I'm sure you will be belatedly outraged to read of the atrocities commited in Central America by Reagan Administration supported death squads. Sorry, I don't have any of the gory pictures you lot like to pore over -- a-la the images of dead Kurds you employed to so effectively. Nonetheless, read it and weep:
<ul>The El Mozote episode is, sadly, only one example of violence borne of Reagan’s foreign policy. The troops that did the killing were supported by his administration because they were fighting leftist rebels. A 1992 report produced by a UN-sanctioned truth commission described the awful event:

"On 10 December 1981, in the village of El Mozote in the Department of Morazan, units of the Atlacatl Battalion detained, without resistance, all the men, women and children who were in the place…. Early next morning, 11 December, the soldiers reassembled the entire population in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked everyone up in different groups in the church, the convent and various houses."


"During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture and execute the men in various locations. Around noon, they began taking the women in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the convent were machine-gunned through the windows. After exterminating the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings."

The report noted that "the Atlacatl Battalion was a ‘Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion’ or BIRI,’ that is, a unit specially trained for ‘counter-insurgency’ warfare. It was the first unit of its kind in the [El Salvadoran] armed forces and had completed its training under the supervision of United States military advisors, at the beginning of that year, 1981."

When two reporters—Raymond Bonner of The New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of The Washington Post —reported the massacre in January 1982, the Reagan administration denied it had occurred. Reagan’s point-man on Latin America, Elliott Abrams, told Congress that these reports were no more than commie propaganda. That is, he lied. (Today, Abrams, that lover of truth and human rights, is a staff member on Bush’s National Security Council responsible for Middle East matters.) A forensic investigation conducted in the early 1990s proved that the massacre had happened. And the truth commission’s report noted that "two hundred forty-five cartridge cases recovered from the El Mozote site were studied. Of these, 184 had discernable headstamps, identifying the ammunition as having been manufactured for the United States Government at Lake City, Missouri. ...All of the projectiles except one appear to have been fired from United States-manufactured M-16 rifles." (<a href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/reagans_bloody_legacy.php" target="_blank">http://www.tompaine.com/articles/reagans_bloody_legacy.php</a>)</ul>

I'm sure that this never happened. What are you going to say next......That it's US policy to torture prisoners.......... Ha ! , Never in a million years.................(Well 20 years, anyway )

c'mon, those were only what, a few hundred villagers? saddam killed hundreds of thousands. while reagan watched.

Glad you brought this to light.... historically that is nothing new to this country.

More than 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned behind barbed wire during World War II......over half were children.

The railway bridge at No Gun Ri, Korea where U.S. troops slaughtered 300 Korean civilians
One of the last acts of the Clinton administration in January 2001 was the admitting that its troops had carried out the massacre at No Gun Ri in 1950. Outgoing US Defense Secretary William Cohen announced plans for a memorial and commemorative scholarships "as a symbol of our deep regret". It was in June 2000 that the President of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung, called on the US government to conduct an inquiry into the alleged mass killing of Korean civilian refugees by US soldiers at a railway bridge No Gun Ri, South Korea on July 26th,1950.

Wow.... 50 years it took for a u.s. president to admit it. Kudos to Clintion for doing so. What about Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and Ike?

On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company, a unit of the US Eleventh Light Infantry Brigade, was ordered into combat by Captain Ernest Medina. The 150 soldiers, led by Lt. William Calley, stormed into the hamlet, and four hours later more than 500 civilians -- unarmed women, children, and old men -- were dead.

In Chile CIA operatives helped overrow an elected leftist leader in the early 1970s, creating the long nightmare of Pinochet's rule.

In the 1950s the CIA helped depose an elected government in Iran that was threatening Western oil profits. They then installed the Shah, a dictator who relied on torture to maintain control.

In Guatemala, UN-backed investigators found that government counterinsurgency forces killed 90 percent of an estimated 200,000 civil war victims. President Clinton recently called the substantial, clandestine US role in that war wrong, but did nothing to investigate those responsible.

CIA operatives mined Nicaragua's main harbor in the 1980s, and until the 1990s, US Army courses for Latin American soldiers included torture. In the early 1990s, CIA agents created a right-wing group in Haiti that killed hundreds of civilians.

These are a few "atrocities" and many more dating back to the Revolutionary War. In recent times presidents of <b>both parties</b> have blood on their hands.

So really...................... what's your point? We as a nation were guilty as hell way before anyone on this board was even born.

You seem to be suggesting that these things are a)inevitable and b)unremarkable.

Czar... they are remarkable. Its just that whatever side of the fence you are on, right or left... pious or not, your leader(s) past and present and most likely future, are guilty.

Atrocities are comitted by only one type of animal.... humans.

I'm sure you will be belatedly outraged to read of the atrocities commited in Central America by Reagan Administration supported death squads. Sorry, I don't have any of the gory pictures you lot like to pore over -- a-la the images of dead Kurds you employed to so effectively. Nonetheless, read it and weep:
<ul>The El Mozote episode is, sadly, only one example of violence borne of Reagan’s foreign policy. The troops that did the killing were supported by his administration because they were fighting leftist rebels. A 1992 report produced by a UN-sanctioned truth commission described the awful event:

"On 10 December 1981, in the village of El Mozote in the Department of Morazan, units of the Atlacatl Battalion detained, without resistance, all the men, women and children who were in the place…. Early next morning, 11 December, the soldiers reassembled the entire population in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked everyone up in different groups in the church, the convent and various houses."


"During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture and execute the men in various locations. Around noon, they began taking the women in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the convent were machine-gunned through the windows. After exterminating the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings."

The report noted that "the Atlacatl Battalion was a ‘Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion’ or BIRI,’ that is, a unit specially trained for ‘counter-insurgency’ warfare. It was the first unit of its kind in the [El Salvadoran] armed forces and had completed its training under the supervision of United States military advisors, at the beginning of that year, 1981."

When two reporters—Raymond Bonner of The New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of The Washington Post —reported the massacre in January 1982, the Reagan administration denied it had occurred. Reagan’s point-man on Latin America, Elliott Abrams, told Congress that these reports were no more than commie propaganda. That is, he lied. (Today, Abrams, that lover of truth and human rights, is a staff member on Bush’s National Security Council responsible for Middle East matters.) A forensic investigation conducted in the early 1990s proved that the massacre had happened. And the truth commission’s report noted that "two hundred forty-five cartridge cases recovered from the El Mozote site were studied. Of these, 184 had discernable headstamps, identifying the ammunition as having been manufactured for the United States Government at Lake City, Missouri. ...All of the projectiles except one appear to have been fired from United States-manufactured M-16 rifles." (<a href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/reagans_bloody_legacy.php" target="_blank">http://www.tompaine.com/articles/reagans_bloody_legacy.php</a>)</ul>

I wrote a paper on this episode based on the documents and book by Rk Danner, "The Massacre at El Mazote: A Parable of the Cold War." In my paper I looked at it from the stance that the U.S. believed that nothing was grave than communism. Hence the fact that innocent woman and children were being killed by death squads supplied by the U.S. meant that those who died had not died in vain. Further, it showed the miopia of U.S. foreign policy and how they regarded everything as a Soviet threat when in fact that was not the case. If was interesting how the papers reported the story with The Times and The Post sending reporters and investigated the cover-up (which was necessary since Congress was leary at continuing or adding to the funding of arms) while the Wall Street Journal said nothing had happened. Even after the government came "clean" and admitted to atrocities the Wall Street Journal in a closing editorial refused to admit anything real had happened, "perhaps something" was their stance. These type of wars by proxy were all up and down central America at the time.

Not to mention the most recent U.S. backed coup-de-tat in Haiti...

We could easily come up with a similar list for most countries in the world. The USA is hardly unique in this regard, and singling it out as if it were so is something I've never understood. Americans aren't perfect. There, I said it.

We could easily come up with a similar list for most countries in the world. The USA is hardly unique in this regard, and singling it out as if it were so is something I've never understood. Americans aren't perfect. There, I said it.
True, but we have always thought of ourselves as better than the average so I think we have a higher standard to uphold.

Absolutely, the US is not the only nation that has commited atrocities. However, by claiming to be spreader of democratic freedoms and the bastion of human rights the US has raised the bar to which it is measured. Additionally, as citizens of your country you have the greatest control over how it is run and its policies. It is hugely important that the US cries out against atrocities elsewhere but it is more important that they do not commit similar events lest the US been seen as hypocritical and self serving.

A.K.A. "Sunny optimism"