I don't know why nowdays a lot of people fuss about Sadam so much? even IF those numberes (of whom he's killed or tortured) are proved and correct - they don't come even close to some other TRUE facts, confirmed by UN and many even still unknown, about which US President officially apologised.

Saddam is just a kid comparing to those atrocities, and most of those people who's done that genocide are still alive and thriving - NOTHING has been done to bring them to justice. perhaps because some things might come up, rather unpleasent or unwanted?

Guatemalan files renew hope of justice

By WILL WEISSERT and JUAN CARLOS LLORCA

Sat Jan 6, 11:06 AM ET

During the 10 years since the end of a civil war that took 200,000 Guatemalan lives.... On top of the known death toll, some 40,000 people simply disappeared... Yet even now, after a U.N. truth commission, an apology from President Bill Clinton for the U.S. involvement and the discovery of graves every few days in remote mountain hamlets or jungle camps, much of the truth about what happened remains hidden or buried.

Some of the perpetrators live freely in mansions in Guatemala's capital, where they remain wealthy, powerful and openly scornful of efforts to hold them accountable for atrocities committed before a peace treaty took effect on Dec. 29, 1996.

The war's outlines have long been known: Dissident military officers rebelled against military regimes installed by the CIA's overthrow of an elected president and joined forces with leftists emboldened by the 1959 Cuban revolution.

U.S.-backed military regimes wiped out entire villages of Mayan Indians suspected of aiding the rebels, the survivors fleeing deeper into the mountains or neighboring Mexico. Death squads swooped down on students, union leaders and political dissidents whose mutilated bodies turned up in ditches or were never seen again.

Washington, a key ally of right-wing leaders throughout Latin America during the Cold War, sent U.S. advisers to help the Guatemalan military.

Declassified CIA documents show high-level U.S. officials were kept informed of the atrocities.

The U.S. Embassy's deputy chief of mission in Guatemala, Viron Vaky, complained in a March 1968 memo to Washington: "Murder, torture and mutilation are all right if our side is doing it and the victims are communists; I have literally heard these arguments from our people."

But CIA documents made public came with key details blacked out. And while the U.N.-brokered peace accord ended open warfare, the U.N. truth commission wasn't allowed to name names or provide evidence for criminal trials.

It said 93 percent of the war's human rights violations, including 626 massacres, were perpetrated by soldiers or army-sponsored civilian paramilitary groups during a campaign to wipe out real or imagined rebel strongholds that amounted to genocide against Mayan villagers.

Only 14 Guatemalan soldiers are behind bars for massacres, in part because the CIA refused to release evidence implicating individuals....

"What I find very staggering is that those who are accused of committing acts of genocide aren't only free but also very powerful," said Sebastian Elgueta, an Amnesty International investigator. "Look at Rios Montt. He got 700,000 votes."

Guatemalan Civil War

In 1954, Operation PBSUCCESS, a CIA-organized covert operation, overthrew the democratically-elected socialist-leaning President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.

The internal conflict is described in great detail in the reports of the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) and the Archbishop's Office for Human Rights (ODHAG). The CEH estimates that government forces were responsible for 93% of the violations; ODHAG earlier estimated that government forces were responsible for 80%.

Vinicio Cerezo, a civilian politician and the presidential candidate of the Christian Democracy Party, won the first election held under the new constitution with almost 70% of the vote, and took office on 14 January 1986. It took, however, another 10 years of massacres and political assassinations by security forces and rightist paramilitary groups, before there was an end to the violence.

On paper, Guatemala had "democratic elections" supported by the USA and the CIA, while the real power-yielding force was the military through the Ministry of Defense. The political climate of the country changed, but the violence continued, as the country is plagued by corruption, organized crime, drug-trafficking, and other socially-disturbing problems.

Guatemala - Modern period

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala#Modern_period

According to the U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission, government forces and paramilitaries were responsible for over 93% [4] of the human rights violations during the war. During the first 10 years, the victims of the state-sponsored terror were primarily students, workers, professionals, and opposition figures of all political tendencies, but in the last years, they were thousands of mostly rural Mayan farmers and non-combatants. More than 450 Mayan villages were destroyed and over 250,000 people became refugees. This is considered one of the worst ethnic cleansings in modern Latin America. In certain areas, such as Baja Verapaz, the Truth Commission considered that the Guatemalan state engaged in an intentional policy of genocide against particular ethnic groups Civil War [5]. In 1999, then US president Bill Clinton stated that the United States was wrong to have provided support to Guatemalan military forces that took part in the brutal civilian killings [6].

Clinton: Support for Guatemala Was Wrong

By Charles Babington

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 11, 1999; Page A1

GUATEMALA CITY, March 10 – President Clinton expressed regret today for the U.S. role in Guatemala's 36-year civil war, saying that Washington "was wrong" to have supported Guatemalan security forces in a brutal counterinsurgency campaign that slaughtered thousands of civilians.

Clinton's statements marked the first substantive comment from the administration since an independent commission concluded last month that U.S.-backed security forces committed the vast majority of human rights abuses during the war, including torture, kidnapping and the murder of thousands of rural Mayans.

"It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong," Clinton said, reading carefully from handwritten notes. "And the United States must not repeat that mistake. We must, and we will, instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatemala."

Clinton's aides said the president had thought for some time about how to word his near-apology. The Guatemalan military received training and other help from the U.S. military in an era when the United States supported several Latin American rightist governments fighting leftist insurgents.

The record of the Guatemalan security forces was laid bare in a report released Feb. 25 by the Historical Clarification Commission, which grew out of the U.N.-sponsored peace process that ended the war in 1996. The commission said the Guatemalan military had committed "acts of genocide" during the conflict, in which 200,000 people died.

...............

In his speech in San Salvador, Clinton alluded to the brutal civil wars and insurrections that killed thousands of people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and, to a lesser degree, Honduras, in recent decades. He did not, however, apologize for U.S. support for the Salvadoran military in the 1980s, which totaled billions of dollars during a war that cost 70,000 lives

so, the only thing which has been done is - "near apology". and even that - only because it was necessary to ensure trade agreements and better relations with those countries. in other words - more like self-interest.

however - NOBODY was ever even arrested or tried ! what to speak - hanged , as Saddam was recently.

let's hope that those classified documents found in Guatemala recently as mentioned in the article quoted in OP, will provide some evidences and perhaps SOME justice will be done sometime in the future.

although personally I doubt it very much - since too many US adisors and agents were involved.

so, all this Saddam execution case - is just a big joke and huge hypocrasy, in my opinion!

now - eat me !

Around 1999 or 2000, I sat on the Mexican side of the Mex-Guatemalan border in a tourist camp. A man walked across the ungarded border from Guatemala (department of Huehuetenango, I believe), and we talked. I explained that I did volunteer work at the massacre site of Acteal, in Chiapas, Mexico, whre 45 people were massacred in a single afternoon. He said that was nothing compared to Guatemala; that only several miles from where we sat, in his native Mayan village, over 1,000 people were slaughtered by the army, and this was quite common for many years.

Me & the missus were up in San Cristobel de las Casas (Chiapas) a few years back and didn't see any unrest. Not like down in Oaxaca these days with the Federales killing American reporters.

Me & the missus were up in San Cristobel de las Casas (Chiapas) a few years back and didn't see any unrest. Not like down in Oaxaca these days with the Federales killing American reporters.

So are you denying what happened then?

Me & the missus were up in San Cristobel de las Casas (Chiapas) a few years back and didn't see any unrest. Not like down in Oaxaca these days with the Federales killing American reporters.

So are you denying what happened then?

It might have happened but all was quiet when we were up there.

The press likes to sensationalize stuff...

Me & the missus were up in San Cristobel de las Casas (Chiapas) a few years back and didn't see any unrest. Not like down in Oaxaca these days with the Federales killing American reporters.

So are you denying what happened then?

It might have happened but all was quiet when we were up there.

The press likes to sensationalize stuff...

So the US were guilty of war crimes then?

Me & the missus were up in San Cristobel de las Casas (Chiapas) a few years back and didn't see any unrest. Not like down in Oaxaca these days with the Federales killing American reporters.

So are you denying what happened then?

It might have happened but all was quiet when we were up there.

The press likes to sensationalize stuff...

So the US were guilty of war crimes then?

Perhaps, but I wern't there in Guatamala - just replying to PB's post re Chiapas, Mexico which had a bit of unrest too.

Actually, not to get too far off-topic, I prefer to emphasize the positive and having said that here's Ten Things You Can Do To Save The Planet:

Nearly ten years after the Kyoto accords, our planet continues to careen helplessly toward certain environmental destruction. The skies are choked with pollutants. Polar bears are plunging through the thinning ice caps. Ben Affleck is still having problems finding a decent comeback project.

Thankfully, with the new release of Al Gore's blockbuster eco-documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," the world is finally heeding the disaster looming on the horizon. But mere consciousness is not enough to cure our current climate ills - it takes action. Here are a few simple things you to put the planet on the road to recovery.

1. Turn off faucets when not in use. While a single dripping faucet may not seem to be much of an environmental hazzard, the numbers really begin to add up when you're hosting a Sierra Club fundraising party for Laurie David and all 10 of your bathrooms are in use. Have your domestic staff check to make sure that electonic sink sensors are working properly, and use other water conservation methods such as installing low-flow bidets. Remember to remind your guests: "If it's yellow, let it mellow."

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3. Crush a Third World economic development movement. One of the most pressing threats facing our environment is rising incomes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Only a generation ago, these proud dark people were happily frolicking in the rain forest, foraging for organic foods amid the wonders of nature. Now, corrupted by wealth, they are demanding environmentally hazardous consumer goods like cars and air conditioning and malaria medicine. You can do your part to stop this dangerous consumer trend by supporting environmentally aware leaders like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro to foster an economy of sustainable low-impact ecolabor camps.

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9. Commit suicide. As an eco-aware, planetary resource parasite, you will eventually want to kill yourself to spare the environment any further damage that your personal existence has already caused. However, it is important that you plan your suicide carefully as not to disturb the ecosystem's delicate balance. Self immolation, while poignant, can release up to 50 kg of airborne fluorocarbons. Why not try the the hot new Malibu trend, ritual Japanese sepukku? it's exotic, elegant, and your intact corpse will make a great compost pile addition.

10. Support eco-friendly organizations and political candidates. Finally, you can make a major impact for environmental good through community legislative action. Like it or not, getting Washington to take action on environmental issues requires intensive lobbying and the election of eco-thinking representatives, and this takes money. There are literally hundreds of worthy environmentalist organizations and candidates out there, and the choices can be confusing. Fortunately, I have taken the work out of this for you.

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^It is estimated that during the period of Ríos Montt's rule about 70,000 civilians have been killed or "disappeared". During the period 1981 to 1983 about 100,000 have been killed or "disappeared" and between 500,000 and 1.5 million displaced, fleeing to other regions within the country or seeking safety abroad.

"When I arrived in the government, we began a change in the state," Ríos Montt later says. "We realised that it shouldn't be the state of a single boss, the state of a regent, the state of a king, but a state that guarantees the rule of law, a state that serves."

Referring to the genocide that occurred during his rule, he says, "I can't deny anything, nor can I corroborate or prove anything. I'm at an impasse. ... If there is proof that shows that I am responsible, then I'm going to wind up a prisoner, because I do not want by any means to evade my responsibility."

Rios Montt

^Ríos Montt begins his career in the Guatemalan Army in 1946 as a cadet, rising to the rank of brigadier-general in 1972. His training includes a period at the notorious US Army School of the Americas (SOA - since renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Dubbed the "school of assassins" and the "school of coups" at the time, the SOA provides instruction in counterinsurgency strategies and tactics, psychological warfare, torture and assassination. Ríos Montt takes a "special course" at the school in 1950.

Rios Montt

so, once again - that makes it a joke that Saddam has been examplary executed for "torture, killing" etc.

otherwise - it will be only fair and logical to bring to justice all the people responsible in genocide in Guatemala.

and there are plenty of other countries in Central America where same practices have been employed - I'm sure many can be listed.

aaaaaaa>> Guess you missed the point that Saddam was executed by Iraqis, not americans.

Are you going to tell the kurds that the death of their relatives doesn't count since some other villagers died on the other side of the globe? How arrogant of you.

no, I didn't miss that point. if it was just - it was just. that is another whole subject which I didn't mention in my OP in this thread. I've debated it with other fellows in other threads on this Forum. and BTW - without "attack on person" - unlike you!

however I think you did miss my point - which was (see OP):

why nowdays a lot of people fuss about Sadam so much?

and then one more:

it will be only fair and logical to bring to justice all the people responsible in genocide in Guatemala.

that would be the true consistency in being just.

if those others are not punished as Saddam was - then there is no justice, or it is biased.

and therefore, and especially so, no need to make so much fuss about Saddam.

so, before you make some conclusions and start accusing others of something, please pay attention yourself. I wasn't even talking to Kurds and neither discounted deaths of their relative (prove me wrong - show me WHERE did I say that?) - but to members of this Forum, who like to talk too much about how Saddam is evil.

yes, he might have been evil. but not more than those many others who NEVER been brought to justice.

and both Saddam and those contra in C. & S. Americas were supported, supplied and trained by US military and government.

so, I think it is rather arrogant of you to accuse me of something I haven't said, while dismissing those facts I've merely quoted here.

in fact - this is a lame under-waist punch trick - attacking a person rather than addressing the point. that I think is real arrogance ! especially attacking me for something which is only your own assumption or twisting of my words according to it.

Guatemala is an example...the fcukin' generals in South America are another...that murdering bastard Pinochet went to his grave without being punished. Chile remains to this day a polarized society with filthy 'buena gente' with their furs and comfort lovin'it...all in the name of Jesus of course...never seen such hypocritical scum...

Clinton fcuked up...I almost returned to the US to live but his Latin America policy was unacceptable...

QUE VIVA FIDEL!!! QUE VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!

yes, Gutemala is just 1 single example of many others, which are plenty. and quite dirty things are in other examples too!

here is one more example about Nicaragua:

http://www.answers.com/Nicaragua

In 1912, U.S. marines were landed to support the provisional president, Adolfo Díaz, in a civil war. The Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, giving the United States exclusive rights for a Nicaraguan canal and other privileges, was ratified in 1916. (It was terminated in 1970.) The Liberals opposed the U.S. intervention, and there was guerrilla warfare against the U.S.-supported regime for years. American occupation ended in 1925 but resumed the next year, when Emiliano Chamorro attempted to seize power. Augusto César Sandino was a leader of the anti-occupation forces. The U.S. diplomat Henry L. Stimson succeeded in getting most factions to agree (1927) to binding elections, although Sandino continued to fight.

The Somozas, Sandinistas, Contras, and Chamorro

The U.S. marines were withdrawn in 1933. Three years later Anastasio Somoza emerged as the strong man in Nicaragua. He officially became president in 1937 and ruled for 20 years.

.....

In 1981 the United States, politically unsupportive of the Sandinista government and suspicious of its relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba, cut off economic aid and began supporting counterrevolutionary military forces, or contras. After the U.S. Congress acted to cut off aid to the contras, it was continued covertly (see Iran-contra affair). In 1984 the United States illegally mined Nicaragua's principal export harbors, and in 1985 it instituted a trade embargo.... In the Feb., 1990, elections, held under a Central American peace initiative, the FSLN was defeated by an opposition coalition, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, a political moderate, became president. The United States subsequently lifted its trade embargo, and the contras ceased fighting.

Sandinistas were faced with an ongoing and debilitating war against the Contra rebels with the ascent of Ronald Reagan to the US presidency. The US trained and financed the contras to fight against the Sandinistas, sparking widespread criticism from many quarters within the US, including Congress. When Congress moved to cut off aid to the Contras, Reagan aide Col. Oliver North concocted a plan to fund the contras through clandestine arms sales to Iran, a fiasco that blew up into the so-called Iran-Contra Affair.

Nicaragua won a historic case against the US at the World Court in 1986, and the US was ordered to pay Nicaragua some $12 billion in reparations for violating Nicaraguan sovereignty by engaging in attacks against it. The United States withdrew its acceptance of the Court and argued it had no authority in matters of sovereign state relations. The US government refused to pay restitutions, even when a United Nations General Assembly resolution on the matter was passed.

"yeah, right - who the <deleted> are those clowns in UN ? anyway they are just our pets! how dare they to order US something?!"

http://www.answers.com/topic/contras

The Contras initially received financial and military support from the Argentine government and the US through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Contras would later receive aid through clandestine initiatives by figures in the administration of President Ronald Reagan...

US officials were active in attempting to unite the Contra groups. In June 1985, they reorganized as the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO)...

Contra Atrocities

The Nicaragua conflict claimed an estimated 60,000 lives. The Contras were frequently accused of being responsible for multiple political assassinations, kidnappings, and the widespread use of torture. They were opposed by many Nicaraguans as well as foreign human rights organizations who viewed their tactics, which included the targeting of civilians, as brutal and indiscriminate.

The Contras were accused of blowing up bridges, civilian power plants and schools, burning fields of crops and attacking hospitals. Their tactics were said to include rape, kidnappings of peasants and civilians, ambushes and massacres against small rural communities, farms, co-operatives, schools and health clinics....

Witness For Peace, an American Protestant watchdog body, collected a list of Contra atrocities in one year, which included murder, the rape of two girls in their homes, torture of men, maiming of children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, amputating the genitals of people of both sexes, scraping the skin off the face, pouring acid on the face, breaking the toes and fingers of an 18-year-old boy, and summary executions.

One survivor of a Contra raid in Jinotega province, which borders Honduras, reported: "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off and their eyes poked out. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."

The Sandinistas accused the Contras of conducting a campaign of indiscriminate terror. For example, the Sandinista government claimed in November 1984 that since 1981 the Contras had:

- assassinated 910 state officials;

- attacked nearly 100 civilian communities;

- caused the displacement of over 150,000 people from their homes and farms;

- damaged or destroyed bridges, port facilities, granaries, water and oil deposits, electrical power stations, telephone lines, saw mills, health centers, schools and dams.

An influential report on alleged Contra atrocities was issued by lawyer Reed Brody shortly before the 1985 US Congressional vote on Contra aid. The report was soon published as a book, Contra Terror in Nicaragua (Brody, 1985). It charged that the Contras attacked purely civilian targets and that their tactics included murder, rape, beatings, kidnapping and disruption of harvests....

U.S. Military and Financial Assistance

A key role in the development of the Contra alliance was played by the United States following Ronald Reagan's assumption of the presidency in January 1981. Reagan accused the Sandinistas of importing Cuban-style socialism and aiding leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. On November 23 of that year, Reagan signed the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the CIA the authority to recruit and support the Contras with $19 million in military aid. The effort to support the Contras was one component of the Reagan Doctrine, which called for providing military support to movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments.

In 1984, Nicaragua filed a suit in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the United States (Nicaragua vs. United States), which resulted in a 1986 judgment against the US, calling on it to "cease and to refrain" from the "unlawful use of force" against Nicaragua, through such actions as the placement of underwater mines by CIA operatives and training, funding and support for the guerrilla forces. The court, whose jurisdiction the Reagan administration did not accept, ruled that the US was "in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another state" and was ordered to pay reparations.

Direct military aid was interrupted by the Boland Amendment, passed by the United States Congress in December 1982, and subsequently extended in October 1984 to forbid action by not only the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency but all US government agencies. Administration officials sought to arrange funding and military supplies by means of third-parties, culminating in the Iran-Contra Affair of 1986-1987, which concerned contra funding through the proceeds of arms sales to Iran. On February 3, 1988 the United States House of Representatives rejected President Reagan's request for $36.25 million to aid the Contras. According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North, an important official in the Iran-Contra affair, had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, the military leader of Panama later convicted on drug charges, whom he personally met.

The issue of drug money and its importance in funding the Nicaraguan conflict was the subject of various reports and publications. The contras were funded by drug trafficking, of which the USA was aware...

The Reagan administration's support for the Contras continued to stir controversy well into the 1990s. In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published a series titled Dark Alliance, alleging that the origins of crack cocaine in California was the responsibility of the Contras. Webb's controversial and highly damaging revelations were disputed at the time, but later revelations confirmed some of his findings. Freedom of Information Act inquiries by the National Security Archive and other investigators unearthed a number of documents showing that White House officials, including Oliver North, knew about and supported using money raised via drug trafficking to fund the Contras.

I think Saddam's atrocities pale in comparison to those conducted by Contras. Saddam is a simpleton or dumb a$$ - nothing so much as creative as all those things Contras did, supplied, supported and trained by .....

Iran-Contra Affair

The Iran-Contra Affair ... was one of the largest political scandals in the United States during the 1980s. [1] Large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials.[2] The affair is still shrouded with secrecy and it is very hard to discover the facts. It involved several members of the Reagan Administration who in 1986 helped sell arms to Iran, an avowed enemy, and used the proceeds to fund the Contras, an anti-communist guerrilla organization in Nicaragua.

After the arms sales were revealed in November 1986, President Ronald Reagan appeared on national television and denied that they had occurred.[4] However, a week later, on November 13, he returned to the airwaves to affirm that weapons were indeed transferred to Iran....

The scandal was compounded when on November 21, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall shredded pertinent documents. US Attorney General Edwin Meese admitted on November 25 that profits from weapons sales to Iran were made available to assist the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Aftermath

Oliver North and John Poindexter were indicted on multiple charges on March 16, 1988. North, indicted on 12 counts, was found guilty by a jury of three minor counts. The convictions were vacated on appeal on the grounds that North's Fifth Amendment rights may have been violated by the indirect use of his testimony to Congress which had been given under a grant of immunity. In 1990, Poindexter was convicted on several felony counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and altering and destroying documents pertinent to the investigation. His convictions were also overturned on appeal on similar grounds. The Independent Counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, chose not to re-try North or Poindexter. Weinberger was indicted for lying to the Independent Counsel but was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.

Faced with undeniable evidence of his involvement in the scandal, Reagan expressed regret regarding the situation at a nationally televised White House press conference on March 4, 1987. Responding to questions, Reagan stated that his previous assertions that the U.S. did not trade arms for hostages were incorrect. He also stated that the Vice President knew of the plan.

Reagan survived the scandal, and his approval ratings returned to previous levels; as the scandal broke in 1986, "Reagan's approval rating plummeted to 46%", but he later "finished strong with a December 1988 Gallup poll recording a 63% approval rating".

George W. Bush selected some individuals implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal for high-level posts in his presidential administration...

Contra drug links

(see also: CIA and Contra's cocaine trafficking in the US)

From the 1980s onward, allegations were made that the Contras were being funded through cocaine distribution.... In 1992 U.S. President George H.W. Bush pardoned persons involved in the scandal...

The allegations resurfaced in 1996 when journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News[40], and later in his book Dark Alliance[41], detailing how Contras had distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles to fund weapons purchases.... In 1998, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz published a two-volume report[42] that substantiated many of Webb's claims, and described how 50 Contras and drug traffickers had been protected from law enforcement activity by the Reagan-Bush administration, and documented a cover-up of evidence relating to these activities. The report also showed that Oliver North and the NSC were aware of these activities. A report later that same year by the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich also came to similar conclusions.

In 2004, Gary Webb allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself twice [ ] in the head.

so, BTW - journalists and reporters are never been killed in US ! they just commit "suicides" by shooting themselves in the head - TWICE, to make sure ! only evil Saddam , and of course Thaksin kill reporters.

and nice piece about Reagan - he simply pretended to be stupid or forgetfull of facts. then he just apologized and expressed regrets.... and has got a lot of awards and honours, enjoyed the huge popularity till his very end of days, and even after....

here are few more facts about REAL mass killings in C. American countries and US policies in that regard

History of Honduras

Between 1979 and 1985, under John Negroponte's appointment as U.S. diplomat from 1981 to

1985, U.S. military and economic aid to Honduras jumped from $31 million to $282 million. Honduras

agreed in exchange to become a base for an estimated 15,000 Nicaraguan Contras, providing logistical and

intelligence support, and joining the U.S. military in joint maneuvers. Negroponte himself supervised the

construction of the El Aguacate air base where Contras were trained... Battalion 3-16, a special intelligence unit involved in the assassination of hundreds of people, including U.S. missionaries, was trained by the CIA and the Argentine military. Negroponte, currently Director of National Intelligence, was later accused by the Honduras

Commission on Human Rights of human rights violations. In August 2001, 185 corpses, including two Americans, were discovered at the Aguacate base....

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-

finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of

faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the

embassy knew nothing about the nuns. However, in a 1996 interview with The Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's

predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had

been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret

Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive....

the CIA and U.S. embassy knew of numerous abuses, but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy's annual human rights report did not contain the full story.

Substantial evidence subsequently emerged to support the contention that Negroponte was aware that serious

violations of human rights were carried out by the Honduran government, with the support of the CIA, if perhaps not with its direct approval.....

the image of Negroponte that emerges from the cables is that of an :

- exceptionally energetic, action-oriented ambassador whose anti-communist convictions led him to play down

human rights abuses in Honduras, the most reliable U.S. ally in the region.... he used "quiet diplomacy" to persuade the Honduran authorities to investigate the most egregious violations, including the mysterious

disappearance of dozens of government opponents....

- a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy....

- so committed to his mission of making Honduras a base for Nicaraguan contra rebels that he routinely ignored

troubling evidence about the Honduran government.

During his four years in Honduras, Negroponte often cast “a friendly eye” at the Honduran government, insisting

that he was unaware of evidence of “death squad” operations that eliminated hundreds of political

dissidents. He also turned a blind eye to the military’s role in making Honduras a way station for drug

traffickers.

well, may be not so much slaughter happened in Honduras, however elimination or hundreds of political opponents is very similar of what Saddam has been accused of....

El Salvador

In 1979, politician Ing. Jose Napoleon Duarte of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC, Partido

Democrata Cristiano in Spanish) joined a Revolutionary Government Junta in a coup against then recently elected Presidente Romero (with the Carter administration's tacit acceptance and encouragement). He became the head of state and also the leader of the Junta (Primera Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno) in 1980...

Having ousted the duly elected president, the situation rapidly deteriorated into a civil war, which would

last for 12 years (1980-92) and claim the lives of approximately 75,000 people.

President Duarte was receiving military aid from the United States to fight the Farabundo Marto National

Liberation Front (FMLN), while the FMLN was receiving aid from groups both in the USA and other countries (

Europe, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia). Complicating the situation were the actions of the ARENA party, which

was proven to have had ties with death squads that were active in the country at the time....

According to the 1993 United Nations' Truth Commission report, over 96% of the human rights violations carried out during the war were committed by the Salvadoran military or the paramilitary death squads, while 3.5% were committed by the FMLN.... During the war, a small group of 55 military advisers from the U.S. Military Group (MILGRP) helped to train government forces, which were heavily funded by the U.S. as well.

Panama

Much of Panama's domestic politics and international diplomacy in the twentieth century was tied to the

Panama Canal and the foreign policy of the United States... In November 1903, the United States supported a

covert Separatist Junta consisting of a small number of wealthy Panamanian landowners and led by Dr. Manuel

Amador Guerrero to secede from Colombia. On 3 November, 1903, Panama declared its independence from

Colombia.... The United States, as the first country to recognize the new Republic of Panama, sent troops to

protect its economic interests....

In December 1903, representatives of the republic signed the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty which granted rights

to the United States to build and administer indefinitely the Panama Canal, which was opened in 1914. This treaty

became a contentious diplomatic issue between the two countries, reaching a boiling point on Martyr's Day (9

January 1964). The issues were resolved with the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties in 1977.

in 1981 ... power was eventually concentrated in the hands of General Manuel Antonio Noriega, a former head of

Panama's secret police and an ex-member of the CIA. Noriega was implicated in drug trafficking by the United States, resulting in difficult relations by the end of the 1980s.

On December 20, 1989, twenty-five thousand US personnel[citation needed] invaded Panama in order to remove Noriega... After the invasion, Noriega sought asylum in the Vatican diplomatic mission ... After a few days, Noriega surrendered to the American military, and was taken to Florida to be formally arrested and charged

by U.S. federal authorities. He will be eligible for parole in 2007.

Under the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, the United States returned all canal-related lands to Panama on December

31, 1999, but reserves the right to military intervention in the interest of its national security.

Noriega might be not as much monster as Saddam, and Panama has not seen much killing as its neighbours in C. America or as Iraq. however Noriega has been also US (more particularly - CIA) trained and apparently, his story is quite similar to Saddam's:

- strong ally of US;

- later relations got sour and tense;

- US has taken steps to remove him with its military force;

- he, as Saddam, has been arrested and convicted.

not much of crimes against humanity as Saddam, perhaps - petty drug trafficing, money laundering... therefore he wasn't hanged as Saddam - only imprisoned for 40 years. although, I wonder - how come US could even arrest and try and convict and hold him imprisoned, since he is a cicizen of sovereign country, not of US ?

Manuel Noriega

The U.S. attorney negotiated deals with 26 different drug felons, including Carlos Lehder,

who were given leniency, cash payments, and allowed to keep their drug earnings in return for testimony against Noriega. Several of these witnesses had been arrested by Noriega for drug trafficking in Panama. Some witnesses later recanted their testimony, and agents of the CIA, Drug Enforcement Administration, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Israeli Mossad, who were knowledgeable about Central American drug trafficking, have publicly charged that accusations were embellished . Noriega was found guilty and sentenced on September 16, 1992, to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations. His sentence was reduced to 30 years in 1999.

In 1999, the Panamanian government sought the extradition of Noriega to face murder charges in Panama

because he had been found guilty in absentia in 1995.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons website currently gives Inmate Noriega (ID # 38699-079) a projected release date of September 9, 2007.

quite mysterious conviction and imprisonment ! despite the Panamian government demand for his extradication for real persecution for murders, somehow US still keeps him. hopefully he will not suddenly die of "heart-stroke" or something alike - as Milosevic has conviniently did. somehow I have feelings that Noriega has been intentionaly held for some other purposes - may be he knows too much of certain affairs?

genocide in Bangladesh - nobody was punished.

Bangladesh Liberation War

Political climax

The situation reached a climax when in 1970 the Awami League, the largest East Pakistani political party, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a landslide victory in the national elections. The party won 167 of the 169 seats allotted to East Pakistan, and thus a majority of the 300 seats in the National Assembly. This gave the Awami League the constitutional right to form a government....

At a meeting of the military top brass, Yahya Khan declared: "Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands." Accordingly, on the night of 25 March, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight to "crush" Bengali resistance in which Bengali members of military services were disarmed and killed, students and the intelligentsia systematically liquidated and able-bodied Bengali males just picked up and gunned down.

Before this began, all foreign journalists were systematically deported from Bangladesh. Bengali members of military services were disarmed. Regarding violence against women, in Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller writes "... 200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped."

The United States supported Pakistan both politically and materially. U.S. President Richard Nixon denied getting involved in the situation, saying that it was an internal matter of Pakistan. But when Pakistan's defeat seemed certain, Nixon sent the USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal, a move deemed by the Indians as a nuclear threat. Enterprise arrived on station on December 11, 1971. On 6 December and 13 December, the Soviet Navy dispatched two groups of ships, armed with nuclear missiles, from Vladivostok; they trailed U.S. Task Force 74 in the Indian Ocean from 18 December until 7 January 1972. United States ... in direct violation of the US Congress-imposed sanctions on Pakistan, Nixon sent military supplies to Pakistan and routed them through Jordan and Iran... The Nixon administration also ignored reports it received of the 'genocidal' activities of the Pakistani Army in East Pakistan, most notably the Blood telegram.

Pakistan also failed to gather international support, and were found fighting a lone battle with only the USA providing any external help. The debacle immediately prompted an enquiry headed by Justice Hamdoor Rahman. Called the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, it was initially suppressed by Bhutto as it put the military in poor light. When it was declassified, it showed many failings from the strategic to the tactical levels. It also condemned the atrocities and the war crimes committed by the armed forces. It confirmed the looting, rapes and the killings by the Pakistan Army and their local agents (mostly Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh followers) although the figures are far lower than the ones quoted by Bangladesh. 200,000 women were raped, according to Bangladesh. Over 3 million people were killed.

However, the army’s role in splintering Pakistan after its greatest military debacle was largely ignored by successive Pakistani governments.

Atrocities

(see also: 1971 Bangladesh atrocities)

The Bangladesh War witnessed widespread atrocities committed against the Bengali population of East Pakistan, at a level that within Bangladesh, ‘genocide’ is the term that is still used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper..... there is little doubt that numerous civilians were tortured and killed during the war. A large section of the intellectual community of Bangladesh were murdered.... The first night of war on Bengalis, which is documented in telegrams from the American Consulate in Dhaka to the United States State Department, saw indiscriminate killings of students of Dhaka University and other civilians...

The number of civilians that died in the Bangladesh War is not accurately known... The international media and reference books in English have also have published figures which vary greatly: varying from 5,000–35,000 in Dhaka, and 200,000–3,000,000 for Bangladesh as a whole... in late June 2005 ... newspaper report published

in both Pakistani and Bangladeshi newspapers, Bangladeshi speakers at the conference stated that the official

Bangladeshi figure of civilian deaths was close to 300,000, which was wrongly translated from Bengali into English as three million.

In 1997 R. J. Rummel published a book ... "Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900" ... he states:

In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) [General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals] also planned

to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This despicable and cutthroat plan was outright genocide.

Rummel goes on to collate what he considers the most credible estimates published by others into what he calls democide. He writes that "Consolidating both ranges, I give a final estimate of Pakistan's democide to be 300,000 to 3,000,000, or a prudent 1,500,000."

Violence against women and minorities

Numerous women were tortured, raped and killed during the war. Again, exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate. Bangladeshi sources cite a figure of 200,000 women raped, giving birth to thousands of war-babies. Some other sources, for example Susan Brownmiller, refer to an even higher number of over 400,000. Pakistani sources claim the number is much lower, though having not completely denied rape incidents...

There was widespread killing of Hindu males, and rapes of women. More than 60% of the Bengali refugees that had fled to India were Hindus. It is not exactly known what percentage of the people killed by the Pakistan army were Hindus, but it is safe to say it was disproportionately high...

Killing of intellectuals

During the war, the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators carried out a systematic execution of the leading Bengali intellectuals. A number of university professors from Dhaka University were killed during the first few days of the war. However, the most extreme cases of targeted killing of intellectuals took place during the last few days of the war. Allegedly, the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami ... created a list of doctors, teachers, poets, and scholars. Some sources also allege the role of the CIA in devising the plan. On December 14, 1971 ... the Pakistani army systematicly executed well over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals and scholars. Professors, journalists, doctors, artists, engineers, writers were rounded up in Dhaka, blindfolded, taken to Rajarbag in the middle section of the city, and executed en masse....

Allegations of genocide

... the allegation that genocide took place during the Bangladesh War of 1971 was never investigated by an international tribunal set up under the auspices of the United Nations, so the alleged genocide is not recognised as a such under international law....

On December 16, 2002, the George Washington University’s National Security Archives published a collection of declassified documents, mostly consisting of communications between US officials working in embassies and USIS centers in Dhaka and in India, and officials in Washington DC. These documents show that US officials working in diplomatic institutions within Bangladesh used the terms ‘selective genocide’ and ‘genocide’ (Blood telegram) to describe events they had knowledge of at the time. They also show that President Nixon, advised by Henry Kissinger, decided to downplay this secret internal advise...

A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 20 September, 2006 for alleged crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators... released press statement says:

“... This is the first time in history that someone is attending a court proceeding in relation to the [alledged] crimes of Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators... "

The Blood telegram

Archer Kent Blood (1923-2004) was an American diplomat in Bangladesh. He served as the last American Consul General to Dhaka, East Pakistan. He is famous for sending the strongly-worded Blood telegram protesting against the atrocities committed in the Bangladesh Liberation War.

The Blood telegram (April 6, 1971) was one of the most strongly worded demarches ever written by Foreign

Service Officers to the State department. It was signed by 29 Americans. The telegram stated:

Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak[istan] dominated government and to lessen any deservedly negative international public relations impact against them... Private Americans have expressed disgust. We, as professional civil servants, express our dissent with current policy ...

In an earlier telegram (March 27, 1971), Blood wrote about American observations at Dhaka under the subject

heading "Selective genocide":

...Here in Decca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak[istani] Military....

Although he was scheduled for another 18 month tour in Dhaka, President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of

State Henry Kissinger recalled him from that position since his opposition went against their hopes of using the

support of West Pakistan for diplomatic openings to China and to counter the power of the Soviet Union.

Archer Blood died of arterial sclerosis September 3, 2004 ... there was family, a few old friends and an entire nation to mourn his passing, but the nation that grieved for him was not his own. It was Bangladesh. His death made headlines in Bangladesh, but was lucky to make it to the back pages of the obituary sections in American newspapers.

Case Study: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971

Summary

The mass killings in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1971 vie with the annihilation of the Soviet POWs, the holocaust against the Jews, and the genocide in Rwanda as the most concentrated act of genocide in the twentieth century. In an attempt to crush forces seeking independence for East Pakistan, the West Pakistani military regime unleashed a systematic campaign of mass murder which aimed at killing millions of Bengalis, and likely succeeded in doing so.

....the Bangladesh events can be classed as a combined gendercide and elitocide, with both strategies overwhelmingly targeting males for the most annihilatory excesses... All through the liberation war, able-bodied young men were suspected of being actual or potential freedom fighters. Thousands were arrested, tortured, and killed. Eventually cities and towns became bereft of young males who either took refuge in India or joined the liberation war... Especially "during the first phase" of the genocide ... "young able-bodied males were the victims of indiscriminate killings."

Bengali man and boys massacred by the West Pakistani regime.

R.J. Rummel likewise writes that "the Pakistan army [sought] out those especially likely to join the resistance -- young boys. Sweeps were conducted of young men who were never seen again. Bodies of youths would be found in fields, floating down rivers, or near army camps. As can be imagined, this terrorized all young men and their families within reach of the army. Most between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five began to flee from one village to another and toward India. Many of those reluctant to leave their homes were forced to flee by mothers and sisters concerned for their safety." (Death By Government, p. 329.) Rummel describes (p. 323) a chilling gendercidal ritual, reminiscent of Nazi procedure towards Jewish males: "In what became province-wide acts of genocide, Hindus were sought out and killed on the spot. As a matter of course, soldiers would check males for the obligated circumcision among Moslems. If circumcised, they might live; if not, sure death."

Atrocities against Bengali women

Bengali women were targeted for gender-selective atrocities and abuses, notably gang sexual assault and rape/murder, from the earliest days of the Pakistani genocide. Indeed, despite (and in part because of) the overwhelming targeting of males for mass murder, it is for the systematic brutalization of women that the "Rape of Bangladesh" is best known to western observers.

In her ground-breaking book, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller likened the 1971 events in Bangladesh to the Japanese rapes in Nanjing and German rapes in Russia during World War II. "... 200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped. Eighty percent of the raped women were Moslems, reflecting the population of Bangladesh, but Hindu and Christian women were not exempt. ... Hit-and-run rape of large numbers of Bengali women was brutally simple in terms of logistics as the Pakistani regulars swept through and occupied the tiny, populous land ..." (p. 81).

"Rape in Bangladesh had hardly been restricted to beauty," Brownmiller writes. "Girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted ... Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use." Some women may have been raped as many as eighty times in a night (Brownmiller, p. 83). How many died from this atrocious treatment, and how many more women were murdered as part of the generalized campaign of destruction and slaughter, can only be guessed at ...

Who was responsible?

... Not since Hitler invaded Russia had there been so vast a massacre." (Payne, Massacre, p. 29.)

There is no doubt that the mass killing in Bangladesh was among the most carefully and centrally planned of modern genocides. A cabal of five Pakistani generals orchestrated the events: President Yahya Khan, General Tikka Khan, chief of staff General Pirzada, security chief General Umar Khan, and intelligence chief General Akbar Khan. The U.S. government, long supportive of military rule in Pakistan, supplied some $3.8 million in military equipment to the dictatorship after the onset of the genocide, "and after a government spokesman told Congress that all shipments to Yahya Khan's regime had ceased." (Payne, Massacre, p. 102.)

None of the generals involved in the genocide has ever been brought to trial, and all remain at large in Pakistan and other countries. Several movements have arisen to try to bring them before an international tribunal (see Bangladesh links for further information).

Democide

Democide is a term created by political scientist R. J. Rummel in order to create a broader concept than the

legal definition of genocide. Democide is defined as "The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder"

there are several statistical charts in that web page, providing numbers of mass killing and genocides or

century and millenium. like one originally taken from Barbara Harff's "Genocides and political mass murders: No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?" (Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955)

BTW - Pakistan remained almost continuously close US' ally in the region, till now. although it has supported Taliban for a long time, and it's nuclear developement is much earlier and ahead of N. Korea. it has also been often critisized for human rights violations. not to mention that it's de facto Head of Government, President (Gen.) Musharraf has been in power since '99 - almost for 10 years already - after he has ousted democratically elected Prime Minister and later on held on power by hook or by crook.

General Pervez Musharraf

Sharif was put under house arrest and later exiled. He and other democratic leaders have subsequently been prevented from entering Pakistan. Reportedly, the disagreement between Musharraf and Sharif centered around the democratically elected Prime Minister's desire to find a diplomatic resolution to the [Kargil] conflict ...

In a list titled "The World's 10 Worst Dictators" prepared by Parade magazine in 2005, Pervez Musharraf is placed at number 7 in the ranking for the first time, in previous years he never appeared.[30] He subsequently dropped out of this listing in 2006

yet somehow, Musharraf is still enjoying position of complete power, not unlike Saddam - a dictator! yeah, may be he is not monster as Saddam - but certainly no less a strongman, which were always been favored by US - never mind democratics !

I wonder, if eventually he'll follow the steps of his fellow muslims as Talibans, Osama, Saddam and others - who's originally been US's pets and later turned against their masters. and what would it take to turn him against US - if at all. because it looks like he is too smart and would rather dance under their flute till the end, mostly as he claims because he has no choise:

Pervez Musharraf appears on ‘The Daily Show’

Jon Stewart asks Pakistani president: ‘Where's Osama bin Laden?’

“I don’t know,” replied Musharraf. “You know where he is? You lead on, we’ll follow you.” [ sounds more like: "whatever master will say - we are ready to follow!"]

The Pakistan president, who is on tour of the U.S., appeared on the program to promote his new memoir, “In the Line of Fire.” The book has drawn headlines for, among other things, the Pakistan president’s claim that after the Sept. 11 attacks he had no choice but to support the U.S. led war on terror groups or face an American “onslaught.”

On balancing the wishes of the U.S. and Pakistan, which is largely anti-American, Musharraf told Stewart: “I’ve had to learn the art of tightrope-walking many times, and I think I’ve become quite an expert of that.”

Stewart ... asked Musharraf if he had omitted any mention of the war in Iraq in his memoir because it has “gone so well.” Musharraf again laughed, but said: “It has led certainly to more extremism and terrorism around the world.”

what if he does get a choise?

The Difference in the Treatment Accorded by the MSM to Strongmen Aligned with the US and Despots Opposed to the US:

Where the MSM had called unequivocally for moving heaven and earth to go after Pinochet while depicting Chile's former head as nothing but a monster, they have taken to referring to the environment in which Warsaw's Stanislaw Wojciech Wielgus met his fate as "Eastern Europe's widening witch hunt for former Communist secret police informers".

To go after Pinochet (as well as his henchmen and people such as the officers forming the 1970s junta of Argentina) is necessary, even heroic, but to go after the leaders of communist states (or their henchmen) amounts to nothing but a "witch hunt"?!

Read Brent Bozell's Dying dictators and double standards (written two to three weeks before Saddam's execution). He hits the nail straight on the head:

"The more things change, the more they stay the same. While conservatives still seek to defend both democracy and American interests, liberals are still fawning over communist and terrorist thugs."

few years ago I remember BBC program called something like State sponsored terrorism. among many parts as the Contra war in Nicaragua, Argentina has also been mentioned, its "Dirty War" in particular.

this is fresh news today, many participants in that dictatorship are still not punished:

Death squad suspect held in Argentina

Mon Jan 8

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A judge investigating the killings of dissidents in the turbulent run-up to Argentina's last dictatorship detained a retired police chief Monday on suspicion he led a 1970s-era death squad....

Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed as dead or missing from the dictatorship era that drew to a close in 1983. Human rights group say the toll was closer to 30,000.

Dirty War

During this period, the junta led by Videla until 1981, then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, was responsible for the illegal arrest, torturing, killing or forced disappearance of between 9,000 (the minimum confirmed number of those killed) and 30,000 Argentinians. These crimes were part of what has been called Operation Condor. Documents show that Argentina's brutal policies were known by the U.S. State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under Gerald Ford's presidency (see also: U.S. involvement

and Henry Kissinger: Argentinian junta).

... several former Ford Argentine workers have deposed a suit against the U.S.-based company, alleging that the local managers worked with the security forces to detain union members on the premises and torture them.... Ford has been accused since 1998 of involvement in state repression, but has denied the claims.....

The junta relinquished power in 1983. After democratic elections... gruesome details, including documentation of the disappearance of nearly 11,000 people, shocked the world.

Jorge Rafael Videla, head of the junta, was among the generals convicted of human rights crimes, including forced disappearances, torture, murders and kidnappings...

only some people responcible were ever tried and convicted, and most of them were pardoned later.

Operation Condor

Operation Condor ... was a campaign of counter-terrorism and intelligence operations implemented by authoritarian right-wing dictatorships that dominated the Southern Cone in Latin America from the 1950s to 1980s, heavily relying on numerous assassinations.... caused an unknown number of deaths, due to the covering up of the different governments involved.

The operation was jointly conducted by the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the mid-1970s. The right-wing military governments of these countries, led by dictators such as Videla, Pinochet and Stroessner agreed to cooperate in sending teams into other countries, including France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and the United States to locate, observe and assassinate political opponents.

Operation Condor... was given at least tacit approval by the United States ... Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in the Nixon administration, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well-aware of the Condor plan. On March 6, 2001, the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. This 1978 cable released in 2000 under Chile's declassification project showed that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America"....

A "U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America", "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries", was acknowledged by the cable.

(see also: Operation Condor: U.S. involvement) 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who had published several articles on Operation Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor"

The "information exchange" (via telex) included torture techniques (i.e. near drowning or playing the sound recordings of victims who were being tortured to their families). The infamous "death flights" were also widely used, in order to make the corpses, and therefore evidence, disappear. There were also many cases of child abduction.

The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released in November 2000 on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final batch of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.

On December 22, 1992, a significant amount of information about Operation Condor came to light when José Fernandez, a Paraguayan judge, visited a police station in the Lambaré suburb of Asunción to look for files on a former political prisoner. Instead he found what became known as the "terror archives", detailing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans secretly kidnapped, tortured and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Some of these countries have since used portions of this archive to prosecute former military officers. The archives counted 50,000 persons murdered, 30,000 "desaparecidos" and 400,000 incarcerated people.

The Operation Condor officially ended with the ousting of the Argentinean dictatorship in 1983, although the killings continued.

U.S. Congressman Edward Koch

In February 2004, John Dinges, a reporter, published "The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents" (The New Press, 2004). In this book, he reveals how Uruguayan military officials threatened to assassinate US Congressman Edward Koch in mid-1976. In late July 1976, the CIA station chief in Montevideo received information about it, but recommended that the Agency take no action... In an interview for the book, Koch said that George H.W. Bush, CIA's director at the time, informed him in October 1976 - more than two months afterward, and after Orlando Letelier's murder - that his sponsorship of legislation to cut off US military assistance to Uruguay on human rights grounds had provoked secret police officials to "put a contract out for you". In mid October 1976, Koch wrote to the Justice Departement asking for FBI protection. None was provided for him.

Kissinger has been accused by several governments in relation to Operation Condor. however he is well and cicking - in fact he continues advising US government, like for example in regard to Iraq War.

yet somehow he's even received Nobel Peace prize - simply amazing! at least Vietnamese guy had decency to refuse his prize:

Henry Kissinger

Kissinger was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize along with North Vietnam diplomatic representative Le Duc Tho for their work in negotiating the ceasefires contained in the Paris Peace Accords on 'Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam', even though the conflict would continue for two more years after the American withdrawal.[9] Kissinger accepted the award, but Tho, being so far the only person who have done so, declined, stating that his country was still not at peace....

Accusations of war crimes and legal difficulties

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

... Christopher Hitchens wrote The Trial of Henry Kissinger, a scathing critique of Kissinger's policy that accused him of war crimes, particularly for his policy toward Vietnam, Cyprus, Cambodia, Chile and East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh). Kissinger became a focal point of criticism from the political Left and certain human rights NGOs. According to the book, his foreign policy was chiefly concerned with attaining allies that had valuable geographical and strategic locations, such as Turkey and Pakistan, and turned a blind eye when these allies attacked democracies and murdered countless innocent people.

The book was later adapted into a documentary entitled The Trials of Henry Kissinger. The film focused on Kissinger's policies towards Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, and Chile.

With the recent declassification of Nixon and Ford administration documents relating to U.S. policy toward South America and East Timor, Kissinger has come under fire ... Following the release of these documents, officials in France, Brazil, Chile, Spain, and Argentina have sought him for questioning in connection with suspected war crimes such as Operation Condor, hindering his travel abroad...

Cambodian Incursion

The Cambodian Incursion was a military campaign during the Vietnam War that culminated in a limited-objective invasion of Cambodia in 1970. The campaign was known officially in the U.S. Army as the Sanctuary Counteroffensive. U.S. incursions into Cambodia began in 1965 with numerous tactical bombings which thereafter were escalated into an intensive carpet bombing campaign ... until Congress imposed an end to the bombing in August 1973. The total tonnage dropped exceeded that dropped by the combined Allied forces during World War II, including the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Statistical summary

For the period of October 4, 1965 to August 15, 1973:

Total sorties: 230,516 (on 113,716 sites)

Total tonnage dropped: 2,756,941 tons

percentage of bombing that was indiscriminate: 10%

estimated number of Cambodian civilians killed: more than 150,000

Khmer Rouge

Since the beginning of Pol Pot's rule, the Soviet Union ceased all aid to Cambodia, because of its anti-Soviet, anti-Vietnamese stance. Without the Soviet support, China and the United States came to aid the Khmer regime.

The U.S. voted for the KR to retain their seat at the UN, along with China.... Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said that in 1979, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could." According to Brzezinski, the United States "winked, semi-publicly" at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge.

and it is more ironic, that Commie Khmer Rouge has named Cambodia as "Democratic Kampuchea" ! and more ironic that US has supported it through another Commie country - China !

Cambodia under Pol Pot (1975-1979)

Communist Cambodia under the government of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge party from 1975 until 1979 was officially named Democratic Kampuchea. The period saw the death of approximately 2 million Cambodians through the combined result of political executions, starvation, and forced labor, about 25% to 30% of the entire population.

Pol Pot has died his own death, as Pinochet - never punished.

many of his comrade-brothers are still alive and also never punished.

now, another dictator, Suharto of Indonesia, is also still alive and never punished:

Haji Mohammad Suharto

Both supporters and critics of Suharto acknowledge that the period of civil war was marked by human rights abuses, with estimated civilian casualties ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions....

Political purges

Between 300,000 and one million Indonesians were killed in the mass-killings following the arrest of PKI members in Suharto's cabinet on October 6, [1965]]. [1] Lists of suspected communists were supplied to the Indonesian military by the CIA. A CIA study of the events in Indonesia assessed that "In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century..."

It must also be noted that the CIA was not the only party to the issue, and there was also British involvement in the events.

In 1975, after Portugal withdrew from its colony of East Timor and the Fretilin movement momentarily took power, Suharto ordered troops to invade the country. Later the puppet government installed by Indonesia requested the area be annexed to the country. It was estimated that 200,000 people, roughly a third of the local population, were killed by the Indonesian forces or affiliated proxy forces.

after examplary execution of Saddam and in the light of bringing justice to all the families of victims in those mass-slaughters, it is only fair and logical to bring to justice Suharto and all other guys, former dictators - isn't it?

then why they are not punished yet?

then why they are not punished yet?

Did you read Brent Bozell's: "Dying dictators and double standards"?

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