Reply #3: Don't Forget Guatemala in the 50s.... [View All]

...an oldie but goodie, very close to this one in terms of local paramilitary types working hand in hand with U.S. Marines to overthrow an elected government.

Also, for those keeping score, this is the fourth instance of "regime change" carried out by the Bush administration in his four-year term--Afghanistan (2001--regime change by direct invasion), Venezuala (2002--unsucessful attempt at regime change by military coup openly backed by the State Department), Iraq (2003--regime change by direct invasion), and Haiti (2004--regime change by combination of U.S.-backed "uprising" by right-wing death squads, followed by the last stages being carried out by direct invasion).

So far, two of the four victims of U.S.-sponsored "regime change" have been democratically elected (the governments led by Chavez and Aristide), while two were unelected (the Taliban and the Ba'athists). What all four had in common was that they presided over third world countries whose natural resources, cheap labor pool, strategic geographical position, etc., were coveted by Wall Street and the Pentagon and that in all four cases the regimes being changed showed an unacceptable level of disobedience to Washington's imperial dictates. Plus, its just so much damn easier to manage these countries as direct colonies than to go through the hassle of dealing with elections and all that shit.