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The United States of America has been accused of funding, training, and harboring individuals and groups who engage in terrorism by some legal scholars, other governments, and human rights organizations, among others. The United States has also been accused by some academics and activists of having directly committed acts of state terrorism. They view the U.S. government as responsible for most acts of terrorism committed since the end of World War II. Critics maintain that the U.S. government is hypocritical as it regularly asserts a public image and agenda of anti-terrorism, and as such has two foreign policies, one publicly stated and the other covertly applied.

Defenders of U.S. policy argue that American military interventions were justified in response to threats such as terrorism and Soviet aggression, and in the end produced superior governments and freer societies. The theoretical framework for the concept of state terrorism, and the evidence presented for U.S. state terrorism, are matters of considerable controversy.

Definition of the term state terrorism

The definition of terrorism itself and state terrorism remains controversial, as is the distinction between them. Among nations there is as yet no international consensus or treaty on what constitutes a terrorist act, how to define a terrorist organization, or whether the definition of terrorism even applies to acts by sovereign governments. The Britannica Concise states that terrorism is "Systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective."

As an example, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation bases its definition on U.S. Code, Title 18, Chapter 113B, and reads as follows:

Domestic terrorism refers to activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. 18 U.S.C. § 2331(5)

International terrorism involves violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any state. These acts appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping and occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum. 18 U.S.C. § 2331(1)

U.S. State Department Definition of Terrorism:

The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

The term "international terrorism" means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than one country.

The term "terrorist group" means any group practicing, or that has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.

The US Government has employed this definition of terrorism for statistical and analytical purposes since 1983.

The United Nations has never agreed on a single definition of terrorism but has four proposed definitions. One, by terrorism analyst Alex P. Schmid states:

Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.

Application of the United States government's own definitions

Noam Chomsky, noted professor of linguistics at MIT and a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, has characterized the tactics used by agents of the US government and their proxies in their execution of US foreign policy — in such countries as Nicaragua, Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Colombia, Turkey, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — as a form of terrorism. Chomsky has also described the U.S as "a leading terrorist state." After President George W. Bush began using the term "War on Terrorism", Chomsky stated in an interview:

The U.S. is officially committed to what is called "low-intensity warfare... If you read the definition of low-intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of "terrorism" in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they're almost the same.

Chomsky has in turn been criticized for allegedly ignoring or justifying terrorism by other nations. Keith Windschuttle notes that Chomsky has stated that "the United States and Israeli leadership should be brought to trial" for war crimes. He contrasts this statement with what he sees as Chomsky's defense of allegedly criminal actions by the leaders of countries like People's Republic of China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Windschuttle writes that Chomsky's "moral perspective is completely one-sided", and accuses him of using evidence that was "selective, deceptive, and in some cases invented."

State terrorism and propaganda

Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton, has argued that the U.S. and other first-world states, as well as mainstream media institutions, have obfuscated the true character and scope of terrorism, promulgating a one-sided view from the standpoint of first-world privilege. He has said that "if 'terrorism' as a term of moral and legal opprobrium is to be used at all, then it should apply to violence deliberately targeting civilians, whether committed by state actors or their non-state enemies." Moreover, Falk asserts that the repudiation of authentic non-state terrorism is insufficient as a strategy for mitigating it, writing that "we must also illuminate the character of terrorism, and its true scope... The propagandists of the modern state conceal its reliance on terrorism and associate it exclusively with Third World revolutionaries and their leftist sympathizers in the industrial countries." Turning specifically to past U.S actions, Falk says "The graveyards of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the number-one exhibits of state terrorism... Consider the hypocrisy of an Administration that portrays Qaddafi as barbaric while preparing to inflict terrorism on a far grander scale... Any counterterrorism policy worth the name must include a convincing indictment of the First World variety."

Allegations

Latin America

Cuba

Cuban government officials have accused the United States Government of being an accomplice and protector of terrorism against Cuba on many occasions. According to Ricardo Alarcón, President of Cuba’s national assembly "Terrorism and violence, crimes against Cuba, have been part and parcel of U.S. policy for almost half a century.” The claims formed part of Cuba's $181.1 billion lawsuit in 1999 against the United States on behalf of the Cuban people which alleged that for over 40 years, "terrorism has been permanently used by the U.S. as an instrument of its foreign policy against Cuba," and it "became more systematic as a result of the covert action program." The lawsuit detailed a history of terrorism allegedly supported by the United States. The United States has long denied any involvement in the acts named in the lawsuit.

The claims center on allegations of "concrete advance intelligence" the CIA had of operations against Cuba from the early Sixties to mid-Seventies, notably the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 in 1976 which killed all 73 people aboard and a series of attacks on tourist sites in the 1990s. For example, the FBI had multiple contacts with one of the bombers but provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities.

The allegations also claim U.S. involvement in the paramilitary group Omega 7, the CIA undercover operation known as Operation 40, and the umbrella group the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations. Cuban Counterterrorism investigator Roberto Hernández testified in a Miami court that the bomb attacks were "part of a campaign of terror designed to scare civilians and foreign tourists, harming Cuba's single largest industry."

In 2001, Cuban Ambassador to the UN Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called for UN General Assembly to address all forms and manifestations of terrorism in every corner of the world, including - without exception - State terrorism. He alleged to the UN General Assembly that 3,478 Cubans have died as a result of aggressions and terrorist acts. He also alleged that the United States had provided safe shelter to "those who funded, planned and carried out terrorist acts with absolute impunity, tolerated by the United States Government." The Cuban government also asserted that in the 1990s, a total of 68 acts of terrorism were perpetrated against Cuba.

The Cuban Government, its supporters and some outside observers believe that the group Alpha 66, whose former secretary general Andrés Nazario Sargén acknowledged terrorist attacks on Cuban tourist spots in the 1990s and conducted training sessions at a secluded camp near the Florida Everglades, has been supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the US International Development Agency and, more directly, according to Cuba's official newspaper Granma, the CIA. The National Endowment for Democracy is a U.S. non-profit organization that is partially funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, whose aid recipients also include the Council on Foreign Relations and the RAND Corporation.

A secret plan, Operation Northwoods, was approved by the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff and submitted for action to Robert McNamara then Secretary of Defense, and subsequently president of the World Bank. This plan included acts of violence on US soil or against US interests, such as plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities; blowing up a U.S. ship, and contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters 'evacuate' remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." The plan was rejected by the administration prior to President Kennedy's assassination but after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

In 1998 the Cuban government charged The Cuban American National Foundation, which was founded in 1981 at the initiative of the Reagan administration and receives U.S. government funding with, according to the official government-controlled Radio Havana Cuba, the continued financing of anti-Cuban terrorist activities Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba, also reported that U.S. senator Mel Martinez was meeting with Cuban American terrorists and sponsoring them via CANF.

In 2006, a former board member of CANF, Jose Antonio Llama testified that leaders of the foundation had created a paramilitary group to carry out destabilizing acts in Cuba. The foundation’s general board of directors didn’t know the details of the paramilitary group, which acted autonomously, Llama said. He added that current CANF board chairman Jorge Mas Santos was never told of the plan. The plans failed after Llama and four other exiles were arrested in the United States territory of Puerto Rico in 1997 on charges of conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro.

The US has also been criticized for failing to condemn Panama's pardoning of the alleged terrorists Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon, and Gaspar Jimenez, instead allowing them to walk free on U.S. streets. Claudia Furiati has suggested Sampol was linked to President Kennedy's assassination and plans to kill President Castro.

The Case of Luis Posada

The Cubans cite what they describe as the admission by Luis Posada Carriles, a one-time supervisor for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, and former chemist, that he was recruited by the CIA into becoming a trainer of other paramilitary forces in the mid 1960s. Posada, alongside Orlando Bosch, is accused by Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Cuba and Venezuela of organizing the terrorist bombing of the aircraft Cubana 455. As described by researcher Peter Kornbluh at the non-governmental research institute National Security Archive, he "is a terrorist, but he’s our terrorist," referring to Posada's relationship with the U.S. government. In 2006, the U.S. Justice Department described Posada as “an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks on tourist sites.”

The Cubans also cite the involvement of FBI attaché Joseph Leo, who admitted multiple contacts with one of the convicted bombers of Cubana 455, Hernan Ricardo, before the attack.

On May 18, 2005, the National Security Archive posted additional documents that purportedly show the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The archive also alleges that while Posada stopped being a CIA agent in 1974, there remained "occasional contact" until June 1976, a few months before the bombing. The Cuban ambassador to the U.N. claimed that Posada had been "doubly employed by the Government of the U.S." both before and after the bombing of the Cubana aircraft. After escaping from prison in Venezuela, Posada, who has boasted of plans to "hit" a Cuban airliner only days before the attack, went to work alongside CIA operative Felix Rodriguez under Richard Secord supplying the Contras.

After serving 10 years for his role in the Cubana bombing and other terrorist attacks, Orlando Bosch was released from jail in Venezuela and given permission to reside in the United States with the assistance of Otto Reich, then US ambassador to Venezuela.

On his arrival in Miami in 1988, Bosch was honored with an "Orlando Bosch Day" celebration by the city politicians in Miami. Despite decisions made by the justice department and FBI to deport Bosch, they were overruled by President George H. W. Bush and he was allowed permanent residency.

In a series of interviews with the New York Times, Posada claimed responsibility for the bombings at hotels and nightclubs in Cuba in 1997 in which an Italian tourist died and scores more were injured. Posada said his activities were directly supported by Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Posada stated "The FBI and the CIA do not bother me, and I am neutral with them," he said. "Whenever I can help them, I do." He later denied that he was involved, stating that he had only wanted to create publicity for the bombing campaign in order to scare tourists.

As more revelations were made public via declassified documents and testimonies from involved parties, journalist Robert Scheer wrote in a column in the Los Angeles Times "For almost 40 years, we have isolated Cuba on the assumption that the tiny island is a center of terrorism in the hemisphere, and year after year we gain new evidence that it is the U.S. that has terrorized Cuba and not the other way around."

In an interview in 2001, Cuban Vice President Ricardo Alarcón stated: "The most quoted phrase by President Bush or ever repeated by him refers to the same idea every time he speaks. "'Those who harbor a terrorist are as guilty as the terrorist himself'".

Posada was arrested in Miami in May 2005 and held for entering the US illegally. On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported because he faced the threat of torture in Venezuela. On May 8, 2007 U.S. district judge Kathleen Cardone dismissed seven counts of immigration fraud and ordered Posada's electronic bracelet removed. The ruling criticized the U.S. government's "fraud, deceit and trickery" during the interview with immigration authorities that was the basis of the charges against Posada.

Nicaragua

Following the rise to power of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration ordered the CIA to organize and train the right wing guerrilla group "Contras". In 1981 President Reagan secretly authorized his Central Intelligence Agency under his appointee William J. Casey to recruit and support the guerrillas. Casey was to have testified before Congress about the disastrous Iran-Contra affair, in which a third country was to help sell Raytheon's MIM-23 Hawk missiles to the Islamic Republic of Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages whom Hezbollah kidnapped. Deteriorating health made it impossible for Casey to speak to the committee.

Florida State University professor, Frederick H. Gareau, has written that the Contras "attacked bridges, electric generators, but also state-owned agricultural cooperatives, rural health clinics, villages and non-combatants." US agents were directly involved in the fighting. "CIA commandos launched a series of sabotage raids on Nicaraguan port facilities. They mined the country's major ports and set fire to its largest oil storage facilities." In 1984 the US Congress ordered this intervention to be stopped, however it was later shown that the CIA illegally continued (See Iran-Contra affair). Professor Gareau has characterized these acts as "wholesale terrorism" by the United States.

In 1984 a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan contras in psychological operations was leaked to the media, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War".

The manual recommended “selective use of violence for propagandistic effects” and to “neutralize” government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead:

...selective use of armed force for PSYOP psychological operations effect.... Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA unconventional warfare operations area, but extensive precautions must insure that the people “concur” in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.

Former State Department official William Blum has written that "American pilots were flying diverse kinds of combat missions against Nicaraguan troops and carrying supplies to contras inside Nicaraguan territory. Several were shot down and killed. Some flew in civilian clothes, after having been told that they would be disavowed by the Pentagon if captured. Some contras told American congressmen that they were ordered to claim responsibility for a bombing raid organized by the CIA and flown by Agency mercenaries."

According to author William Blum the Pentagon considered US policy in Nicaragua to be a "blueprint for successful US intervention in the Third World" and it would go "right into the textbooks".

Nicaragua vs. United States

U.S. foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky, and other scholars, argues that the U.S. has been legally found guilty of international terrorism based on the verdict by International Court of Justice in Nicaragua v. United States, which condemned the United States federal government for its "unlawful use of force".

The Republic of Nicaragua vs. The United States of America was a case heard in 1986 by the International Court of Justice which found that the United States had violated international law by direct acts of US personnel and by the supporting Contra guerrillas in their war against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The Court ruled in Nicaragua's favor, but the United States refused to abide by the Court's decision, on the basis that the court erred in finding that it had jurisdiction to hear the case. The court stated that the United States had been involved in the "unlawful use of force"—specifically that it was "in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another state". The ICJ ordered the U.S. to pay reparations, which it never did. Noam Chomsky stated in an interview in Pakistan Television that:

The World Court considered their case, accepted it, and presented a long judgment, several hundred pages of careful legal and factual analysis that condemned the United States for what it called “unlawful use of force”--which is the judicial way of saying “international terrorism”--ordered the United States to terminate the crime and to pay substantial reparations, many billions of dollars, to the victim.

One critic of this interpretation is David Horowitz, who argues in the book The Anti-Chomsky Reader, that "unlawful use of force is not another word for terrorism" and that the ICJ has no authority over sovereign states unless they themselves so agree, which the U.S. did not. The U.S. did accept the ICJ's compulsory jurisdiction in 1946, but withdrew its acceptance following the Nicaragua case.

The ICJ used the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare CIA manual as evidence in the case.

The CIA claimed that the purpose of the manual was to "moderate" activities already being done by the Contras.

The court also stated "Finds that the United States of America, by producing in 1983 a manual entitled Operaciones sicologicas en guerra de guerrillas, and disseminating it to contra forces, has encouraged the commission by them of acts contrary to general principles of humanitarian law; but does not find a basis for concluding that any such acts which may have been committed are imputable to the United States of America as acts of the United States of America" Therefore, "It is for this reason that the Court does not have to determine whether the violations of humanitarian law attributed to the contras were in fact committed by them."

Guatemala

Declassified CIA documents show that the United States was instrumental in organizing, funding, and equipping the coup which toppled the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954. Analysts Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh note that "After a small insurgency developed in the wake of the coup, Guatemala's military leaders developed and refined, with U.S. assistance, a massive counterinsurgency campaign that left tens of thousands massacred, maimed or missing."

After the US-backed coup, which toppled president Jacobo Arbenz, lead coup plotter Castillo Armas assumed power. With Armas at the head of government, "the United States began to militarize Guatemala almost immediately, financing and reorganizing the police and military." Human rights expert Michael McClintock has argued that the national security apparatus Armas presided over was “almost entirely oriented toward countering subversion,” and that the key component of that apparatus was “an intelligence system set up by the United States.” At the core of this intelligence system were records of communist party members, pro-Arbenz organizations, teacher associations, and peasant unions which were used to create a detailed “Black List” with names and information about some 70,000 individuals that were viewed as potential subversives. It was “CIA counter-intelligence officers who sorted the records and determined how they could be put to use.” McClintock argues that this list persisted as an index of subversives for several decades and probably served as a database of possible targets for the counter-insurgency campaign that began in the early 1960’s.

Guerrilla unrest in Guatemala continued into the 1960’s, which in 1962 led President John F. Kennedy to approve a “pacification program aimed at the most rebellious provinces…including both ‘civic action’ programs such as digging wells and building clinics and a sharp increase in military assistance.” After a successful (U.S. backed) coup against president Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes in 1963, U.S. advisors began to work with Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio to defeat the guerrillas, borrowing “extensively from current counterinsurgency strategies and technology being employed in Vietnam.” Between the years of 1966-68 alone some 8,000 peasants were murdered by the U.S. trained forces of Colonel Osorio. Arana Osorio earned the nickname "The Butcher of Zacapa" for killing 15,000 peasants to eliminate 300 suspected rebels. McClintock argues that “counter-insurgency doctrine, as imparted by the United States civil and military assistance agencies, had a tremendous influence on Guatemala’s security system and a devastating impact on Guatemala’s people.” He notes:

United States counter-insurgency doctrine encouraged the Guatemalan military to adopt both new organizational forms and new techniques in order to root out insurgency more effectively. New techniques would revolve around a central precept of the new counter-insurgency: that counter insurgent war must be waged free of restriction by laws, by the rules of war, or moral considerations: guerrilla “terror” could be defeated only by the untrammeled use of “counter-terror”, the terrorism of the state.

This idea was also articulated by Colonel John Webber, the chief of the US Military Mission in Guatemala, who reportedly instigated the technique of “counter-terror.” Colonel Webber defended his policy by saying, “That’s the way this country is. The Communists are using everything they have, including terror. And it must be met.”

In 1995 CIA aid was stopped. A 1996 report by the Intelligence Oversight Board stated that "Relations between the US and Guatemalan governments came under strain in 1977, when the Carter administration issued its first annual human rights report on Guatemala. The Guatemalan government rejected that report's negative assessment and refused US military aid." Relations between the two countries warmed in the mid-1980s the Reagan administration's covert funding of several wars in Central America. In December 1990, however, the Bush administration suspended almost all overt military aid."

According to the Center for International Policy, "The CIA established a liaison relationship with Guatemalan security services widely known to have reprehensible human rights records, and it continued covert aid after the cutoff of overt military aid in 1990. This liaison relationship and continued covert aid occurred with the knowledge of the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Congressional oversight committees. Contrary to public allegations, CIA did not increase covert funding for Guatemala to compensate for the cut-off of military aid in 1990."

Utilizing a series of formerly secret government documents, George Washington University historians Kate Doyle and Carlos Osorio, document U.S. training, cooperation and political support of Guatemalan Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, despite U.S. Department of State and CIA knowledge of his frequent command of and/or participation in extra-judicial killings, kidnappings and civilian massacres. Colonel Estrada would eventually rise to command D-2, the Guatemalan Military Intelligence services who were responsible for many of the terror tactics wielded throughout the 1980s against the Guatemalan people.

In 1999, an independent Guatemalan Truth Commission named "The Historical Clarification Commission" issued a damning report which, among other things, clearly stated that the "government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some of these state operations." Among the report's conclusions were

...estimates that the Guatemalan conflict claimed the lives of some 200,000 people with the most savage bloodletting occurring in the 1980s. Based on a review of about 20% of the dead, the panel blamed the army for 93% of the killings and leftist guerrillas for three percent. Four percent were listed as unresolved....the army committed 626 massacres against Mayan villages....which "eliminated entire Mayan villages...completely exterminating Mayan communities, destroying their livestock and crops."

The report went on to term the Guatemalan military's campaign in the northern highlands a "genocide," and noted that besides "carrying out murder and "disappearances," the army routinely engaged in torture and rape. "The rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice" by the military and paramilitary forces, the report found."

In the early 1990s US citizen and nun, Sister Diana Ortiz, took a US civil court case against General Hector Gramajo Morales, who was then attending Harvard University after having given that year's commencement speech at the SOA. Sister Ortiz stated that she was abducted by police officers under Morales' command and taken to a secret prison where she was tortured and raped repeatedly. A 1992 report to the United Nations General Assembly recounts her testimony citing pits packed with men women and children, some bodies decapitated. She further reported a "light complexioned man, who spoke broken Spanish, but perfect North American English" named Alejandro who appeared to her to run the facility, and was often referred to as "boss" by the other men at the location. She was brought to what she described as a rape room and stated she seem others being tortured at the location. He later ordered the men to stop and removed her from the facility.

In 1995 Allan Nairn writing for The Nation exposed that "North American C.l.A. operatives work inside a Guatemalan Army unit that maintains a network of torture centers and has killed thousands of Guatemalan civilians." and further in relation to the abduction rape and torture of Sister Ortiz that Gramajos was a C.I.A. asset and receiving pay from them. He also highlights Gramajos link to the early 1980s highland massacres.

While at Harvard, Gramajo-Morales stated in his defense:

"We have created a more humanitarian, less costly strategy, to be more compatible with the democratic system ... which provides development for 70% of the population while we kill 30%. Before, the strategy was to kill 100%."

Professor Gareau argues that the School of the Americas, a US Army institution, where Morales trained as a young officer and taught in later life, is a terrorist training ground. He notes a UN report which states the school has "graduated 500 of the worst human rights abusers in the hemisphere." He further argues that people protesting against the school are frequently beaten and arrested, "By the year 2002, 71 demonstrators had served a total of 40 years of jail time for protesting in front of the School of the Americas". This includes an 88 year old nun. Gareau claims that by funding, training and supervising Guatemalan 'Death Squads' Washington was complicit in state terrorism. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, expands on this by stating: "In particular, the U.S. client regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala regularly massacred their own populations, slaughtering over 100,000 civilians during the 1980s and into the beginning of 1990s. Yet the U.S. continued to sponsor such terrorism, propping up the dictatorships responsible for such violence while actively helping them carry it out..."

In their 1998 "Report On Guatemala" Rolando Alecio and Ruth Taylor condemn the "legacy of state terror" the nation has inherited from the U.S.-backed and -trained military. Similarly, journalist Minor Sinclair, writing in the Sojourner, stated that

Recent disclosures have revealed the extent of U.S. support for the Guatemalan army despite its reputation as the most repressive military in Latin America. For years Guatemala's elite military officers have been trained in the United States, and at any given time dozens are on the CIA payroll.

Defenders of the former School of the Americas (reorganized as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001) argue that no school should be held accountable for the actions of only some of its many graduates. Before coming to WHINSEC each student is “vetted” by his/her nation and the U.S. embassy in that country. All students are now required to receive "human rights training in law, ethics, rule of law and practical applications in military and police operations."

A 1996 report on CIAs action in Gutemala by the Intelligence Oversight Board states that:

The CIA's successes in Guatemala in conjunction with other US agencies, particularly in uncovering and working to counter coups and in reducing the narcotics flow, were at times dramatic and very much in the national interests of both the United States and Guatemala.

The human rights records of the Guatemalan security services--the D-2 and the Department of Presidential Security (known informally as "Archivos," after one of its predecessor organizations)--were generally known to have been reprehensible by all who were familiar with Guatemala. US policy-makers knew of both the CIA's liaison with them and the services' unsavory reputations. The CIA endeavored to improve the behavior of the Guatemalan services through frequent and close contact and by stressing the importance of human rights -- insisting, for example, that Guatemalan military intelligence training include human rights instruction. The station officers assigned to Guatemala and the CIA headquarters officials whom we interviewed believe that the CIA's contact with the Guatemalan services helped improve attitudes towards human rights. Several indices of human rights observance indeed reflected improvement--whether or not this was due to CIA efforts--but egregious violations continued, and some of the station's closest contacts in the security services remained a part of the problem.

Middle East

Afghanistan

The United States' role in arming, training, and supporting the radical Islamic Mujahideen of Afghanistan in the 1980s has been called the model for state-sponsored terrorism. These religious fundamentalist terrorists were armed and trained by the United States. This guerrilla movement, initially intended to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, gave rise to terrorist groups in nations such as Indonesia, the Philippians, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Chechnya, and the former Yugoslavia.

Some of the Afghan-trained "freedom fighters" were later involved Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks against the U.S., the very government that had given them support in the early days of their organization. The initial bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, and the attacks of September 11 all have been linked to individuals and groups that at one time were armed and trained by the United States and/or its allies. For example, the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 used a manual written by the CIA for the Mujihadeen fighters in Afghanistan on how to make explosives. Sheik Abul Rahman, one of the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was allowed to come to the U.S. to recruit Arab-Americans to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets.

Iran

The Asia Times Online reported that the United State is providing aid to rebels in Iran, who are currently engaged in a revolt against the Tehran government. Stratfor, a think tank with ties to the American military and intelligence establishments, reported that rebel groups such as Jundallah are receiving aid from foreign intelligence agencies. In addition Stratfor stated, "The US-Iranian standoff has reached a high level of intensity ... a covert war being played out ... the United States has likely ramped up support for Iran's oppressed minorities in an attempt to push the Iranian regime toward a negotiated settlement over Iraq." The state controlled Iranian media reported that this is an attempt to stir up sectarian violence inside Iran. The Asian Times Online refers to this as part of a US policy of continues fomenting of ethnic strife and sponsorship of terrorism in Iran.

Iraq

The New York Times reported that, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA orchestrated a bomb and sabotage campaign between 1992 and 1995 in Iraq via one of the resistance organizations, Iyad Allawi's group. According to the Iraqi government at the time, and one former CIA officer, the bombing campaign against Baghdad included both government and civilian targets. According to this former CIA official, the civilian targets included a movie theater and a bombing of a school bus where children were killed. No public records of the secret bombing campaign are known to exist, and the former U.S. officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. "But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then."

Lebanon

The CIA has been accused of being the perpetrator of the 1985 Beirut car bombing which killed 81 people. The bombing was apparently an assassination attempt on an Islamic cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. The bomb (known as the Bir bombing after Bir el-Abed, the impoverished Beirut neighborhood which it targeted), reported the New York Times, caused a "massive" explosion "even by local standards," killing 81 men, women and children, and wounding more than 200 people. Investigative journalist Bob Woodward has claimed that the CIA was funded by the Saudi Arabian government to arrange the bombing. Fadlallah himself also claims to have evidence that the CIA was behind the attack and that the Saudis paid $3 million.

The U.S. National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane admitted that those responsible for the bomb may have had American training, but that they were "rogue operative(s)" operating without CIA approval. The next day, a notice hung over the devastated area where grief-stricken families were still digging the bodies of loved ones out of the rubble. It read: "Made in the USA." The sign was more apt than even its furious makers knew. The terrorist strike on Bir el-Abed was a classic product of US covert policy. Agreeing with the proposals of CIA director William Casey, president Ronald Reagan sanctioned the Bir attack to avenge a devastating truck-bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks at Beirut airport in October 1983, which in turn was a bloody reprisal for earlier US acts of intervention and diplomatic betrayal in Lebanon's civil war that had cost hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian lives. After CIA operatives had repeatedly failed to arrange Casey's car-bombing, the CIA "farmed out" the operation to agents of its longtime Lebanese client, the Phalange, a Maronite Christian, anti-Islamic militia.

Eastern and Western Europe

Anti-communism

On October 24, 1990 Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti told the Italian Parliament that NATO had long held a covert policy of training partisan groups in the event of a Soviet Invasion of Western Europe. Under Operation Gladio the CIA, British MI6 and NATO trained and armed partisan groups in NATO states to fight a guerrilla war if they were captured during a future Soviet invasion. It has been alleged that these groups and individuals in them were responsible for various acts of violence perpetrated against leftists during the cold war. political assassinations in Belgium, military coups in Greece (1967) and Turkey (1980) The supposed aim of this group was to prevent Communist movements in Western Europe from gaining power and thus contain the expansion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whose "iron curtain", as Winston Churchill termed it, had "descended across the Continent."

In 2000, a report from the Italian Democratic Party of the Left (formerly the Italian Communist Party) claimed that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI (Communist Party)(itself sponsored to the tune of over $60million from Moscow during the Cold War), and to a certain degree also the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), from reaching executive power in the country." TIntending to drawing a pejorative linkage to the atrocities of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, during which millions were persecuted and an estimated half million killed, the centrist Italian Republican party said the report was worthy of a 1970s Maoist group.

The US State Department has admitted the existence of Gladio only as a plan which was to be activated in the event of Soviet occupation of Western Europe during the Cold War, but has continued to deny it qualified as terrorism. The United States maintains that several researchers have been influenced by a Soviet Cold War forgery.

Anti-fascism

The United States government, through its Lend-Lease program, gave military and logistic supplies to Joseph Stalin to prop up his government after the Great Terror and during the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War. Stalin's poor human rights record appears not to have been concerned the Roosevelt administration. Included in the lend-lease supplies were more than 375,000 transport vehicles and 100,000 machine guns. Over the following years, more than three million dissidents, political prisoners, and opponents of the dictatorship of America's "gallant Soviet ally" were killed outright, or exiled to Siberia.

Opposing views

One reason for the United States' and other Western nations' support of certain right-wing dictatorships is because it is rare for democracy to exist in nations with low economic development. In these nations the population often lacks literacy, education, and is otherwise too poor to be able to fully participate in the democratic process. Thus supporting a dictatorship that promotes economic growth has often been seen as the best option available, anticipating that this will eventually lead to democratization. Evidence of this claim is the fact that right-wing dictatorships in all of the following nations eventually became democracies: Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Chile, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, and Indonesia. However, this view has been challenged recently by arguing that research shows poor democracies perform better than poor dictatorships by enjoying better economic growth, with the exception of east Asia. However, many US supported dictatorships have not become democracies, such as Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, etc.

Defenders of the United States point out the US has rarely used violence against another democracy. When the United States was involved in coups d'états against other democratic states, one explanation given was the believed perception that these states were on the verge of becoming Communist dictatorships or under communist influence. Also complicit was the role of semi-transparent, or non-transparent United States government agencies, such as the C.I.A., who sometimes did not implement the decisions of or mislead elected officials.

Though US soldiers have committed war crimes such as rape and murdering POW's, these actions are not allowed by the laws of United States, nor are they the official policy of the US military. The same applies even more so to acts committed by foreign groups supported by the US, but outside direct US control.

The US is blamed for human rights violations in nations committed by groups they have supported, even if indirectly, regardless of whether this was approved of by the foreign leadership or not, and regardless of whether the US had tried to use its influence to stop this or not. For example, stating that 200,000 people died during the long civil war in Guatemala and implying that the US was responsible is misleading, despite the US having for long periods of time cut off its military aid just because such violations helped stop a coup in 1993 and made efforts to improve the conduct of the security services.

Quotes

On March 1, 1985 President Reagan spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference. In the room was legendary Mujahideen fighter Abdul Haq who was affiliated with Hezb-e-Islami. Global Security described them as: "perhaps the most radical among the seven parties that made up the fractious anti-Soviet Afghan alliance of the 1980s." and notes their "virulent anti-Americanism and a radical Islamic ideology, but nevertheless accepted US arms and assistance - funneled through Pakistan - to fight occupying Soviet forces. Hezb-e-Islami committed numerous other human rights violations during the Afghan civil war. It's said that probably killed more Afghans than he did Soviets." Later Hezb-e-Islami would condemn Pakistan's cooperation with the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

Throughout the world the Soviet Union and its agents, client states, and satellites are on the defensive—on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They’re doing so on almost every continent populated by man—in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America. In making mention of freedom fighters, all of us are privileged to have in our midst tonight one of the brave commanders who lead the Afghan freedom fighters—Abdul Haq. Abdul Haq, we are with you. They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help. I’ve spoken recently of the freedom fighters of Nicaragua. You know the truth about them. You know who they’re fighting and why. They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance. We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong. -- US President Ronald Reagan, March 1, 1985

One has to ask whether there was transparency in the invasion of Iraq. The world knows President Bush lied openly about Iraq having chemical weapons, They keep on bombing cities, killing children, they have become a terrorist state.--Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, 2005.

Actually, who is the terrorist, who is against human rights? The answer is the United States because they attacked Iraq. Moreover, it is the terrorist king, waging war. --Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz, 2003

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it. --Noam Chomsky

See also

• Allegations of war crimes against U.S. officials
• American terrorism
• Command responsibility
• Economic terrorism
• Foreign relations of the United States
• List of acts labelled as state terrorism sorted by state
• List of terrorist incidents
• List of United States military history events
• US invasions
• Torture manuals

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• Alexander, George (December 1991). Western State Terrorism. Polity Press. p. 276. ISBN 9780745609317. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Chomsky, Noam (January 1988). The Culture of Terrorism. South End Press. p. 269. ISBN 9780896083349. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Pilger, John (December 12, 2002). "Bush Terror Elite Wanted 9/11 to Happen". Third World Traveler. Retrieved 2007-07-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Perdue, William D. (August 7, 1989). Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear. Praeger Press. p. 240. ISBN 9780275931407. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)
• "Understanding Terrorism". Public Broadcasting Service. August 15, 1997. Retrieved 2007-07-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Vann, Bill (November 21, 2001). "Bush nominee linked to Latin American terrorism". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 2007-07-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• Foreign relations of the United States
• State terrorism