Ravenwood - 11/24/03 11:00 AM
This is too funny.
Demonstrators gathered outside Fort Benning to protest a military school were hit with a sonic barrage Saturday: patriotic music Army officials had blaring from the main gate.A crowd estimated by Columbus police at 8,000 gathered to protest the school once known as the School of the Americas, which they blame for Latin American human rights abuses. It appeared to be the largest first-day gathering in the 14-year history of the protest.
The Army's loudspeakers, playing "The Army Song" and "God Bless the U.S.A.," were 50 yards away from where protesters were speaking to the crowd.
Leaders of School of Americas Watch, which has protested at Fort Benning every year since the early 1990s, said they planned to sue over the noise tactic and accused the Army of a "psychological operation."
That's just how they got Noriega to surrender, too.
While that is a pleasant analogy, it isn't entirely true. Noriega was actually in a far end of the Embassy, and the music being blared by U.S. troops only served to keep the Embassador and his family from sleeping.
What really got Noriega to surrender was that the U.S. let it be known that they would be reluctant to interfere, should the angry citizens storm the Embassy and string him up by his toes, ala Mussolini.
Even though the U.S. troops would never have really let the crowd get that far out of control, it was Noriega's fear of mob violence that really got him to surrender.
Posted by: Ravenwood at November 24, 2003 8:36 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
