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#Reagan's Chickens Home to Roost?
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Zepp
May 23, 2013, 1:39:54 AM5/23/13
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http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/17558-reagans-chickens-
home-to-roost
Reagan's Chickens Home to Roost?
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
22 May 13
he guilty get some breathing room, but not safety yet
Former members of the Reagan administration are breathing easier, now
that they are somewhat less likely to face criminal charges for their
part in the Guatemalan genocide of 1982-1983, supported by Reagan
policies.
The threat that former officials might be held accountable for genocidal
policies of the Reagan administration increased on May 10, when a
Guatemalan lower court convicted the country's former president, General
Efrain Rios Montt, 86, of genocide and crimes against humanity for his
part in the killing of thousands of Guatemalan civilians.
Rios Montt's conviction and sentence included an order by Judge Iris
Yassmin Barrios to Attorney General Paz Y Paz to further investigate
everyone else involved in Rios Montt's crimes, an investigation that
would include many Guatemalans including the country's current president,
as well as U.S. military advisors, the CIA and other American agents, and
Washington officials like Elliott Abrams and others directly involved in
supporting the Guatemalan governmental genocide.
But this threat of prosecution for accessories and accomplices to
genocide didn't last long, as Guatemala's highest court, the
Constitutional Court of Guatemala, ruled by a vote of 3-2 on May 20 that
the lower court's proceedings going back to April 19 were dismissed, thus
annulling the verdict.
The Genocidal General's Trial May Yet Begin Again
But the Constitutional Court ruling also allows the trial to resume at
some undetermined time in the future. The dismissal sets the trial back
to April 19, when a judge who had heard earlier but separate proceedings
relating to Rios Montt asserted jurisdiction over the continuing trial
that had started a month earlier. Judge Barrios overruled the prior judge
supported by Attorney General Paz Y Pay, who said his claim was unlawful.
The jurisdictional dispute proceeded to the Constitutional Court while
Rios Montt's trial continued to its unsurprising conviction, given the
weight of the evidence against him and his administration.
Rios Montt came to power in 1982 through a military coup, after he had
lost a democratic election for the second time, claiming massive fraud
both in 1974 and 1982. Between elections, in 1978, Rios Montt had left
the Catholic Church and become a minister in the evangelical/Pentecostal
Church of the Word, based in California. His friends and supporters
included Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson, and others connected
with the evangelical movement that helped elect Ronald Reagan president
in 1980.
Rios Montt would be the American-supported dictator of Guatemala for only
17 months, before he fell to another military coup. But in that time he
was responsible for government forces that killed more than 1,700 people,
mostly indigenous Mayans, and also tortured, raped, kidnapped, and
brutalized thousands more – for which he was found guilty on May 10.
Ronald Reagan and His Administration Supported Gen. Rios Montt
President Reagan praised Rios Montt for his anticommunism and claimed
that human rights were improving under his rule, while human rights
organizations condemned the general and the army. Amnesty International
estimated that Rios Montt's forced killed more than 10,000 rural
Guatemalans from March to August 1982, and drove more than 100,000 from
their homes.
Reagan evaded Congressional oversight in order to provide Rios Montt with
millions of dollars of military aid. When Reagan and the general met in
Honduras in December 1982, Reagan spoke warmly of him: "I know that
President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment.
I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to
promote social justice. My administration will do all it can to support
his progressive efforts."
"The next day," the London Review of Books reported in 2004, "one of
Guatemala's elite platoons entered a jungle village called Las Dos Erres
and killed 162 of its inhabitants, 67 of them children." The report
continued:
Soldiers grabbed babies and toddlers by their legs, swung them in the
air, and smashed their heads against a wall. Older children and adults
were forced to kneel at the edge of a well, where a single blow from a
sledgehammer sent them plummeting below. The platoon then raped a
selection of women and girls it had saved for last, pummelling their
stomachs in order to force the pregnant among them to miscarry.
They tossed the women into the well and filled it with dirt, burying
an unlucky few alive. The only traces of the bodies later visitors would
find were blood on the walls and placentas and umbilical cords on the
ground.
On another occasion, Reagan claimed that the dictator was getting a "bum
rap."
In 1983, then assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams told PBS, "the
amount of killing of innocent civilians is being reduced step by step....
We think that kind of progress needs to be rewarded and encouraged."
Guatemalans Have Struggled for Decades to Get Justice
The currently interrupted trial is part of a judicial process that began
in 2001, with a ruling by the Constitutional Court on March 21, exposing
Rios Montt and others of the ruling party to prosecution for corruption.
The next day, two grenades were thrown in the yard of Judge Iris Yassmin
Barrios. Three days later, the head of the Constitutional Court, Judge
Conchita Mazariegos, had shots fired at her house.
The criminal role of the United States in Guatemala has continued at
least since 1954, when the Eisenhower administration engineered a CIA-
backed coup d'etat against the country's elected president.
American reporting on the Rios Montt trial and America's role in genocide
in Central America goes largely unreported in the United States.
According to FAIR, none of the three major TV networks have mentioned the
trial since it began. Perhaps the most detailed coverage has come from
DemocracyNOW, which summed up the present situation this way:
In the run-up to its latest decision to overturn, the court had come
under heavy lobbying from Rios Montt supporters, including Guatemala's
powerful business association, CACIF. Rios Montt remains in a military
hospital where he was admitted last week. His legal status is now up in
the air. He will likely be released into house arrest, and it is unclear
when or if he will return to court.
For the moment, that leaves surviving Reagan administration officials
beyond the reach of Guatemalan law and international law.
In 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi, head of the human rights commission
uncovering the truth of the disappearances associated with the military,
including Rios Montt, was assassinated. His successor is Catholic bishop
Mario Enrique Rios Montt, the convicted general's brother. The trial and
conviction of Bishop Gerardi's killers in 2001 was the first time members
of the military were tried in a civilian court.
--
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Not dead, in jail or a slave? Thank a liberal!
home-to-roost
Reagan's Chickens Home to Roost?
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
22 May 13
he guilty get some breathing room, but not safety yet
Former members of the Reagan administration are breathing easier, now
that they are somewhat less likely to face criminal charges for their
part in the Guatemalan genocide of 1982-1983, supported by Reagan
policies.
The threat that former officials might be held accountable for genocidal
policies of the Reagan administration increased on May 10, when a
Guatemalan lower court convicted the country's former president, General
Efrain Rios Montt, 86, of genocide and crimes against humanity for his
part in the killing of thousands of Guatemalan civilians.
Rios Montt's conviction and sentence included an order by Judge Iris
Yassmin Barrios to Attorney General Paz Y Paz to further investigate
everyone else involved in Rios Montt's crimes, an investigation that
would include many Guatemalans including the country's current president,
as well as U.S. military advisors, the CIA and other American agents, and
Washington officials like Elliott Abrams and others directly involved in
supporting the Guatemalan governmental genocide.
But this threat of prosecution for accessories and accomplices to
genocide didn't last long, as Guatemala's highest court, the
Constitutional Court of Guatemala, ruled by a vote of 3-2 on May 20 that
the lower court's proceedings going back to April 19 were dismissed, thus
annulling the verdict.
The Genocidal General's Trial May Yet Begin Again
But the Constitutional Court ruling also allows the trial to resume at
some undetermined time in the future. The dismissal sets the trial back
to April 19, when a judge who had heard earlier but separate proceedings
relating to Rios Montt asserted jurisdiction over the continuing trial
that had started a month earlier. Judge Barrios overruled the prior judge
supported by Attorney General Paz Y Pay, who said his claim was unlawful.
The jurisdictional dispute proceeded to the Constitutional Court while
Rios Montt's trial continued to its unsurprising conviction, given the
weight of the evidence against him and his administration.
Rios Montt came to power in 1982 through a military coup, after he had
lost a democratic election for the second time, claiming massive fraud
both in 1974 and 1982. Between elections, in 1978, Rios Montt had left
the Catholic Church and become a minister in the evangelical/Pentecostal
Church of the Word, based in California. His friends and supporters
included Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson, and others connected
with the evangelical movement that helped elect Ronald Reagan president
in 1980.
Rios Montt would be the American-supported dictator of Guatemala for only
17 months, before he fell to another military coup. But in that time he
was responsible for government forces that killed more than 1,700 people,
mostly indigenous Mayans, and also tortured, raped, kidnapped, and
brutalized thousands more – for which he was found guilty on May 10.
Ronald Reagan and His Administration Supported Gen. Rios Montt
President Reagan praised Rios Montt for his anticommunism and claimed
that human rights were improving under his rule, while human rights
organizations condemned the general and the army. Amnesty International
estimated that Rios Montt's forced killed more than 10,000 rural
Guatemalans from March to August 1982, and drove more than 100,000 from
their homes.
Reagan evaded Congressional oversight in order to provide Rios Montt with
millions of dollars of military aid. When Reagan and the general met in
Honduras in December 1982, Reagan spoke warmly of him: "I know that
President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment.
I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to
promote social justice. My administration will do all it can to support
his progressive efforts."
"The next day," the London Review of Books reported in 2004, "one of
Guatemala's elite platoons entered a jungle village called Las Dos Erres
and killed 162 of its inhabitants, 67 of them children." The report
continued:
Soldiers grabbed babies and toddlers by their legs, swung them in the
air, and smashed their heads against a wall. Older children and adults
were forced to kneel at the edge of a well, where a single blow from a
sledgehammer sent them plummeting below. The platoon then raped a
selection of women and girls it had saved for last, pummelling their
stomachs in order to force the pregnant among them to miscarry.
They tossed the women into the well and filled it with dirt, burying
an unlucky few alive. The only traces of the bodies later visitors would
find were blood on the walls and placentas and umbilical cords on the
ground.
On another occasion, Reagan claimed that the dictator was getting a "bum
rap."
In 1983, then assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams told PBS, "the
amount of killing of innocent civilians is being reduced step by step....
We think that kind of progress needs to be rewarded and encouraged."
Guatemalans Have Struggled for Decades to Get Justice
The currently interrupted trial is part of a judicial process that began
in 2001, with a ruling by the Constitutional Court on March 21, exposing
Rios Montt and others of the ruling party to prosecution for corruption.
The next day, two grenades were thrown in the yard of Judge Iris Yassmin
Barrios. Three days later, the head of the Constitutional Court, Judge
Conchita Mazariegos, had shots fired at her house.
The criminal role of the United States in Guatemala has continued at
least since 1954, when the Eisenhower administration engineered a CIA-
backed coup d'etat against the country's elected president.
American reporting on the Rios Montt trial and America's role in genocide
in Central America goes largely unreported in the United States.
According to FAIR, none of the three major TV networks have mentioned the
trial since it began. Perhaps the most detailed coverage has come from
DemocracyNOW, which summed up the present situation this way:
In the run-up to its latest decision to overturn, the court had come
under heavy lobbying from Rios Montt supporters, including Guatemala's
powerful business association, CACIF. Rios Montt remains in a military
hospital where he was admitted last week. His legal status is now up in
the air. He will likely be released into house arrest, and it is unclear
when or if he will return to court.
For the moment, that leaves surviving Reagan administration officials
beyond the reach of Guatemalan law and international law.
In 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi, head of the human rights commission
uncovering the truth of the disappearances associated with the military,
including Rios Montt, was assassinated. His successor is Catholic bishop
Mario Enrique Rios Montt, the convicted general's brother. The trial and
conviction of Bishop Gerardi's killers in 2001 was the first time members
of the military were tried in a civilian court.
--
Subscribe:
zepps_essay...@yahoogroups.com
zepps_news...@yahoogroups.com
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Not dead, in jail or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Steve
May 23, 2013, 6:48:26 AM5/23/13
to
On Thu, 23 May 2013 05:39:54 +0000 (UTC), Zepp <de...@gone.com> wrote:
>http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/17558-reagans-chickens-
>home-to-roost
>
>
>Reagan's
<LOL> @ Leftist propaganda
>http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/17558-reagans-chickens-
>home-to-roost
>
>
>Reagan's
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