrupt… morally and otherwise.
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“One government’s revolutionary is another’s terrorist, and visa versa, making the hypocrisy of those that claim to be combating terrorism abroad all the more profound.”
that’s what i’ve always said and argued about this ‘war on terror’ bullcrap.
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Would Bush be considered a terrorist by your average Iraqi then?
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fleeter. i think so.
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Full disclosure. I am the public affairs officer at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which was created in public law in 2000, opening in 2001 as a replacement for the Army’s School of the Americas. The reason I answer questions about the school is that I am a retired Army officer, and the people who taught there were my peers.
The entry about Posada having been to the school is completely false. He was one of those people involved in the Bay of Pigs who was later commissioned in the US Army and was at Fort Benning in 1963-4 or thereabouts. The school was in Panama at that time.
Please don’t try what one correspondent did–he said that because Posada had been at Ft. Benning, and the school came to Ft. Benning, his claim that Posada attended the school was a ‘reasonable approximation of the truth.” Sorry, there is no ‘reasonable approximation of the truth.’
Having said that, you might want to look into the truth about the school and the institute. Note that not one person who ever attended has been accused of using what he learned there to commit a crime–not one. Mere association is not proof of anything.
Come see us for yourself. Getting into Fort Benning is as easy as showing a photo ID, and I’ll send you directions to our door.
Sincerely,
Lee Rials
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Honestly, while it may be true that “One government’s revolutionary is another’s terrorist”, it seems to me that when Bush says “war on terror”, its actually double speak for “war on radical Islam”, which has undoubtedly gained a certain amount of popularity around the world. If you look at it in this way, then the last 7 years makes quite a bit of sense.
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Quoting LeeRials:
I have corrected that; you are, in fact, right. It has been amended on my previous entry as well. That said, it does not mean that he did not attend the school in Panama, which was wholly US funded (under all three names). The US Lawyers Guild has gone on record stating that he did attend it. It may have been after the Bay of Pigs, as he remained a CIA asset until 1968, according to the CIA anyway, though very probably well beyond, and was all over Central America during those years, operating in Guatemala and so forth. Like many of his ilk, he delved into various nefarious areas linked to organized crime and drugs, which isn’t all that uncommon with regards to the CIA’s history in Latin America.
As for criminality. Over 60,000 military personnel were trained at the school. Are you suggesting that none of them were paramilitaries, that none of them took part in operations that resulted in the killing of civilians, political dissidents, clergy, or opposition groups? That they were not used by dictatorial regimes in training roles, or as assets in their own domestic intelligence services or secret police? That out of 60,000 graduates, not one of them has blood on their hands?
In 2003, after WHINSEC was instituted, did Colonel Cid Diaz attend the institute or not? The State Department, your State Department, has him on a list of gross human rights abusers. So please do explain that discrepancy to me.