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Produced by The Fellowship of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America
and the Caribbean
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Puerto Rico Update, Number 32, Spring 2001
Disarming the U.S. Military Hub in Latin America
The Vieques-Iraq Connection
By Luis Monterrosa
When U.S. warplanes from the USS Harry S. Truman bombed targets south of
Baghdad on February 16, it was one in a long string of such bombing attacks
conducted by U.S. and British forces that, according to the Gulf News of
Dubai, have killed 311 Iraqis since December 1998. Exactly since six months
before the February attack, the same USS Harry S. Truman conducted its
final bombing practice runs -- in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
[Embedded image moved to file: pic18467.jpg]
And when Navy officials announced April 12 that bombing would resume in
Vieques in late April, it was for a deployment of the USS Enterprise to the
Persian Gulf immediately afterward.
Since the 1940's, Vieques has served as a dress rehearsal in the U.S.'
global theater of war. In recent times the cast has included the U.S.
military, NATO and South American and Caribbean allied forces, although the
protagonist has always been the U.S. Navy. U.S. military bombing exercises
have made Vieques the sneak preview of the U.S. military's foreign acts of
aggression.
During the Vietnam War, for instance, the military used Vieques to practice
carpet bombings and its ignoble napalm program, the jellied gasoline used
against the Vietnamese people. It was also from Vieques that the United
States prepared for its military intervention in Guatemala in 1954 and the
Dominican Republic in 1965, and conducted its final rehearsal for the
invasion of Grenada in 1983. In this way, the military has created an
involuntary, mutually destructive relationship between Vieques and
countries subject to U.S. military foreign policy. Since the beginning of
the Gulf War in 1991, the most salient of these relationships between
Vieques and the outside world has been with Iraq.
About 50,000 troops train on Vieques every year, including virtually all
naval and Marine troops entering combat in the Gulf War. According to
Admiral Diego Hernández, U.S. forces' "success" in Iraq is due to the
troops' extensive dress rehearsals in Vieques. The U.S. bombings'
destruction of Iraq is well known. Less known is its destructive precursor
relationship to Vieques. As Roberto Rabin, of the Committee for the Defense
and Rescue of Vieques recently acknowledged, "If [the U.S. military] did it
in Iraq, you know they practiced it first in Vieques."
According to a July 1999 study conducted by the Secretary of the Navy,
entitled The National Security Need For Vieques, forward deployed naval
forces engage in military activity on average every five weeks,
necessitating a constant tuning of their military apparatus. Two U.S.
carriers, USS ENTERPRISE and USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT, are good examples of
this.
In November, 1998, the ENTERPRISE battle group trained in Vieques and left
for the Arabian Gulf. Shortly upon arrival, the battle group began military
operations, "expending more than 690,000 pounds of ordnances on Iraqi
targets in a 70-hour time period," according to the Navy study. In early
1999, the ENTERPRISE battle group also launched a Tomahawk missile land
attack on Kosovo. The ENTERPRISE, which also conducted training in Vieques
in December of 2000, is currently slated to deploy to the Mediterranean and
Persian Gulf in May of this year.
After practicing on the Vieques range in February of 1999, the THEODORE
ROOSEVELT battle group also engaged in the NATO Kosovo operation. From May
12 to June 12, 1999, aircraft from ROOSEVELT's airwing flew more than 2,500
combat sorties, launching nearly a thousand precision guided munitions at
Yugoslavian and Kosovar targets. Referring to these military operations,
the Commander U.S. Second Fleet and Commander U.S. Marine Corps Forces
Atlantic illustrate Vieques' utility: "Every facet of naval training
refined on the Vieques range complex was immediately demonstrated under
stress." The skills acquired by the Navy in Vieques included high altitude,
single and multiple aircraft bombing sorties using guided munitions.
According to Jay, L. Johnson, chief of naval operations, and Gen. James L.
Jones, commandant of the Marine corps, "The fundamental value of the
Vieques facility is proven every day by our forward deployed naval forces.
The Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups and the Amphibious Ready Group that
trained at Vieques within the last year [1999] ended up flying combat
operations over Iraq and Kosovo within days of their arrival overseas. They
delivered many of their attacks from high altitude, and their ability to do
so successfully was directly related to their training at Vieques."
During the last decade the U.S. has consistently propped up the Iraq threat
to justify its continued bombing exercises in Vieques. In light of
widespread protest against the military's presence in Vieques, the U.S.
Navy has set the stage for its theater by attempting to put the argument
for Vieques in the context of the evil antagonist -- Saddam Hussein. In
March of this year, Rear Admiral Richard Naughton of the USS GEORGE
WASHINGTON was quoted on AP wires with his dramatic quip ""The No. 1 thing
that would make Saddam Hussein happy would be to parade an American fighter
pilot down the streets of Baghdad."
High-altitude bombings have become the signature method of U.S. military
operations. As Michael Ignatieff has pointed out, "If pilots fly high, they
can't identify targets accurately and the risks of horrifying accidents
increase. Flying low improves accuracy but the risk to pilots is
significantly increased." For example, when U.S. and British warplanes
launched ten missiles on targets in southern Iraq in August 2000, they
missed several, killing a civilian and injuring twenty, according to Agence
France Presse. But preventing U.S. casualties has become a mantra for the
politics in Washington of U.S. military action overseas.
"Our interest was in addressing the question of the safety of the pilots
that are flying those missions," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said of
February attacks on Baghdad, and added "that the Navy munitions did not
find their targets precisely."
According to an internal UN Security Sector report, during one five-month
period, 41 per cent of the victims of bombings were civilians. The places
hit were farmland, villages, fishing jetties, and barren valleys where
sheep graze. In January 2000 an American missile hit Al Jumohria, a street
in a poor residential area, killing six children and injuring sixty-three
people, a number of them badly burned.
Navy officers also cited the military's Kosovo operations for why it must
bomb Vieques. Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations
stated that "events in Kosovo should remind us of the value of the forward
presence provided by combat-ready Carrier Battle Groups and Amphibious
Ready Groups... The THEODORE ROOSEVELT Battle Group commenced highly
successful strike operations three days after entering the Mediterranean
and only 10 days after beginning her regularly scheduled deployment."
The ROOSEVELT battle group's performance, said Lautenbacher, "is noteworthy
for its many successes: scores of fixed targets destroyed, more than 400
tactical targets destroyed or damaged, and in excess of 3,000 sorties
without a single loss...It takes a proper level of resources and the most
realistic training we can provide prior to deploying -- precisely the type
of coordinated, live fire training conducted at the Atlantic Fleet Weapons
Testing Facility at Vieques."
As The Washington Times explained last year: "In December 1998, the USS
Carl Vinson battle group was in combat within eight hours of arriving on
station in the Persian Gulf, firing cruise missiles against Iraq. The last
seven carrier battle groups deployed have seen combat in such places as
Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Vieques prepared them."
On June 25 - 27, 2000, five ships of the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON Carrier
Battle Group trained in Vieques prior to deploying to the Mediterranean and
Arabian Gulf that summer. The training included ship-to-shore gunnery as
well as air to ground bombing exercises. According to the Navy, Vieques is
the only location in the Atlantic where naval units can conduct the
Combined Arms training required prior to deploying to "...areas of
potential hostilities in support of U.S. Foreign Policy."
It is clear that as tiny an island as Vieques is, it serves as the military
springboard for the most powerful military force in all of history. In this
sense, Vieques is a symbolically important place for peace and
demilitarization in the Middle East and anywhere that U.S. foreign
interests bring war. Its significance lies in how a vibrant movement from a
small island has, together with supporters from Puerto Rico and around the
world, formed a phalanx of justice that is nonviolently marching closer to
ousting a belligerent and colossal military brute.
___________________________________
Sources:
"Navy drops napalm on Vieques," in:
www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43/023.html
Edwin Meléndez and Edgardo Meléndez, The Colonial Dilemma, 59, Wall Street
Journal, 11/15/99
peacehost.net/EPI-Calc/Vieques.html, Roberto Rabin interview, 4/4/01
Commander, U.S. Second Fleet, National Security Need for Vieques, 7/15/99
San Juan Star, 1/14/01
Miami Herald, 11/15/99
The Washington Times, 5/21/00
Navy web site: (www.navyvieques.navy.mil/news14.htm)
The Guardian Daily, 3/4/00
Chris Allen-Doucot, Princeton Packet, 2/12/99
Associated Press, 3/29/00, 5/21/00
Ignatieff, NY Review of Books, 7/20/00
Journal of Aerospace and Defense Industry News, 12/10/99
Vice Amiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr.
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Puerto Rico Campaign
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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