<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcelo_montecino/5246561/” title=”Victims of Death Squads, Legal Aid Office, SAn Salvador 82 by Marcelo Montecino, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm1.staticflickr.com/3/5246561_ffb88b0ea1.jpg” width=”500″ height=”328″ alt=”Victims of Death Squads, Legal Aid Office, SAn Salvador 82″></a>
If you are of a certain age, you might remember Ronald Reagan.
And if you remember the Reagan years, you might remember the Iran-Contra Scandal.
In an effort to raise off-the-books money to fund conservative paramilitary groups in Central America, the Reagan Administration set up a money laundering system where weapons were sold to Iran, the cash bought drugs and the cash from the sale of the drugs was sufficiently laundered to give it to the Right-wing warriors south of the border–free of Reagan’s fingerprints. Much and more of these funds went to Nicaragua, but the dirty wars spread to other countries. One was El Salvador, where a brutal civil war flourished from 1979 to 1992.
A central feature of all the Central American conflicts during the Reagan/Pappy-Bush years was the Right-wing death squad. They killed anybody in their way from peasants to intellectuals to Bishops to Nuns. A lot has been written and documented about these conflicts. It is known who–in addition to Reagan’s off-the-books (and illegal) contributions–funded the death squads. In El Salvador much of that funding came from a few rich Salvadorian families with estates in Miami.
Funny thing.
It turns out that the folks funding El Salvadorian Death Squads contributed 40% of the capital that Mitt Romney needed to start Bain Capital.
Somehow, I am not surprised.
Over at the Huffington Post, Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler went into depth today about the blood money behind Mitt’s millions. It was a match made in grifter heaven: the Death-Squad-tainted-cash had to be cleaned up and Mitt needed investors. Ca-ching!
The more I learn about Romney, the more horrified I am at his easy and shameless immorality.
Cheers
[the photo, Victims of Death Squads, Legal Aid Office, SAn Salvador 82, was taken in 2005 by Marcelo Montecino. Back in the 1980s, the Catholic Legal Aid Office had hired a full-time photographer to take photos of Death Squad victims to help families find their loved ones. This went on for a little while until the Death Squads expressed their displeasure with the program. The photographer left. The surviving documentation of the Death Squad’s handiwork is still in El Salvador for review–and so are the surviving victims. Perhaps Bain Capital could set up a fund to help families still scared by the civil war–after all, their suffering made Bain possible.]
Lord Jesus Perm
Speechless. Seriously.
Poopyman
Bonus benefit from the Death Squad days: Salvadorans who fled to the US started MS 13, which is still very much a problem today.
Linda Featheringill
This is terrible on all levels. What handsome people they must have been when alive! What absolute horror the squads spread!
And then the money. So much destruction in the world. And the fatcats profit from it all.
Oy. Let us pray for pitchforks.
jenn
Jesus Christ. I can’t even …. I honestly didn’t think that my opinion of the man could get any lower. Sadly, I am proved wrong.
rikyrah
the man made a profit from aborted fetuses.
and, you think he’d have a problem from taking blood money?
he was trying to get rich for Pete’s sake.
James Gary
Mayor Quimby: “I’ll admit I used the city treasury to fund the murder of my enemies, but as Gabbo would say, I’m a bad wittle boy.”
Baud
@jenn:
It’s still early. It’ll drop further.
MikeJ
@rikyrah: I have no problem with someone making money by disposing of medical waste. Of course I’m not a wingnut.
srv
We seem to not worry too much about our recent past, which is a bloody and noxious as any era in our history.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
It might have an effect on some Central American immigrants who might have considered voting for Mitt because they don’t like abortion.
the Conster
@efgoldman:
That story is the sound of the drip, drip, drip of Mitt’s burning ambition being extinguished. Every thing Mitt does normal people recoil from, and every story like that one is another piece of the puzzle that Romney’s been trying to hide.
Ben Franklin
Although the deal was conceived after the assassination of Cardinal Romero and three Nuns, the same families were in power in the Banana Republic. Unfortunately, the public has a short memory and probably don’t care about Republican support for the Regime of El Salvador, or Nicaragua.
Outta sight. Outta mind.
Ben Franklin
BISHOP Romero…
Valdivia
Have been sort of lurking because I am slammed with family medical issues but I saw that this morning and almost had a conniption. The Salvadorean Death Squads. Ugh. So glad you spotlighted this.
Apropos too, must read reports from the Brazilian Truth Commission. Naming names and all. Truly repulsive stuff.
Mnemosyne
Um, would you mind putting the picture under the fold so people aren’t surprised by photos of corpses when they’re innocently scrolling through dog photos and editorial cartoons at work? Kthxbai.
On topic, I’ll be fascinated to see how this plays out in the Spanish-language media. Not too many people from Latin America who remember the 1980s death squads fondly.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I can’t say I’m all that shocked. The specifics of this case surprise me, but overall, it’s just another sleazy thing Rmoney’s done. What a fuckface. Any decent person would have told these death squad scumbags to go to hell, but this is just exhibit 387 of why Rmoney isn’t a decent person. I really don’t know how the guy lives with himself. And here’s a bonus aside for me: Those death squads also worked in my adopted second home, Honduras. Fucker.
Peter
Christ, every time you think you’ve finally dredged up the last of the slime from the pit that is Romney’s sense of ethics…
I’m not sure this is useful politically, though. It SHOULD make people recoil in horror, but it sounds so outlandish and cartoon villainish that I think the public will have a hard time taking it as a serious accusation rather than a smear.
kelrian
Holy crap. Just… holy crap. There are no words.
Ash Can
And to think that Romney is still considered a serious candidate for the office of president of the United States. What the holy fucking hell has upper-class/right-wing media done to this nation?
Arundel
It’s truly unbelievable what an outrageous, traitorous scandal Iran-Contra was, a sheerly Republican production, that has been utterly erased from our national memory by our “liberal media”. It’s boggling to look back at the scale of the treachery, hypocrisy, and real human cost, under St. Ronnie. That does not seem that long ago, to me. It’s breathtaking how completely the media swept all that under the rug, erased the tape, this never happened.
It’s still a scandal. The GOP should’ve been exposed and destroyed by Iran-Contra, Reagan should’ve been impeached, people should have been put in jail. It was a disgrace to the nation, and criminal.
Oh but look! Gary Hart is having an extramarital affair! Back then, the media jumped away from the hearings to that “scandal”, and the whole thing has been wiped. Yeah, worse than Watergate. Watergate seems a quaint scandal now, compared to Iran-Contra, and the Iraq war. The horrors just get greater. As does the body count, and it’s all on the Republicans. They really are a malevolent force in America, they are the worst, but the media forgives their every sin and pretends they never happened. It’s egregious that Iran-Contra has been so forgotten.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@ Ben Franklin: This. I was an activist in the ‘eighties when this was happening, but not so much as my cousin, who was a priest living with the Ecuadorians, terrified that he and his flock were going to die at the hands of these squads.
It’s still a scandal. The GOP should’ve been exposed and destroyed by Iran-Contra, Reagan should’ve been impeached, people should have been put in jail. It was a disgrace to the nation, and criminal.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Arundel: Sorry, Arundel … trying to blockquote a portion of your extraordinarily pertinent comment, but failed.
peggy
Archbishop Romero is one of my heroes. We have services commemorating his martyrdom in my Unitarian church. Rep. Joe Moakley(MA) investigated the murder of the nuns in El Salvador as a faithful Catholic and fought the the Reagan administration.
Meanwhile, a few miles away, Romney was sucking up blood money. Somehow, this is worse, more personal.
The Fat Kate Middleton
I just went back and reread your post, Dennis … I almost wish I hadn’t. I don’t think I will sleep tonight.
SRW1
Being responsible for funding the deaths squads and therefore literally have the blood of their victims on his hands had essentially no impact on Reagan getting beatified and canonized as a saint not only by Republicans, but by the American mainstream. Which, depressing as it is, makes me suspect that Romney ‘merely’ having taken blood money won’t ruffle many moral feathers of the public conscience 25-30 years after that fact.
Lurking Canadian
This is almost too horrible to believe. Even worse is the fact that, if this gets any media attention at all, it will get less than what Harry Reid got for saying Mitt doesn’t pay taxes.
New slogan for Obama ads:
Romney’s not just a bad candidate. He’s a bad man.
Ella in New Mexico
In the mid 80’s, my mother and father-in-law (who are from a rural, conservative and pretty unsophisticated area of southern Pennsylvania) went to El Salvador as part of a “Witnessing Mission” lead by the Lutheran church in protest of all the killings of innocent people. They came home spiritually moved by the level of suffering and poverty experienced by the common people there. The brutality of the murders of the helpless and innocent stunned them. Even though they were not wealthy at all, they sent significant money to their church to help the victims, and even traveled to other Lutheran churches in their area to testify as to the injustices there. I was so proud of them.
Guess who they will most likely vote for in this election (50/50 they will just not vote)?
Mitt Romney. Because, you know, Barack Obama is a Muslim Socialist who’s not an American citizen. Seriously–they really believe these things. Oh, and they’re life long Republicans, who simply cannot pull the lever for a Democrat.
I just cannot, will not, ever truly understand the psyche of people who are so sane one day will completely detach their living values when they enter the damn voting box.