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.
All in Latin America have ample experience with US terrorist tactics. In South America alone 90,000 people disappeared as a direct result of the operation of the School of the Americas and US "counterinsurgency" policies (30 times more than the victims of the World Trade Center).
It is estimated that the 64,000 Latin American troops trained at SOA since the 1960's have been involved in around 75,000 murders in El Salvador, 200,000 in Guatemala, and thousands more in other violence-torn countries such as Columbia.
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 the armed forces within several Latin American countries ruled or had disproportionate government influence and committed serious human rights violations in those countries."
And the next question... what is 'the second 9/11'? (Ours was not the first of dramatic importance.)
U.S. terrorism is far worse because we are a powerful state. Take what happened on 9/11, it was a serious terrorist act. In Latin America, they often call it 'the second 9/11'... because there was another one, namely September 11th, 1973 (the original 9/11... giving rise to increased hatred of the U.S. for it's role in the incident).
"Suppose that al Qaeda had not just blown up the World Trade Center, but suppose they’d bombed the White House, killed the president, established a military dictatorship, killed maybe fifty to a hundred thousand people, tortured seven hundred thousand, instituted a major international terrorist center in Washington, which was overthrowing governments around the world and installing malicious dictatorships, assassinating people, and brought in a bunch of economists who drove the economy into its' worst disaster maybe in history. Well, that would be worse than what we call 9/11... and it did happen... namely on 9/11/1973."
Remembering September 11 1973
Were the lives of those killed at the World Trade Center more valuable than the innocents murdered in Chile's U.S. backed coup.
SOA and WHINSEC graduates continue to surface in news reports regarding both current human rights cases and new reports.
Journalist and documentarian John Pilger focuses on the role played by the U.S. in promoting Latin American democracy, suggesting American leaders have often favored oppressive regimes over more democratic alternatives. Pilger, in his film 'The War On Democracy,' outlines the last five decades of political manipulation by the CIA and other U.S. agencies, focusing in particular on recent efforts to unseat the populist Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
It flies in the face of the false realities being promulgated by media and powers with vested interests in the area. This is an important film you really should take the time to watch to better understand the continuing international policies of the American government throughout the world, and their effect on how the world population views the interventionist role of our government. It's truly a 'must see' film.
SOA Watch: Close the School of the Americas
