Edward M. Kennedy: “I want to clarify for the record the fact is that this school has, in fact, suggested that they have begun to teach…”

“I want to clarify for the record the fact is that this school has, in fact, suggested that they have begun to teach human rights at the school. I had the individual who was hired by the school come to my office and tell me that when he taught human rights at the school, he was ridiculed. He was abused, and he says that the notion that this school has reformed itself is a joke. Rather than assisting to establish democracy in a part of the world so important to us, the great tradition of School of the Americas results in a who's-who of the hemisphere's dictators. In Honduras, Panama, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, and Ecuador the stain of the School of the Americas remains. The graduates of the School of the Americas include dictators and soldiers implicated in human rights violations all over Latin America thanks to the American taxpayer. No more should our American soldiers be introduced to the position of being sent into dangerous situations in order to clean up the mess made by a few of the graduates of the School of the Americas. At its best, the school is ineffective.”