Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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of victims; soldiers from the Atlacatl Battalion say that incendiary
weapons are used before their operations and that “they have seen
villages burned to the ground and large tracts of land charred by
incendiary bombs.” Refugees report many killed and villages and land
destroyed by the incendiary bombing, along with the recently-acquired
antipersonnel fragmentation bombs. Use of napalm was subsequently
confirmed by Dr. John Constable of Massachusetts General Hospital, a
specialist on burn victims with Vietnam war experience. Congressman
James Oberstar reports that he was informed by air force commander
Col. Rafael Bustillo that napalm bought from Israel had been used until
1981. 101
Military sources in the capital confirm that “improved intelligence”
derived from US reconnaissance is responsible for the fact that bombing
attacks have become much more accurate. Relief officials and Church
sources report that the result, not surprisingly, has been to increase
civilian deaths from the bombardment. 102 The correlation between USsupplied
“improved intelligence” and the increased kill-rate, including
direct attacks on defenseless peasants, received little notice in the press.
When noted, the reader was offered two interpretations. The “news”
columns, keeping to their fabled objectivity, reported that “U.S. help has
not enabled the Air Force to avoid hitting civilians, according to human
rights activists.” The second and rather different interpretation was the
one provided by the activists themselves: the Director of the Church
Human Rights office reports a sharp increase in civilian fatalities, not
guerrillas, but “children, women, old people,” as US reconnaissance
improved bombing accuracy, and “suggested that the Air Force was
deliberately aiming at civilians who are suspected of helping the rebels.”
The refugee reports leave little doubt that this is so, as it has always
been so. It takes quite an act of faith to take seriously the pretense that