El Salvador to send new troops to Iraq

[struggle4progress]

Aug 4, 2008 1:44
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador



JPost.com » Middle East » Article
Aug 4, 2008 1:44
El Salvador to send new troops to Iraq
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador

President Tony Saca said El Salvador will send its 11th contingent of troops to Iraq this month.

The 280 troops will replace soldiers .. in Kut, a city south of Baghdad.

Saca has sent troops to Iraq since 2003. El Salvador is currently the only Latin American country with a military presence in Baghdad ...

Five Salvadoran soldiers have been killed in Iraq.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331183076&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[Judi Lynn]

1. Oh, YEAH! I think they have an election coming up, with a leftist favored to win. Bush is putting

pressure, beyond all doubt, to do his bidding before the new guy slams the door on our right-wing fascist scum would-be world-dominators!

I'm going to have to take some time and dive in there and see when that election is, and check on this, but I gotta run. I'll do it later tonight.

You know, when they get their new President, he/she will undoubtedly bring these guys right back! :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

Screw the fascist maggots who stole our government. They have destroyed so much in those 8 stolen years.

You can be sure someone has twisted Saca's fat arm to get him to do this. He'll probably get a buncha money added to his Swiss bank account.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Here's some information on the upcoming Presidential election, March next year!

Scanning El Salvador's 2009 Electoral Horizon: The FMLN Nominates Mauricio Funes
Written by Jason Wallach
Tuesday, 16 October 2007

As the US political juggernaut gears up for the primary battles that will define the 2008 Presidential election here, El Salvadorans are already fixing sights on their own 2009 race to replace President Antonio Saca.
The Salvadoran constitution forbids standing presidents from running for re-election, so mark your calendars! Salvadorans will elect Congressional deputies and local mayors in January 2009. The presidential contest will take place in March. The candidate/ political party drama is just as juicy in El Salvador as is in the US, and for Central Americans, the stakes are high.

Last week, the Political Commission of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)—the inner voice of the party—shattered months of anticipation and announced that it would recommend Mauricio Funes to represent the party’s Presidential ticket. Funes is a popular political commentator and talk show host who gained a national audience—and following—through the construction of a patchwork quilt of daily TV and radio broadcasts on second-tier media outlets throughout the country. Most major TV channels are owned and/or operated by Telecorporación Salvadoreña (TCS), which has close ties to the ARENA party and the Saca government. Despite Funes’ popularity and national appeal, TCS refused to broadcast his program.

For VP, the FMLN Commission proposed historic FMLN leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren. With the gesture, the matter now rests with the FMLN’s National Council, which is comprised of local elected officials and party activists throughout the country. The Council is almost sure to back the nominations.

The Funes/Ceren announcement comes after months of internal party consultation and the stiff-arming of an inquisitive and sometimes intrusive press. Grassroots progressive forces had long cast their lot with Funes, who will turn 49 on October 18th. More than a month ago, the Salvadoran Union Front (FSS in Spanish), comprised of 27 mostly public sector unions, proclaimed its support for a potential Funes candidacy. The Popular Social Block (BPS) followed a few days later when leader Guadalupe Erazo—who is also an alternate FMLN deputy in El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly--held a press conference a few days later.

Funes was later named an official “pre-candidate”—a title reserved for Funes alone. The moniker was ostensibly forged by the party to buy time around what was becoming an evermore distracting wave of popular support craning to know if their candidate had support inside the FMLN's inner circle, the Political Commission. But as rumors swarmed, Funes initiated a series of campaign-style trips, touching base with Salvadoran ex-pat strongholds in Los Angeles, upstate New York and Washington, DC.

An early September trip to Sao Paolo had Funes looking almost presidential as he squared up with Brazilian President Ignacio Lula de Silva.

Days later, CNN International announced that it had severed its contract with Funes, where he occasionally offered commentary on regional issues. Salvadoran Channel 21 cut Funes’ popular daily show “The Interview with Mauricio Funes” from its programming. Channel 15, which also broadcasts “The Interview,” said it would not renew its contract with the rising star. Neither Funes nor station management would reveal the broadcast’s terminal date. The wave of terminations were received much differently than Funes' abrupt firing by Channel 12 a few years ago.

The 2009 election marks a watershed political moment for El Salvador, which ended a bloody 12-year civil war in 1992 with the signing of a peace pact between FMLN rebels and the US-backed government and army. The election marks the first time since the FMLN’s initial foray electoral that Congressional and mayoral races-decided every three years- will coincide with the Presidential vote –decided every five years.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/937/74/



Mauricio Funes

El Salvador: US admits interference in 2004 vote


19 July 2008


Below is a July 10 statement from the Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). For more information, visit http://cispes.org.


During a recent heated meeting at the US Embassy in El Salvador, US ambassador Charles Glazer admitted to US intervention in the 2004 Salvadoran presidential elections.

The June 27 meeting was requested by a group of 12 US citizens who were taking part in a 10-day delegation organised by CISPES.

During the meeting, the group cited statements made by US State Department officials denouncing the leftist Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN) during the 2004 presidential campaign.

The delegates also referenced legislation moved in Congress that threatened to cut off remittances sent by Salvadorans in the US to their families in El Salvador should the FMLN win.

“The US Embassy in El Salvador never countered this absurd threat or clarified the impossibility of such legislation being passed”, said Rosa Lozano, a delegate from Washington. “Ultimately, such intervention helped turn a close race for the presidency into a decisive victory for the right-wing National Republican Alliance (Arena).”

When asked directly if the US government had intervened in the 2004 presidential elections on behalf of Arena, Glazer replied in the affirmative.

More:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/759/39195

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Death Squads in El Salvador:
A Pattern of U.S. Complicity
by David Kirsch
Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1990


In 1963, the U.S. government sent 10 Special Forces personnel to El Salvador to help General Jose Alberto Medrano set up the Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista (ORDEN)-the first paramilitary death squad in that country. These Green Berets assisted in the organization and indoctrination of rural "civic" squads which gathered intelligence and carried out political assassinations in coordination with the Salvadoran military.

Now, there is compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, members of the U.S. military and the CIA have helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador.

In the last eight years, six Salvadoran military deserters have publicly acknowledged their participation in the death squads. Their stories are notable because they not only confirm suspicions that the death squads are made up of members of the Salvadoran military, but also because each one implicates U.S. personnel in death squad activity.

The term "death squad" while appropriately vivid, can be misleading because it obscures their fundamental identity. Evidence shows that "death squads" are primarily military or paramilitary units carrying out political assassinations and intimidation as part of the Salvadoran government's counterinsurgency strategy. Civilian death squads do exist but have often been comprised of off-duty soldiers financed by wealthy Salvadoran businessmen.

It is important to point out that the use of death squads has been a strategy of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. For example, the CIA's "Phoenix Program" was responsible for the "neutralization" of over 40,000 Vietnamese suspected of working with the National Liberation Front.
Part of the U.S. counterinsurgency program was run from the Office of Public Safety (OPS). OPS was part of U.S. AID, and worked with the Defense Department and the CIA to modernize and centralize the repressive capabilities of client state police forces, including those in El Salvador. In 1974 Congress ordered the discontinuation of OPS.

In spite of the official suspension of police assistance between 1974 and 1985, CIA and other U.S . officials worked with Salvadoran security forces throughout the restricted period to centralize and modernize surveillance, to continue training, and to fund key players in the death squad network.

Even though the U.S. government's police training program had been thoroughly discredited, the Reagan administration found other channels through which to reinstate police assistance for El Salvador and Honduras. Attached to this assistance is the requirement that the president certify that aid recipients do not engage in torture, political persecution, or assassination. Even so, certain members of Congress showed concern over the reinstatement of police aid to repressive regimes. In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Senator Claiborne Pell (Dem.-Rhode Island) asked, "I was talking about cattle prods specifically. Would they be included or not?"

Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affair Elliott Abrams replied, "Well, I would say that in my view if the police of Costa Rica, with their democratic tradition, say that for crowd control purposes they would like to have 50 shot {sic} batons, as they are called in a nonagricultural context, I would personally want to give it to them. I think that government has earned enough trust, as I think we have earned enough trust, not to be questioned, frankly, about exporting torture equipment. But I would certainly be in favor of giving it to them if they want it."

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html