Presidential candidate protests Benning school

[unhappycamper]

Presidential candidate protests Benning school
By Harry R. Weber - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Nov 18, 2007 17:58:53 EST

COLUMBUS, Georgia — Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich joined thousands of protesters in a demonstration Sunday against a U.S. Army school that opponents accuse of fostering human rights abuses in Latin America.

Kucinich used the occasion to emphasize his opposition to the Bush administration for leading the U.S. into war in Iraq and now threatening to attack Iran.

“We reject war as an instrument of foreign policy,” the Ohio congressman told the crowd, estimated by local police to number about 10,000.

Kucinich said one of his first acts if elected president would be to shut down the school at Fort Benning, Georgia, which trains Latin American soldiers, police and government officials.

The Army’s School of the Americas moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984 and was replaced in 2001 by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, under the Defense Department.

The annual protests outside the gate to the military installation are timed to commemorate six Jesuit priests who were killed along with their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador on Nov. 19, 1989. Some of the killers had attended the School of the Americas.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_kucinich_071118/