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

Free World Vignettes
murdered; a man killed by hanging after his eyes were gouged out and
his fingernails pulled out; a man who was stabbed to death after having
been beaten, his eyes gouged out and a cross carved in his back after he
fled from a hospital attacked by the contras; another tortured then
skinned; another cut to pieces with bayonets by contras who then
beheaded her 11-month-old baby before his wife’s eyes; others who
were raped to a background of religious music; children shot in the back
or repeatedly shot “as though she had been used for target practice,”
according to a North American priest; along with much similar testimony
provided by American priests, nuns, and others working in the border
areas where the terrorist forces rampage, attacking from the Honduran
bases established by their US advisers, instructors and paymasters. 23
The chairmen of Americas Watch and Helsinki Watch, after a
personal visit to study the “great divergence between President Reagan’s
rhetoric and the conclusions of the [Americas Watch] report” on contra
atrocities, concluded that “there can be no doubt, on the basis of what
we heard and saw, that a planned strategy of terrorism is being carried
out by the contras along the Honduras border” and that “the U.S. cannot
avoid responsibility for these atrocities.” 24 Nor can the US apologists for
the “democratic resistance” or those who front for it.
This is a brief sample of the methods we are compelled to undertake
when the orderly regime of traditional life is challenged in our
dependencies. They constitute what the press describes as “a military
and economic annoyance to the Sandinista regime,” and since it does
not appear likely to achieve the aim of overthrowing this regime, this
“annoyance” is often considered unwise. 25 Our chosen instruments for
such annoyance are blandly described as the “democratic opposition” in
the news columns of the nation’s press, for example, in a lengthy
account of US government preparations for invasion of Nicaragua in the
New York Times. 26 In keeping with the principle of objectivity, no
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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