John Mica: “once again I think the well-intended but misinformed would like to cut the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security…”

“once again I think the well-intended but misinformed would like to cut the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation funding. Now, what the cafe latte crowd has in mind is that these terrorists are only misunderstood individuals, that they probably need counseling. Maybe we should send them some social assistance to straighten them out, but certainly we should not train military. In fact, we found with narcoterrorists, narcoterrorists have better training and better equipment than the native military population that is trying to stabilize some of these countries like in Colombia. Not only do they have better equipment and training and do more destruction, but they also have the money because they mostly finance their operations through narcoterrorism. What they want to do is tie the hands of those countries that are helping us to stabilize those countries, to bring some peace there, to bring narcoterrorism under control. So if we want to tie hands and put them right behind our back, cut the funds; and we will have poorly trained individuals who do not know the difference between human rights violations. In fact, we do insist on the very highest standards. We have the opportunities to train these individuals and influence them to do the right thing and to conduct military exercises that are honest and open and well directed.…”