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• Committed military and political support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including the savage massacre of innocent Palestinians and Lebanese civilians at refugee camps in West Beirut. • Carried out a policy of “constructive engagement” toward the apartheid regime in South Africa while cooperating with South Africa on military and nuclear matters. This specious policy encouraged discrimination and oppression against the majority of the people of South Africa; it hampered effective action by the international community against apartheid and facilitated aggressive conduct by the South African apartheid regime against neighbor states. • Ordered the overthrow of the government of Grenada. One year after the invasion the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported on human rights abuses in Grenada saying, "Reliable accounts are circulating of prisoners being beaten, denied medical attention and confined for long periods without being able to see lawyers. The country's new US-trained police force has acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest and abuse of authority." •Ordered the assassination of Libyan leader Muammar el-Quaddafi. the bombs dropped by American pilots, who all earned medals from the US navy, killed or wounded approximately 200 people, all civilians but one, and destroyed the French embassy. The dead included Quaddafi's young adopted daughter. • Engaged in various strategies aimed at overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. Reagan sponsored horrendous terrorist acts through the Contras, an army Reagan once famously described as "the moral equivalent to our founding fathers.” The Contras were trained by the CIA and funded with US tax money, profits from illegal arms sales to Iran and CIA drug money. The US was later condemned by the World Court for its actions in Nicaragua and ordered to pay reparations. Predictably, the US refused to acknowledge the courts decision and drastically cut aid to Nicaragua. • Authorized the sale of US planes, munitions, bombs, satellite surveillance images, poisonous chemicals and deadly biological stocks, including anthrax, to Iraq, with full knowledge that Iraq was already using chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi citizens. An envoy, including Donald Rumsfeld, met with Saddam Hussein in 1983, consolidating an active military partnership. • Supported mass murder in El Salvador. Not long after the killings reached the amazing level of more than 200 per week, Reagan mused aloud that they were not the work of "so-called murder squads" on the right, but of left-wing "guerrilla forces". After the war, the Catholic archdiocese in San Salvador documented the number of killings on each side. The tally: US supported military and government-assisted death squads, 41,048 murders; left-wing guerrillas, 776. • Aided in the dictator Gen. EfraÌn RÌos Montt's campaign of genocide in Guatemala in which roughly 200,000 people, mainly Mayan Indians, were murdered. The violence in Guatemala reached a gruesome climax during the Reagan administration. As Guatemalan army helicopters strafed a caravan of 40,000 unarmed refugees seeking to escape to Mexico, Reagan chose that moment to congratulate RÌos Montt for his dedication to democracy. • Issued Proclamation 4908, which declared "Afghanistan Day" in honor of fundamentalist forces fighting against Soviet intervention on behalf of the Government of Afghanistan. Under the Reagan administration, the CIA was instrumental in training tactics of terror to fundamentalist fighters who would later make the FBI's most wanted list, such as Osama Bin Laden, who reportedly had only kind words for the Reagan administration.
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