Free Republic

FORT HUACHUCA — The defense of the United States is going to require highly trained military intelligence professions, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Friday. Preparing critical intelligence providers is being done on this Southern Arizona post, said U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., who assumed the chairmanship of the committee in January. Having an intelligence force that is the best will ensure the United States can counter any future enemy, he said. “It’s going to be the intelligence world that makes the difference,” he said after spending an afternoon on the post. It was Skelton’s first trip...

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), then based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, vigorously lobbied for Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, the Cuban-style Marxist regime that shot its way to power in 1979. Today, WOLA pretends it is concerned about the rule of law in Honduras after the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court supported removing the leftist president for defying its constitution. WOLA and Jim Wallis' publication Sojourners have teamed up to spin Honduras' defense of its democracy as another example of a U.S.-supported, imperialist military coup. The constitutional coup in Honduras was...

Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos was a decorated, American-trained officer in the Salvadoran army. But for the last year, the 43-year-old toiled as a janitor at a West Los Angeles-area motel, a man with a secret who was always looking over his shoulder, his girlfriend said. His clandestine existence came to an end Wednesday, when federal authorities announced that they had arrested him as an illegal immigrant who was a human rights violator. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Guevara Cerritos was one of nine Salvadoran officers and soldiers implicated in one of the most notorious massacres in El Salvador's history:...

<p>Kate Stanley's Feb. 2 Op Ex column, "Will it be prison for young woman of conviction?" inspired my sympathy for Anika Walz, but not for the reasons Stanley suggests. Walz, a student at the College of St. Catherine, faced a judge because she believed and acted on misinformation, misinformation of the type Stanley purveys in her article. Stanley asserts that the assassins of Archbishop Oscar Romero "learned their trade" at the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation).</p>

Kathy Kelly was arrested at Senator Richard Durbin’s office in Chicago, on April 5, along with three other anti-war activists.  The Senate Appropriations Committee is to consider a spending bill on April 6 to provide nearly $80 billion more to fund the war in Iraq.  They sought a pledge from Senator Durbin to vote against the bill. Kelly was informed that that Senator Durbin will vote for the supplemental spending bill.  Kelly and her group then disrupted the operations of the senator's office by reading the names of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives in...

Blacksburg social activists listed as missing following suspected arson The fire's cause had not yet been determined in what police are calling "a very vague crime scene." By Shay Barnhart 981-3665 The New River Valley Current PEARISBURG - Giles County sheriff's investigators are looking for two Blacksburg social activists who haven't been seen since Thursday morning, when a cabin in Newport that was home to one of them was destroyed by fire. Sue Daniels, 44, who lived in the cabin, and her friend, Niklan Jones-Lezama, 40, have been listed in a national database of missing people, said Lt. Willie Lucas...

The pilgrimage of the human zoo came to the front gates of Fort Benning this weekend just as it does every November. Thousands protest against the training of Latin American officers and NCOs at Fort Benning's Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This year we had a God Bless Fort Benning Day counter demonstration that virtually matched the size of the protest. We had Lee Greenwood headline the bill. Columbus Georgia's Jack and Miriam Tidwell were the chief organizers of the effort. We also have a Friends of WHINSEC group which counter punches the propaganda of the Left. Today as...

ATLANTA (AP) -- Fears of a terrorist attack are not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled, saying Sept. 11 "cannot be the day liberty perished." The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday that protesters may not be required to pass through metal detectors when they gather next month for a rally against a U.S. training academy for Latin American soldiers. Authorities began using the metal detectors at the annual School of the Americas protest after the 2001 terrorist attacks, but the court found that practice to be unconstitutional....

Venezuela Ceases All Training of Soldiers at the School of the Americas 3/1/04 1:14:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk Contact: Father Roy Bourgeois of School of the Americas Watch, 706-682-5369 WASHINGTON, March 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Venezuelan government has announced that it is going to cease all training of Venezuelan soldiers at the School of the Americas (now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), the controversial US military combat training school for Latin American soldiers, based in Fort Benning, Georgia. The official announcement was made by Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel in an address...

<p>WASHINGTON - In a position that's likely to alienate some Democratic primary voters, retired Gen. Wesley Clark is a big booster of the controversial "School of the Americas" - which critics charge has history of graduating Latin American soldiers accused of rape, murder and torture.</p>