The same was true for years in El Salvador, a little country in Central America that endured a decade-long revolution and civil war, in which the US was backing a vicious oligarchy and supporting a brutal military that regularly sent death squads out into the slums and the countryside to murder those who supported the rebels. American forces there were always described as "trainers" or "advisors," though their roles were far more active, and bloody, than that, as was occasionally exposed when they'd get caught in rebel ambushes (as happened to the 12 Green Berets staying at a hotel that rebels temporarily captured during an offensive in the country's capital).
Putting military forces in a country and calling them advisors or trainers is an old propaganda stand-by for the US. The only thing that sets this latest fraud apart from earlier imperial interventions by US military forces this time is the numbers involved. Even that legendary Bill Clinton obfuscator would have a hard time making anyone believe that a force of 10,000 heavily armed US troops are just "trainers."
DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, LORI SPENCER, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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