John Joseph Moakley: “Some of my colleagues are alluding to things that happened many years ago. We are talking about some atrocities that…”

“Some of my colleagues are alluding to things that happened many years ago. We are talking about some atrocities that happened as recently as March of 1999 by two major generals; other atrocities in 1998 in Colombia. So some of the graduates are still doing these things. This is a bipartisan amendment, Mr. Chairman. It is authored by both Democrats and Republicans. And I think if we close the school once and for all, we are not stopping all military training for Latin America, we are only stopping 10 percent of it. There are 10,000 people from Latin America trained by the United States Army, only 1,000 in the School of the Americas. But I think where the School of the Americas has been so symbolic in Central America to some of the people down there, and it attracts thousands of people every year to picket it, I think that we should close it and start anew. So I hope my amendment is adopted.”