South and Central America?
See the School of the Americas....the name changed by the Bush admin to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation because of the notorious reputation of the SOA.
The only thing that could be said is that support for this "school" by US presidents has been bi-partisan since its inception.
Quote:
The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC or WHINSEC), formerly the School of the Americas (SOA; Spanish: Escuela de las Américas) is a United States Department of Defense facility at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia in the United States.
Between 1946 and 2001, the SOA trained more than 61,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Some of them became notorious for human rights violations, including generals Leopoldo Galtieri, Rios Montt and Manuel Noriega, dictators such as Bolivia's Hugo Banzer, as well as some of Augusto Pinochet's officers. The terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was educated there in 1961, although he never graduated. Critics of the school argue that the education encouraged such practices and that this continues in the WHINSEC. This is denied by the WHINSEC and its supporters who argue that the alleged connection is weak. According to the WHINSEC, the education now emphasizes democracy and human rights.....
According to the Center for International Policy, "The School of the Americas had been questioned for years, as it trained many military personnel before and during the years of the "national security doctrine" -- the dirty war years in the Southern Cone and the civil war years in Central America -- in which Latin American militaries ruled or had disproportionate government influence and committed serious human rights violations. Training manuals used at the SOA and elsewhere from the early 1980s through 1991 promoted techniques that violated human rights and democratic standards. (that would be the Reagan years) SOA and WHINSEC graduates continue to surface in news reports regarding both current human rights cases and new reports."
Defenders argue that today the curriculum includes human rights as described above. They also argue that no school should be held accountable for the actions of only some of its graduates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Americas
|