Poor Glenn Reynolds, the Insta-expert over at Instapundit. The supposed bias of the MSM (mainstream media, for those not in the know) is sooooo anti-war – or anti-Bush: same thing – and they’re sloppy, too. Because, you see, that story about how the administration is contemplating the creation of death squads, a la Central America in the 1980s, that we’re running today is wrong, wrong, wrong. Newsweek writes:
- Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.
To which Reynolds responds:
- Er, maybe because the Iran-Contra scandal had to do with overthrowing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, rather than the guerrilla war in El Salvador? I mean, I know all those people look alike to the folks at Newsweek, but this is either inexcusable sloppiness, or simply a stretch to try to bring in more stuff that might make it look bad.
The MSM, whines Reynolds, is trying to make the torturers in D.C. "look bad." Oh, boo hoo hoo! Thank god we have the fact-checkers in the pro-torture wing of the "blogosphere" to set us straight. Except that Reynolds, as usual, is emitting ignorant bullsh*t to the nth degree. The Nicaragua/El Salvador gang of thugs and torturers, led by Ollie North and funded by a deal with the Iranian mullahs (thanks, Michael Ledeen!), was no respecter of borders, as In These Times points out:
- That policy included backing the contras – a surrogate army dedicated to overthrowing
the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It also involved funding the military thugocracy of El Salvador and supervising its war against a popular leftist rebellion. In his role as public servant, Abrams found time to cover up the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan government and embrace the government of Honduras while it perpetrated serial human rights abuses through Battalion 3-16, a U.S.-trained ‘intelligence unit’ turned death squad.
And of course the death squads of El Salvador are grateful to the Republicans, who supported them with money and political backing, with the ARENA party – founded by death-squads leader Roberto D’Aubisson – backing the Bushies to the hilt, as PBS points out:
- The relationship between today’s President Bush and El Salvador’s conservative ARENA party government is one of mutual gratitude. Consider it payback.
The inheritors of the death-squads franchise (Central American division) have a lot of affinity for the Bushies, considering that so many of the latter are veterans of the Iran-Contra scandal: Eliot Abrams is now doing to the Middle East what he did to Central America in the 1980s. Current Bush administration officials Richard Armitage, John Poindexter, Roger Noriega, and Otto Reich are all alumni of Death Squad U. Having perfected their course materials, they are teaching Iraqis – and American soldiers – the basics of "counter-insurgency" techniques, updated for the post-9/11 era.
Obviously, the anti-insurgent operation run by Col. North against the Sandinistas was intimately connected to a similar covert-action program being run in El Salvador. As one report has it:
- Some investigators, however, have concluded that North probably used the Iran arms-sales profits to finance a secret weapons airlift from a U.S.-controlled air base in El Salvador to contra fighters in Nicaragua.
Leave it to some shyster lawyer out in the boondocks to try to spin the horrific slaughter of Central American peasants during the 1980s as No Big Deal: "This is either inexcusable sloppiness," scolds "The Professor," "or simply a stretch to try to bring in more stuff that might make it look bad."
It looks bad, Glenn old boy, because it is bad, so go back to hectoring your students on the finer points of ambulance-chasing and ask yourself this: why do you approve of death squads, whether they be in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s, or in "liberated" Iraq?