Ah yes, back in the 80s politics alienated me from two dear friends.
They were both supporters of that champion of goodness and light, ol'
666 himself, Ronald Wilson Reagan (though like that guy in Batman
Begins, it turns out he wasn't really the devil, he was just
practice).
From Nixon to Reagan to Bush, like a triple play threat from the
pit.... each worse than the last.
I wish I had turned out for the protests against North. It's
encouraging that there were some, in a place like Wenatchee - maybe
there's hope.
30,000 civilians killed by the contras ("The moral equivalent of our
founding fathers" - it was Ronald Reagan that was holding Washington
Jefferson, et all in such low esteem, not me. Though I suspect some
Native Americans might be inclined to agree).. That's almost as bad
as what Frederick Wortham did to the youth of America. I had to grow
up without comic books that had images of torture and dismemberment.
Oh, the humanity!
December 16, 2005
Why I Didn't Salute...
When Ollie North Came to Hot Springs
By JOHN BOMAR
"They took out their knives and stuck them under his fingernails.
After they took his fingernails off, then they broke his elbows.
Afterwards they gouged out his eyes. Then they took their bayonets and
made all sorts of slices in his skin all around his chest, arms, and
legs. They then took his hair off and the skin of his scalp. When they
saw there was nothing left to do with him, they threw gasoline on him
and burned him. The next day they started the same thing with a 13
year old girl. They did more or less the same, but they did other
things to her too. First, she was utilized, raped by all the officers.
They stripped her and threw her in a small room, they went in one by
one. Afterwards they took her out tied and blindfolded. Then they
began the same mutilating, pulling her fingernails out and cutting off
her fingers, breaking her arms, gouging out her eyes and all they did
to the other fellow. They cut her legs and stuck an iron rod into her
womb."
"Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and
took out her heart. The men had their arms broken and their testicles
cut off and their eyes poked out. They were then killed by slitting
their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."
These are but two of the hundreds of documented eyewitness accounts of
the kind of brutal and sadistic rapes, sodomies, kidnappings, tortures
and murders committed by the Contra forces in Nicaragua in the 1980's
-- Contras that were clothed, fed and armed by the illegal efforts of
Oliver North.
I guess it is no wonder that his recent visit to Hot Springs gave me
waking nightmares. It was as if the spirits of those brutalized,
tortured and murdered by the Contra "freedom fighters" were calling
out to me. Perhaps it was my working knowledge of Spanish and my
thirty years of travel to Latin America that brought these souls to my
door. The images haunted and shamed me. The most horrible aspect of
these tales is that the atrocities were commonly committed on the most
vulnerable; young boys and girls, their pregnant mothers and their
grandparents. Many times the families were forced to watch as these
abominations were carried out. Terror, you see, is most effective and
intimidating when viewed publicly. In all, over 30,000 civilians were
killed in Nicaragua by the Contras, mostly peasants, rural doctors and
health care workers, teachers, clergy, and civil administrators trying
to afford social services to the poorest in the land. This is our
government's most recent legacy in Central America.
The Sandanistas had been freely and fairly elected among seven active
political parties, with 75% voter turn out. It was declared a just
election by all international observers and monitors. After leading
the rebellion to oust one of Latin America's most infamously brutal
and greedy military dictators Anastacio Samoza, the new government
chose a more socialized model that quickly garnered international
acclaim for its efforts at providing health care, food, education,
literacy and land reform for its population. It also brought on the
wrath of the U.S. government and the CIA who financed the ex-national
guardsmen: Samoza's former henchmen, who formed the core of the Contra
forces. Eventually, the U.S. congress was so repulsed by the stories
of horror and butchery coming out of the villages in northern
Nicaragua, and lobbied strongly by ecumenical church organizations
representing millions of church goers, they forbade any further
financing of the effort or any further U.S. involvement. A
congressional intelligence committee at the time confirmed that the
Contras "raped, tortured and killed unarmed civilians, including
children" and that "groups of civilians, including pregnant women and
children were burned, dismembered, blinded and beheaded."
With the elimination of U.S. funds the Contra forces waned and were
forced back into their sanctuaries across Nicaragua's borders. That
was when Mr. North secretly went to work in the basement of the White
House. His unlawful scheme eventually involved tens of millions of
dollars, secretly selling arms to the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran.
This sad story also includes sworn testimony by those involved of
cocaine filled airplanes returning to the U.S. after dropping off
supplies, explosives and arms to the Contras. Some have attributed
this "coca pipeline" to the crack epidemic that swept through many
American cities in the mid 1980's. By his own hand written accounts at
the time, preserved in the last days of the Reagan administration, Mr.
North acknowledged being repeatedly informed of contra ties to drug
trafficking. Luis Posada, deeply implicated in the terrorist bombing
of a Cubana DC 8 airliner filled with teenagers in 1976, and a
confessed hotel lobby bomber, was a leading local coordinator of the
effort. Many lurid tales have come to light in the ensuing years of
our CIA,s dealings with the dirtiest of the dirty in Latin America
during this era.
I guess, being a believer in the inalienable rights of an oppressed
people to rise up and throw off their yokes and form a new government,
even one we don't particularly like, puts me in a foreign camp to
some. To me, national sovereignty means a country being able to chart
its own course, free of coercive outside attack from powerful and
wealthy forces, even down what many of us believe is the dead-end road
of extreme socialism. It is giving to other nations nothing more than
we demand for ourselves.
So, I hope you can understand if I couldn't stand up and salute when
Ollie came to town. The whispered voices and tortured images wouldn't
let me.
Dr. John Bomar, a veteran of the Vietnam War, is a Catholic Lay
Minister and student of Latin American history. He can be reached at:
johnrbomar@hotsprings.net
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