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Judi Lynn

(164,122 posts)
4. Excuse me, they are the SAME, as I said, and as Army Maj. Joseph Blair says.
Sun Dec 20, 2015, 10:08 PM
Dec 2015

First, you are not the one to censor material for other people.

Next:


Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the US Army School of the Americas,[1][2] is a United States Department of Defense Institute located at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia, that provides military training to government personnel in US-allied Latin American nations.

The school was founded in 1946 and from 1961 was assigned the specific goal of teaching "anti-communist counterinsurgency training," a role which it would fulfill for the rest of the Cold War.[3] In this period, it educated several Latin American dictators, generations of their military and, during the 1980s, included the uses of torture in its curriculum.[4][5] In 2000/2001, the institute was renamed to WHINSEC.[6][7]:233

. . .

By 2000 the School of the Americas was under increasing criticism in the United States for training students who later participated in undemocratic governments and committed human rights abuses. In 2000 Congress, through the FY01 National Defense Act, withdrew the Secretary of the Army's authority to operate USARSA.[8]

The next year, WHINSEC was founded as a successor institute. U.S. Army Maj. Joseph Blair, a former director of instruction at the school, said in 2002 that "there are no substantive changes besides the name. [...] They teach the identical courses that I taught and changed the course names and use the same manuals."[1]

. . .

Human rights violations by graduates[edit]

WHINSEC has been criticized for human rights violations committed by former students.[1][31][32]

According to the Center for International Policy, "The School of the Americas had been questioned for years, as it trained many military personnel before and during the years of the 'national security doctrine' – the dirty war years in the Southern Cone and the civil war years in Central America – in which the armed forces within several Latin American countries ruled or had disproportionate government influence and committed serious human rights violations in those countries."[citation needed] SOA and WHINSEC graduates continue to surface in news reports regarding both current human rights cases and new reports.

Defenders argue that today the curriculum includes human rights,[33] but according to Human Rights Watch, "training alone, even when it includes human rights instruction, does not prevent human rights abuses."[31]

WHINSEC has said "that no school should be held accountable for the actions of its graduates."[33]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation

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You just missed the annual Vigil at Ft. Benning, Georgia, School of the Americas, November 20 to 22nd, 2015.
It's been an oberservation by people of faith in humanity who want to see the school of the assassins closed. DU members attend these vigils.

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