Another reminder of the "conservative movement"'s "glory days", when the revered St. Ronald was Saving The World From Communism:
consortiumnews.com
Reagan & the Salvadoran Baby SkullsBy Robert Parry
January 30, 2007
Ronald Reagan’s many admirers may find this idea offensive, but – given a new report by the Washington Post – it might be fitting to have a display at Reagan National Airport to show how Salvadoran baby skulls were used as candle holders and good luck charms. Perhaps the presentation could contain skeletal remains of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans, too. It might be modeled after skeletons on display in Cambodia from the slaughters by the Khmer Rouge. After all, it was President Reagan – more than any other person – who justified and facilitated the barbarity that raged through Central America in the 1980s, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, clergy and students, men, women and children.
Reagan portrayed the bloody conflicts as a necessary front in the Cold War, but the Central American violence was always more about entrenched ruling elites determined to retain their privileges against impoverished peasants, including descendants of the region’s Maya Indians, seeking social, political and economic reforms. One of the most notorious acts of brutality occurred in December 1981 in and around the Salvadoran town of El Mozote. The government’s Atlacatl Battalion – freshly trained and newly armed thanks to Reagan’s hard-line policies – systematically slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.
When the atrocity was revealed by reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Reagan administration showed off its new strategy of “perception management,” denying the facts and challenging the integrity of the journalists. Because of that P.R. offensive, the reality about the El Mozote massacre remained in doubt for almost a decade until the war ended and a United Nations forensic team dug up hundreds of skeletons, including many little ones of children.
Now the Washington Post has added a new grisly detail. Several months after the massacre, the Salvadoran army returned to the scene and
collected the skulls of some El Mozote children as novelty items, the Post reported.
“They worked well as candle holders,” recalled one of the soldiers, Jose Wilfredo Salgado,
“and better as good luck charms.”------------------------------------------
Full article at:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2007/012907.htmlAnd, of course, thanks to that PR offensive, more Americans were outraged by Nancy's astrologer than by what our nation's government was supporting. Anytime anyone asks "Why do they hate us?", it's not "for our freedoms", it's for this kind of barbarity.