Nicaraguan parliament approves destruction of yet more SAM-7

July 14th, 2006 at 10:37 Björn Hallberg

Nicaragua’s National Assembly narrowly votes to destroy another 600 or so SAM-7 shoulder-launched surface to air missiles at the behest of their US overlords and Contras power brokers.

Nicaragua dismantled 1,000 of its missiles in 2005. Washington has sought to convince it to destroy its estimated 1,000 remaining SAM-7s, but Nicaragua insists on keeping 400 of the missiles for its own national defense force.

Though of course it is only a matter of time before Nicaragua is left completely defenseless, as the political left stands poised for a possible comeback. But that is just the way the US likes its prey — ’strafable’ easy pickings for the media to relay to its bloodthirsty ‘America No 1′ crowd at home. Of course, since Nicaragua is allegedly a democracy and the vote came to a tie, the US-backed regime stepped in and decided / strongarmed / manipulated the vote in their / America’s favour. Also, it’s worth noting that the primary threat to Nicaragua (except for a direct and overt attack by the US) namely a proxy Honduras has not undertaken a similar cut in fighter / bomber aircraft.

And regarding the missiles falling into the hands of “terrorists” who better to assure that this actually happens than the good old CIA itself. Not to mention that a considerable number of these rather modest weapons have been unaccounted for and left with bona fide terrorists (former Contras forces) and sleeper cells in remote areas. It would be wise of the US to clean up its own mess before pointing any fingers. This is what happened last year as the issue heated up in the US press.

In the past month, the US government through planted newspaper stories starting with the Reverend Sun Mung Moon-owned, right-wing Washington Times, has begun a classic psychological operation (pysops) to force Nicaragua to dismantle its air defense. First came the unsubstantiated claim that high officers in the Nicaraguan Army have SAM-7s hidden away that they plan to sell on the black market ? possibly to terrorists! Then, coincidentally, two men were arrested exchanging a SAM-7 in Managua. In fact, that weapon never belonged to the Nicaraguan Army but was instead part of a batch of SAM-7s provided to the US-trained contra mercenaries which tried to overthrow the Sandinista government throughout the 1980s. Those SAM-7s were never turned in as part of contra demobilization agreements. Not only that, but at his sentencing last week, the buyer of the SAM-7 said he was paid $1,000 by the CIA to buy the missile and that he attended the operation planning meeting in the US embassy in the presence of US Ambassador Barbara Moore. He was even supposed to take pictures which could be used as “proof.”

Also of historical note: “Security Council considers Nicaraguan complaint against United States, takes no action.” (UN Chronicle; 2/1/1986) on the topic of the escalation of the conflict and the use of SAM-7.

Well, hopefully the upcoming election will put an end to the US scourge that has festered in Nicaragua. Not that anyone actually believes the elections will be fair and free of US interference. They never have been to date.

Entry 588 filed under: Central America. This entry was posted 2 years, 4 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.