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

Free World Vignettes
security forces . . . Killings and terrorist acts are the work of both
leftist “Democratic Front” forces who often claims [sic]
responsibility for them, and of rightist elements with whom some
members of the security organizations are associated . . . The
government has been unable to end such abuses.
Through 1980 and beyond, the US press generally kept to the Party
Line, though it was subsequently conceded that “Under the Carter
Administration, United States officials said security forces were
responsible for 90 percent of the atrocities,” not “‘uncontrollable’ rightwing
bands” 33 —so that the assertions in the Human Rights Report and
other public statements were deliberate lies, reiterated as conscious
deception by the media.
The Washington Post maintained that “There is no real argument
that most of the estimated 10,000 political fatalities in 1980 were
victims of government forces or irregulars associated with them”—only
the detailed accounting by the Church Human Rights office and what
the press was being told by US officials, but chose to conceal. Jeane
Kirkpatrick stated: “And I think it’s a terrible injustice to the Government
and the military when you suggest that they were somehow responsible
for terrorism and assassination.” No commissar could be more loyal in
defending state terror. The first major massacre, at Rio Sumpul, was
suppressed for over a year, though it was reported at once in the Church
and international press. A congressional report to which we return
directly received the same treatment as did much other evidence that
was readily available but not considered appropriate for the general
population. 34 This is quite typical; it is always more rewarding to gaze
with horror at the crimes of official enemies.
The claim that “the government has been unable to end such abuses”
by right-wing death squads continues to be widely echoed in the press;
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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