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| Oscar Romero - Hugo Chavez Liberation Theology - Sacred and Secular |
"When Reagan
was elected, two months later there was a meeting of his National Security
Council in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to discuss one thing: How can we destroy
liberation theology in Latin America? And they concluded: We can’t destroy it,
but we can divide the church. And so they went after the pope. They gave him
lots and lots of cash for solidarity in Poland. And in exchange, they got the
permission, if you will, the commitment on the part of the papacy, to destroy
liberation theology."
...
So, history and cheerleading of popes, what I call
papolatry, will not cover up the facts. This has been the most sordid 42 years
of Catholic history since the Borgias. And as I say, I think it’s really about
ending that church as we know it. I think Protestantism, too, needs a reboot.
I think all of Christianity can get back more to the teachings of Jesus, a revolutionary around love and justice. That’s what it’s about. And that’s why there’s been such fierce resistance all along from the right wing.
The CIA has been involved in, especially with Pope John Paul II, the decimation of liberation theology all over South America, the replacing of these heroic leaders, including bishops and cardinals, with Opus Dei cardinals and bishops, who are—well, frankly, it’s a fascist organization, Opus Dei is.
It’s all about obedience. It’s not about ideas or theology. They haven’t produced one theologian in 40 years. They produce canon lawyers and people who infiltrate where the power is, whether it’s the media, the Supreme Court or the FBI, the CIA, and finance, especially in Europe.
I think all of Christianity can get back more to the teachings of Jesus, a revolutionary around love and justice. That’s what it’s about. And that’s why there’s been such fierce resistance all along from the right wing.
The CIA has been involved in, especially with Pope John Paul II, the decimation of liberation theology all over South America, the replacing of these heroic leaders, including bishops and cardinals, with Opus Dei cardinals and bishops, who are—well, frankly, it’s a fascist organization, Opus Dei is.
It’s all about obedience. It’s not about ideas or theology. They haven’t produced one theologian in 40 years. They produce canon lawyers and people who infiltrate where the power is, whether it’s the media, the Supreme Court or the FBI, the CIA, and finance, especially in Europe.
Steele's
contribution was pivotal. He was the covert US figure behind the intelligence
gathering of the new commando units. The aim: to halt a nascent Sunni
insurgency in its tracks by extracting information from detainees.
It was a role made for Steele. The veteran had made his
name in El Salvador almost
20 years earlier as head of a US group of special forces advisers who were
training and funding the Salvadoran military to fight the FNLM guerrilla
insurgency. These government units developed a fearsome international
reputation for their death squad activities. Steele's own biography describes
his work there as the "training of the best counterinsurgency force"
in El Salvador.
Of his
El Salvador experience in 1986, Steele told Dr Max Manwaring, the author of El
Salvador at War: An Oral History: "When I arrived here there was a
tendency to focus on technical indicators … but in an insurgency the focus has
to be on human aspects. That means getting people to talk to you."
But the
arming of one side of the conflict by the US hastened the country's descent
into a civil war in which 75,000 people died and 1 million out of a population
of 6 million became refugees.
Celerino
Castillo, a Senior Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who worked
alongside Steele in El Salvador, says: "I first heard about Colonel James
Steele going to Iraq and I said they're going to implement what is known as the
Salvadoran Option in Iraq and that's exactly what happened. And I was
devastated because I knew the atrocities that were going to occur in Iraq which
we knew had occurred in El Salvador."
It was
in El Salvador that Steele first came in to close contact with the man who
would eventually command US operations in Iraq: David Petraeus. Then a young
major, Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 and reportedly even stayed with
Steele at his house.
But
while Petraeus headed for the top, Steele's career hit an unexpected buffer
when he was embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair. A helicopter pilot, who also
had a licence to fly jets, he ran the airport from where the American advisers
illegally ran guns to right-wing Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. While the
congressional inquiry that followed put an end to Steele's military ambitions,
it won him the admiration of then congressman Dick Cheney who sat on the
committee and admired Steele's efforts fighting leftists in both Nicaragua and
El Salvador.
In late
1989 Cheney was in charge of the US invasion of Panama to overthrow their once
favoured son, General Manuel Noriega. Cheney picked Steele to take charge of
organising a new police force in Panama and be the chief liaison between the
new government and the US military.
