Close the "School of Assassins" at Fort Benning Ge

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OK people, we need to take a little action here. (Five minutes tops.)

For the past few months, the School of the Americas Watch has had an online petition asking President-elect Barack Obama to sign an Executive Order to close the School of the Americas as soon as he gets into office. This is the year it can be done! But, although Father Roy’s annual SOA Watch march on Fort Benning draws several thousand people each year, this nationwide petition is languishing at under 7,000 signatures. There isn’t much time left to get the number of signatures to an impressive level before our President-elect becomes our President-in fact.

If each of you would take a couple of minutes and go to www.soaw.org and sign the petition, we could boost the number of signatures to well over 7,000. (Scroll down the homepage until you see the little portrait of Barack next to “Close the SOA” ) And it would help if you forwarded this message to your friends and relatives throughout the US. (If you’ve already signed a paper version of the petition, you can still forward this message to others.)

You do not need to be a citizen of the US to sign this petition. Unlike George Bush, Barack Obama listens to the rest of the world. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Let’s CLOSE THE SOA!!

And the SOA/ Fort Benning is what exactly?

edit: Post google... SOA trains foreigners in American military style, and that makes it a School For Assassins? Does that not mean that ALL American military officers are trained to be cruel murdering bastards with no respect for human rights, as they have the same training too?

On-line petitions are not worth the paper they're printed on.

I'll pass.

The SOA started out as a US military training facility in Panama where officers from Latin American countries would be trained in how to do counter-insurgency work. That means officers from Venezuala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, etc. would learn the best techniques on how to put down populist uprisings -- the tools on how to prevent democracy from happening. Many of the graduates from the SOA were implicated in terrible human rights abuses in their own countries. The military officers who organized the death squads in El Salvador were graduates of the SOA. Four Maryknoll nuns from the US who were working with the poor in El Salvador were raped and murdered by SOA graduates. (Social activists, journalists, and labor organizers are prime targets of SOA gradnuates) Some of the SOA classes were/are taught by CIA, and the curriculum includes classes on how to torture people. (This was proven when some peace activists got ahold of some SOA training manuals in Honduras.)

When US occupied Panama was turned back over to the Panamanian people, the SOA was moved to Ft. Benning in Georgia. That means the officers from Bolivia, Colombia, etc. come to the US to learn how to keep their own people from demanding social justice. While they are in the US, these foreign military officers are treated to outings to Disneyworld and sports games, at the expense of the US taxpayers. The real purpose of the SOA has always been to make Latin American countries safe for exploitation by large US corporations. For more information, you can visit the soaw.org website. There are also videos and reading material available about the School of the Americas. (we call it the School of Assassins)

www.soaw.org

Explore the site. Read, and learn.

Use the drop-down menu under "About SOA/WHINSEC" and click on "background" for starters.

Sorry Hon, I don't think they'd let me do that. When Father Roy tried to "visit" the SOA he
was arrested and put in prison. Every year hundreds of protestors get arrested just for
walking onto the place.

And how do you consider reports from numerous countries and agencies to be "one-sided" ?

Now the SOA view of things would be one-sided (the Pentagon's side.)

Done!

Thank you Veladoq!

Ask yourself, why does the US taxpayer have to pay to have our government
train military people from other countries, so the governments of those countries can
keep their own people from gaining equality?