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

Free World Vignettes
undergoing her third operation to repair injuries incurred when
Salvadoran agents attacked her [in 1981] with bayonets,” Amnesty
International reports. She too was raped and tortured. Her 14-year old
son had been tortured by the National Guard several years earlier and
two of her brothers “disappeared,” one since found murdered. 54
The refusal to grant the visas was noted here, but their testimony
went largely unreported, to my knowledge. 55
When President Duarte’s daughter was kidnapped a year later, the
Times reported: “By abducting her the guerrillas broke what [prominent
families] regarded as an unspoken but traditional rule of chivalry,” which
had spared “the wives and daughters of the middle and upper
classes.” 56 The latter statement is false; women of these classes are
tortured and murdered with impunity by the US client regime. But in the
light of the regular sadistic treatment of women by these terrorist forces,
the reference to the “traditional rule of chivalry,” now broken, can only
inspire amazement about the nature of our friends, and wonder about
the moral and intellectual values of a country where these words can
appear.
Meanwhile peasants continue to be beaten to death and mutilated,
women and children are being killed in indiscriminate army attacks, and
police torture remains a routine practice. In November 1983, in a leaked
cable that the Reagan Administration attempted to conceal, the
International Committee of the Red Cross cabled that it
has seen a continuing deterioration in the treatment of detainees
since April. Perhaps as many as ninety percent of detainees are
being tortured during interrogation. Torture is being employed in
some of the formerly more humane centers, such as those run by
the National Police.
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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