Why Barack Obama should close the SOA

Over the weekend of November 21-23, thousands gathered outside Fort Benning, Georgia, to participate in an annual vigil to protest the School of the Americas (SOA).

Most Americans have probably never heard of the SOA, which was cleverly renamed a few years ago to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)" to try to dodge the stigma surrounding the institution's reputation.

But changing the name doesn't change the fact that the school continues to use our tax dollars to train Latin American warlords and dictators in the art of torture and repression. The graduates then use their new skills to violate human rights in their home countries.

At an Amnesty International conference a few years ago, I had the privilege of meeting a Salvadoran victim of torture by the U.S.-trained death squads of the 1980s, and I heard his heart-wrenching story. Believe me, this is not how our tax dollars should be spent.

Amnesty International estimates that the WHINSEC-SOA has trained hundreds of Latin American officers who were later implicated in human rights violations.

Amnesty International has called for an independent commission of inquiry to investigate past activities of the SOA and its graduates, and for the school to be suspended pending publication of its findings.

We're still waiting.

Meantime, the crimes against humanity that originate there are free to continue, as long as the U.S.-trained militias and warlords can get away with it. God bless America.

President-elect Barack Obama has spoken out against the use of torture. That is certainly good, but it's not enough. Talk is cheap, so Obama needs to act on those words.

And, to do so, he must not only put an end to the use of torture by U.S. agents in the so-called "war on terror", but he must also call for closure of the WHINSEC-SOA. An end to torture by the CIA means little if we are still teaching the techniques to those who would propagate the atrocities overseas with our assistance.

After all, if we are to stand before the world and say truthfully (for a change) that the U.S. does not engage in torture, then we must guarantee that we are neither the instigators nor the enablers.