[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 115 (Thursday, September 4, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H6802]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                TIME TO CLOSE THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS

  (Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, in the next couple of 
hours, this House will have the opportunity of closing down the School 
of the Americas. This is one of the worst vestiges of this country's 
foreign policies over the course of the last couple of decades. While 
the cold war has ended, the association of this country in hundreds of 
villages throughout Latin America, in thousands of families where human 
rights abuses have taken place time and time and time again, those who 
perpetrated those human rights abuses have one thing in common. They 
were graduates of the School of the Americas.
  This is a school that is funded by U.S. taxpayers. It has trained the 
Latin American militaries how to come to this country and learn to 
kill, torture, and maim more efficiently. It is a school that should 
never have been associated with U.S. taxpayer funds. It is a school 
whose time has not only come and gone, but whose time should never have 
been associated with this country.
  It is time, I believe, for us to close down the School of the 
Americas. I ask Members on both sides of the aisle, save the taxpayers 
money. Close the School of the Americas.

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