School Of The Assassins
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The Western Hemisphere Institute For Security Cooperation (WHISC; formerly School of the Americas, SOA--Is a United States Army facility at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. Its motto is Libertad, Paz y Fraternidad (Liberty, Peace and Fraternity).

The school is frequently cited as an example of United States support for regimes in Latin America that employ death squads and otherwise infringe upon human rights.


HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
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The SOA has been accused of training members of governments guilty of serious human rights abuses and have been found to advocate techniques that violate accepted international standards, particularly the Geneva Conventions.

Graduates of the SOA include men such as, Hugo Banzer Suarez, Leopoldo Galtieri, Manuel Noriega, Efrain Rios Montt, Vladimiro Montesinos, Guillermo Rodriguez, Omar Torrijos, Roberto Viola, Roberto D'Aubuisson and Juan Velasco Alvarado.

Because many of its students have been associated with death squads, the school's acronym is occasionally reparsed by its detractors as the "School of Assassins." It is also known as the "School of Coups" (en.wikipedia.org)

Further abuses SOA graduates have alleged to have committed include "the death or disappearance of 200,000 Guatemalans and innumerable other atrocities...In Colombia, 2 million have been displaced and thousands are still reliving the horrors of their torture--Not surprising since, with 10,000 graduates from the SOA, Colombia is the school's largest customer and has the worst human rights record on the continent (sourcewatch.org).


U.S. TRAINING MANUAL
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On September 20, 1996, the Pentagon released seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for training courses in Latin America and at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA).

According to the Third World Traveler (thirdworldtraveler.com), these manuals show ow U.S. agents taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America and the Globe.


SOA Videos...

1) Close the School of the Americas (SOA / WHINSEC):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vfCGVsBX95E&search=SOA


2) Fr. Roy Bourgeois and the SOA Watch:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1219294790121074599&q=SOA+watch