El Salvador Massacre Apology On 20-year Peace Mark

[Judi Lynn]

El Salvador Massacre Apology On 20-year Peace Mark
Published on 16 January 2012
by Associated Press

El Salvador's president has formally apologized for the 1981 El Mozote massacre and acknowledged the government's responsibility for killing 936 civilians in a counterinsurgency operation.

President Mauricio Funes says the army committed "the biggest massacre of civilians in the contemporary history of Latin America."

Funes was elected on the ticket of the former leftist rebels. He was a journalist at the time and did not take part in the country's 12-year civil war.

Funes spoke Monday on the 20th anniversary of the 1992 peace accords that ended the conflict.

More:
http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=191944

[gratuitous]

1. So, is it safe for the U.S. to admit it, too?

It was official U.S. policy for a long time that no massacre occurred at El Mozote, that the inhabitants simply faded into the jungle all at once, as a ploy to embarrass the El Salvador government. Or that if a massacre had occurred, it was carried out by leftist rebel forces, despite the fact that the area was friendly to the rebels, and the people all disappeared during a few days when the Salvadoran military briefly seized control of the area.

But if there was a massacre, we can all be sure that every last person killed was very, very bad and had it coming to them, and they should have been more careful about where they were living or who they were associating with. Why, Elliott Abrams himself dismissed the charges of a massacre as just so much propaganda. And he was pardoned by President Bush in the dead of night on Christmas Eve 1992, so we can take that to the bank.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Well I will be surprised if we do

Suffice it to say there were survivors...

[Louisiana1976]

3. K&R!