"I look forward to a great future for America--a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose."

"America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal--to discover and maintain liberty among men."

The United States government and its branches have throughout history ignored the meaning of these quotes, just as it has ignored human rights violations in the interest

of capitalism. In Nicaragua a major anti-socialist group was committing atrocities: Rape,

starvation, and disciplinary tethering were tortures that new contra recruits were forced to endure. The contras were supported unconditionally by Washington and trained by the

C. I. A. In Chile the Pinochet military junta murdered thousands of Allende's supporters. The regime was backed fully by the White House. Over the course of the past century and a half, economic and strategic interests were put above all moral and ethical priorities when involved in foreign countries. This nation's leaders con

Panama is another example of the outright lies perpetrated by the United States. According to a variety of non-mainstream but authoritative sources, The Nation, NBC, and The New York Times, the U.S. invasion of Panama on December 20, 1989 received inadequate news coverage. It now appears that the legal implications of the invasion, the Bush-Noriega relationship and the actual post-invasion conditions in Panama have all been misrepresented to the American public. The most fraudulent news may be the coverage dealt with the true numbers of civilian and combat fatalities, especially the loss of lives among Panamanians.

As new details of the widening scandal emerged, a series of congressional and legal investigations began. In February 1987 the Tower Commission, a special panel headed by former U.S. Senator John Tower of Texas, issued a report castigating President Reagan and his advisers for their lack of control over the National Security Council. In May of 1987, Reagan was quoted saying "I've known what was going on there ... I was very definitely involved in the decisions about support to the freedom fighters. It was my idea to begin with." (Cockburn, 223.) The Congressional Joint Investigative Committee collected more than 300,000 documents, conducted more than 500 interviews and depositions, and listened to 28 witnesses in 40 days of public hearings. In November 1987 the committee reported that the president bore the ultimate responsibility for the implementation of his administration's policies but found no firm evidence that he had known of the diversion of funds to the contras. In May 1989 North was tried and convicted of obstructing Congress and unlawfully destroying government documents, but his conviction was subsequently overturned. A guilty decision on Poindexter's actions was also later reversed. The scandal's reverberations concerning the ultimate responsibility for the operation continued into the 1990s. In December 1992 President George Bush, who had been vice president under Reagan and who had also been implicated, but not charged, in the scandal, issued pardons to many of the top government officials who had been charged or convicted for their role in the Iran-Contra affair.

The reasons the U. S. gives for the sanctions on Cuba are usually based on the accusation of Castro's human rights violations. His administrations did not commit any outrageous atrocities against innocent civilians. They would execute and jail, as it is a necessity for any revolutionary movement, after all, revolutionaries jailed those whose loyalties laid with the King abroad during the American Revolutionary War. Castro's officers executed or imprisoned those that were deserving of it; social predators: police officers who would rape and beat prisoners, pimps, drug dealers, corrupt Batista army officials, so on and so forth. However, these executions and arrests only occurred immediately after the revolution, and even then his officers would not systematically kill those aligned with Batista, nor would they execute on the mere supposition that one was a supporter of the opposition.

In addition to Stealth Bombers dropping 2000-pound bombs, U.S. soldiers are reported to have directly fired upon civilian homes with machine guns, rockets, and tanks in the barrio of El Chorillo surrounding Noriega's headquarters. U.S. soldiers evacuated apartments and promptly burned them to the ground. Witnesses reported U.S. troops killing wounded civilians with either gunshots or rifle-butts to the head.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, FDN Sandinistas, Investigative Committee, President Allende, Lawyers Guild, John Poindexter, Sanger Forty-one, Guardia Nacional, Latin American, human rights, guardia nacional, la guardia nacional, la guardia, latin american, sanctions cuba, direct violation, death toll, national security, bush administration, united government, 90 miles coast, regime 90 miles, recruits forced endure, chavez democratically elected,
Approximate Word count = 3679
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)