Editor:

I am the public affairs officer for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the DoD facility that replaced the Army’s School of the Americas four years ago. I was surprised and disappointed that a second-year law student would write a guest column replete with errors and unsupportable assertions (“Students should stand against School of Americas ‘education,'” April 8).

Where is the evidence? The most misunderstood fact about professional education is that students attend a specific course and return to their jobs.

Thus, it is utterly meaningless to say “SOA graduate” or “WHINSEC graduate” if you don’t know what course the student attended. Not one instance of a cause-effect relationship between U.S. training and later misdeeds has ever been found. Not one.

Some facts: Courses here help military, police and civilians do their jobs better; counterinsurgency techniques – a valid military doctrine – are not taught here now, and “combat” training is essential in courses that involve the likelihood of meeting an enemy force. By law, all courses contain democracy and human rights training; even School of the Americas Watch acknowledges that Augusto Pinochet “was never a student at SOA.”

Walsh’s view of the nations is out of date; all the countries that send students to WHINSEC have elected civilian governments.

In the booklet, “Unmatched Power, Unmet Principles,” Amnesty International called for suspension of training here. However, one of the contributors clearly had a different view, as the following excerpts point out: ” … today the School of the Americas has a new name, a new charter, and a significantly different curriculum, which includes coursework in human rights and humanitarian law.” And, “Two programs that routinely feature such content are the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), which features a mandatory human rights course, and International Military Education and Training (IMET), which includes courses on civil-military relations, human rights and military justice.” Also, “WHINSEC-SOA’s core human rights program or the Investigative Criminal Investigative Training and Assistance Program’s (ICITAP) partnership with John Jay College could serve as models for some 275 US institutions providing training to foreign military and law enforcement officers.”

I’ll be happy to show anyone what we do; Ft. Benning requires a photo ID for entry, and anyone can come, sit in our classes, talk with students and faculty and review our instructional materials.

I hope this encourages your readers to look at the facts and make up their own minds. At least, check out our Web site (http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec) and write to us if you have other questions ([email protected]).

Lee Rialspublic affairs for WHINSEC