Operation Condor North - Buzzflash (lib-dem) Editorial

[Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers@xxxxxxxxx>]

Courtesy of Tony Black, [A-list]

Torture, Murder, Bush, Kissinger and The Mothers of the Disappeared in 
Argentina: America on the Brink of Horror

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Sun, 10/08/2006 - 11:38am. Editorials

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
October 9, 2006

Dateline -- Buenos Aires, Argentina

For some 30 years, the Argentine women known as the Madres (Mothers) de 
La Plaza de Mayo have marched every Thursday in front of the 
Presidential Palace of Argentina. They gather in memory of their 
children and grandchildren, who were among the estimated 30,000 people 
who disappeared during "Operation Condor." Another 50,000 people were 
murdered.

"Operation Condor" reached its peak in the 1970s. With assistance from 
the United States, and the support and knowledge of Henry Kissinger, 
five of the southern cone South American nations conducted a campaign of 
unspeakable torture and killing against their own citizens.

When you look at the photos carried by many of the Madres de La Plaza de 
Mayo, you see middle class men in suits and ties and nicely dressed 
women. You see young children with smiling faces.

What happened during Operation Condor is so horrific â all done in the 
name of the safety and security of "the nation" â that it is barely 
speakable. The torture included one of the Bush Administrationâs 
favorite techniques â waterboarding â and many other methods. Families 
were forced to watch or listen to their love ones being mutilated. 
Friends were required to conduct torture on those that they knew. 
Pregnant women were allowed to stay alive until their babies were born, 
then they were murdered. Their children were given to military families 
who adopted them.

In a New Yorker article a few years back, a former member of the 
Argentinian military recalled flights over the Atlantic where drugged 
and bound Argentinians, whose interrogation was finished, were thrown 
alive into the ocean. Bodies of the already killed were dumped into the 
Rio de la Plata, which divides Argentina and Uruguay.

Many Americans will say that this horror cannot happen in the United 
States, but they are wrong. Legally, as a result of the legislation 
passed in September, it is now quite possible.

As was the case in Argentina, America now allows the President or his 
designate to declare a person an "enemy combatant" (or enemy of the 
state) without any judicial process. In short, a person becomes an 
"enemy of America" on the mere basis that Bush or his designate says so.

The fundamental problem with such power is that it allows tyrannical 
authority to detain anyone, without the right of habeas corpus, on the 
mere whim or suspicion of the executive branch of government. No one 
will be informed of the detention, no court will review it, no recourse 
will be allowed the relatives or friends of the detained.

They will become the new "disappeared," as many foreigners have already 
become in the CIA gulag of secret prisons, and the not-so-secret jails 
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new law is vague enough that the Bush Administration, which drives a 
Mack truck through loopholes or openly disregards congressional laws, 
can justify arresting American citizens it simply declares are providing 
support to those it declares are enemies of America.

It is "Operation Condor" all over again.

What one must remember about "Operation Condor" and Gitmo, for example, 
is that they were basically horrifying fishing expeditions. One did not 
need to be guilty of anything. One was adjudged guilty merely because a 
state authorized agent declared one so. In "Operation Condor" â as at 
Gitmo â the vast majority of people were detained and tortured merely on 
the suspicion that they might have some knowledge of value. And if they 
didnât, it was their bad luck â and their detention would be a sacrifice 
paid for the "security of the nation."

It is not a large leap â however much Americans would like to think 
otherwise â from the summary arrest, torture and occasional murder of 
foreigners to applying the same process to residents of the United 
States. Suspicion or politically-motivated accusations of the government 
become equivalent to a sentence of guilt. Bush has already declared 
persons who disagree with his Iraq policies "tools of the terorrists."

To those who say that the recently passed legislation may allow Bush to 
authorize torture as he deems fit, but that it prohibits murder, we have 
two words: Abu Ghraib. How quickly we have forgotten that a number of 
detainees at Abu Ghraib were tortured to death, with no one in the Bush 
Administration held accountable.

One cannot fully control torture as if it were a thermostat. When you 
start down the road of torture, people are going to die accidentally. 
And then when the culture of torture becomes ingrained in the military, 
people will start to be murdered. It is hard to contain torture; it is 
impossible to just torture the "guilty." Soon, it becomes â as it did in 
"Operation Condor" â a nightmare combination of "trolling" and 
"cleansing" the political opposition.

In such an environment, torture is the first step on a descent into 
state-authorized murder to achieve political goals, not necessarily 
"national security."

The mothers of the disappeared, clutching photos now more than three 
decades old, know this truth.
It is said, in Bob Woodwardâs book "State of Denial," that Henry 
Kissinger is now privately advising Bush and Cheney on the Iraq War.

It was Henry Kissinger who brought us a prolonged war in Vietnam, the 
bombing that led to the Khmer Rouge massacre in Cambodia, the death 
squads in Central America, the East Timor slaughter, and Operation 
Condor -- among other potential war crimes.

It is not a coincidence that he has allegedly returned as an advisor to 
Bush and Cheney on the debacle in Iraq â and perhaps on other matters. 
Kissinger believed and believes that murder in the name of some vague 
notion of "American supremacy" is justified (although he wonât publicly 
acknowledge it). More than 80,000 victims of Operation Condor are 
murdered testaments to his worldview. (Kissinger will not travel to 
several nations, including France, because he would face judicial 
questioning in these countries about his role in Operation Condor.)

He now has the ear of a man who has been given Operation Condor-like 
authority.

Yes, it is true that murder per se is not sanctioned in the new 
Congressional legislation; but how would we know if someone has been 
murdered if we are not told why or by whom they have been detained?

That is how the children and grandchildren of the Madres de La Plaza de 
Mayo came to be "los desaparecidos."

The mothers and fathers who march in Plaza de Mayo each Thursday are now 
senior citizens. Their losses are three decades behind them, but still 
they demand accountability for the nightmare of abduction, torture and 
death that gripped their nation and the surrounding countries of 
Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia.

When the mothers first began marching, Operation Condor was still in 
place. So it followed that some of them, including the founder, 
"disappeared" because they demanded the right of habeas corpus for their 
loved ones.

It is early October and the beginning of spring in the Southern 
Hemisphere. "Operation Condor" appears a distant memory amidst the 
bustling city of Buenos Aires. Trees and flowers are blossoming. Lovers 
openly embrace and kiss in the many parks. It is the annual time of 
seasonal renewal in Argentina.

For some nations, their long nightmare of people being declared "enemies 
of the state" by faceless men, then tortured and killed is over.

For the U.S., the long nightmare of the disappeared is just beginning to 
take shape.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL