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We need to step up the pressure on lawmakers to revoke the funding for The School Of The Americas. this is a terrorist training camp located just north of Jacksonville inside of Fort Benning up in Georgia.

Since it moved to Ft Benning in 1983, after being kicked out of Panama, the School Of The Americas has trained a hundred thousand Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics.

The school has trained 11 dictators who have returned to their countries and carried out mass murders, disappearances, rapes, revocations of civil rights, the list goes on and on.

It may be true that the US cannot predict what the graduates will do with their expert military training after graduation. But the facts show that it is clear that graduates are using their training to undermine other governments and to commit human rights violations on a mass scale.

I don’t want America represented this way in other parts of the world.

Up until the Bush Administration’s strangulation of the freedom of information and transparency, the list of graduates and their country of origin were public information.

Recently, the courts struck down part of the Bush secrecy program surrounding the graduates of the School of the Americas, but they did not go far enough. They are still classifying the names and country of origin of graduates from 2004 through 2008. All along, going back as far as the history of this school is concerned, the graduate list was public.

This makes us wonder exactly who was trained at the school during these still classified 5 years during the Bush Administration. One has to wonder…who attended the school and where were they from during these “missing years” in the record. What is the Pentagon trying to hide?

It is time to demand the names and country of origin of all of the graduates and it is past time for lawmakers to revoke the funding.

Starting this week, it’s the annual vigil to close the School Of The Americas at the gates of Ft Benning outside of Columbus Georgia.

From November 20-22, 2009, thousands will vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, to stand up for justice, to shut down the School of the Americas and to end the oppressive U.S. foreign policy that the school represents.

Please visit School Of The Americas Watch to learn more.