Liberal Forum

Nairn said that The U.S. prosecutors in Washington should immediately convene a grand jury with two missions: first, coming to the aid of the Guatemalan attorney general, who has just been ordered by the court to investigate all others involved in Ros Montt’s crimes, by releasing all classified U.S. documents about what happened during the slaughter, which U.S. personnel were involved, providing to the Guatemalan attorney general a list of all Guatemalan army officials and security force officials who were on the payroll of the American CIA, and then proceeding to issue indictments against U.S. officials who acted in the role of accessory or accomplice to the crimes for which Ros Montt has already been convicted.The top officials of the Reagan administration who made the policy-President Reagan is deceased, but his top aides, including Elliott Abrams and many others, are still alive; the U.S. CIA personnel on the ground who worked within the G2, the military intelligence unit that coordinated the assassinations and disappearances; the U.S. military attachs who worked with the Guatemalan generals to develop this sweep-and-massacre strategy in the mountains. There would be hundreds of U.S. officials who were complicit in this and should be subpoenaed, called before a grand jury and subjected to indictment. And the U.S. should be ready to extradite them to Guatemala to face punishment.Little Miss Marxist has denied for years that she's a leftist. Except that she walks, talks and lies like a leftist.Indict Reagan officials? I can't think of a single time I've seen a liberal demand that.The Left's Cold War Revenge in GuatemalaThe history behind an absurd court ruling that Gen. Rios Montt is guilty of genocide.By now even casual readers of Latin American news know that a Guatemalan court has ruled Gen. Efran Ros Montt guilty of genocide against the Ixil Indians during the 16 months from March 1982 to August 1983 that he was the country's head of state. More difficult to learn from ubiquitous press reports is how far the narrative used to convict the 86-year-old Mr. Ros Montt departs from reality.The 36-year war between communist guerrillas and the Guatemalan state that ended with peace agreements in 1996 was bloody and torturous. Both sides committed atrocities. Thousands died. Indians and mixed-race Guatemalans living in rural areas experienced the brunt of the violence.Guatemala's former dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt stands in the courtroom before the judge enters to read the verdict in his genocide trial in Guatemala City, Friday, May 10, 2013. The Guatemalan court convicted Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 80 years in prison. The 86-year-old former general is the first former Latin American leader ever found guilty of such a charge. The war between the government and leftist rebels cost more than 200,000 lives and ended in peace accords in 1996. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)Yet the claim that the Guatemalan state, led by the general, engaged in genocide—that is, an attempt to destroy totally or partially the Ixil people or displace them—is not supported by the facts. On the contrary, a serious reading of the history suggests that the general bested the guerrillas by empowering those Indians who did not want anything to do with the upper-middle-class ideas of revolution that were being foisted on them. The trial of Mr. Ros Montt, 30 years after the fact, is more a score-settling exercise by the international left than a search for truth and justice.....Some army units, often made up of ethnic Indians, did indeed engage in massacres, village burning and the destruction of crops. This happened "without a doubt, in various places, especially in parts of the Quich [region] when the army thought that the local population supported the guerrilla," according to Mr. Sabino. But it was "in no way a policy of the state nor a war strategy," he explains, because it would have been directly contrary to solving the problem as it was diagnosed. ...In the trial, the prosecution presented the testimony of numerous Indians who had been victims of the violence. But their stories could not prove genocide.Neither did the prosecution's "experts," mostly foreigners of the leftist persuasion who were not actually witnesses to any alleged acts of genocide. They were used to advance the prosecution's case that the army strategy "to exterminate" subversives was the same thing as an attempt to "exterminate" the Ixil people.The absurdity of this has not been lost on many Guatemalans, including Gustavo Porras, a former guerrilla intellectual. He signed a letter, with others, calling the charge "a legal fabrication" and asserting that it could threaten the peace.Ixil people and others from the region who still view Mr. Ros Montt as a hero have been holding protests against the verdict. It's not the first time they've shown support for him.When he ran for president in 2003, he lost. But in the three municipalities of the Ixil Triangle, he not only beat 10 other candidates but perhaps more important trounced former guerrilla leader Rodrigo Asturias 13,451 to 1,202. That hasn't been reported in the international press much, if at all, either.http://online.wsj.co...BelowLEFTSecondIn other words, the region in which this supposed genocide occurred voted more than 10:1 for the General little Miss Marxist claims committed genocide.Even a moonbat might be able to figure that out.