Elizabeth Oglesby is associate professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and a Public Voices fellow with the Op-Ed Project. She is co-editor of “Guatemala: History, Culture, Politics” and “Guatemala: The Question of Genocide.” She was an expert witness in the Guatemala genocide trials in 2013 and 2018. At Common Dreams and The Hill, she writes—Guatemala Shows Why the CIA Must Be Held Accountable For Torture:
Gina Haspel's nomination for CIA chief has reignited debate over accountability for torture. A bi-partisan group of Senators, including John McCain (R-Ariz.), is demanding greater transparency from the CIA on Haspel's involvement in waterboarding and other acts of torture at the "black site" she ran in Thailand, as well as her role in destroying videotapes of torture sessions. [...]
On March 9, just days before Haspel's nomination, I testified in a courtroom in Guatemala City in the dual genocide trials against the former Guatemalan dictator, General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), and his intelligence chief, General José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez.
For six hours, I described how the Guatemalan army massacred Mayan communities in the early 1980s, and captured, tortured and "disappeared" survivors during its war against leftist insurgents.
The United States supports Guatemala's efforts to prosecute human rights violators. At the same time, the trials remind us that CIA involvement in torture is not an anomaly of the immediate post-911 world, but stretches back decades. Declassified U.S. government documents disclose that beginning in the 1960s, the CIA trained the Guatemalan military in covert repressive techniques, including kidnapping, torture, disappearance and executions of suspected communist dissidents.
Fast-forward 30 years, and the repression left 200,000 dead and 40,000 forcibly disappeared, with Guatemala's 1999 Truth Commission attributing 93 percent of these crimes to government forces.
Mass forced disappearances, what we now call "rendition," spread to other Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s, with the active collaboration of U.S. intelligence agencies in operations such as Operation Condor to target and eliminate dissidents, as declassified U.S. documents show. [...]
No surprise: if human rights criminals aren't prosecuted, they can continue to corrode the rule of law. Sometimes, they get "laundered" back into respectable, high-level government positions. Some have a similar concern with Haspel.
[...] we know enough about Haspel's record to conclude that she is a dangerous pick for CIA chief. The Senate must reject her nomination.
What we know may be enough for the Justice Department to launch a probe into Haspel's actions at the CIA, especially her potential role in covering up evidence.
If Guatemala can prosecute its torturers and rebuild the rule of law, so can we.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“A recent letter in The Oregonian compares a politician’s claim to tell ‘alternative facts’ to the inventions of science fiction. The comparison won’t work. We fiction writers make up stuff. Some of it clearly impossible, some of it realistic, but none of it real – all invented, imagined — and we call it fiction because it isn’t fact. We may call some of it ‘alternative history’ or ‘an alternate universe,’ but make absolutely no pretense that our fictions are ‘alternative facts’ … The test of a fact is that it simply is so – it has no ‘alternative.’ The sun rises in the east. To pretend the sun can rise in the west is a fiction, to claim that it does so as fact (or ‘alternative fact’) is a lie.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, letter to the editor of The Oregonian, February 2, 2017
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2009—Story punches reporters in face; goes unnoticed
He just believed in our right to bear arms. He believe that hard economic times were going to put forth gun bans and that sort of thing. He basically believed in what our forefathers had put before us, and was being distorted by the Zionist-controlled government, and he didn’t believe in that. […]
He just basically told me he didn’t like the Zionist control over our government, he didn’t like that there was about to be military policing, he didn’t believe in the fact that there was about to be a gun ban. He didn’t like anything that was going on in the political forefront, and he was basically very politically active, and he didn’t agree with what was going on right now in the United States of America.
Dude just stood there and told reporters—twice, and matter-of-factly both times—that his friend who just killed three cops was motivated "by the Zionist-controlled government," and was upset, "that there was about to be military policing," and by "the fact that there was about to be a gun ban."
Zionist-controlled government. Was about to be military policing. The fact that there was about to be a gun ban. Not a single one of these reporters says, "Hey, wait a minute. What?!?"
Guy says, "Zionist-controlled government," and the reporter's follow-up? "Did he have a lot of guns?" Second reporter was even worse! He believed there was a Zionist-controlled government. That there would be military policing. That there would be a gun ban.
Follow-up: So there was never anything that made you think there could be a situation like this?
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Scott Pruitt drops more shoes than Imelda Marcos. WTF with MBS? Arliss Bunny helps clear up how unclear everything is in Saudish Arabia, while Kushner hands over the PDB. Blurred line between WH, Breitbart finally erased. Top Trump troll outed
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