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James Tager's Nov. 19 column "Shut down the SOA" is an example of poor research. He criticizes Duke students for enjoying their weekend instead of going down to Fort Benning to protest something he does not fully understand. If you are going to criticize people for not taking action, at least make sure the actions you take are well informed. According to the website for School of the Americas Watch, they have recorded 476 SOA-trained human rights violators from 17 different countries in their "Notorious Graduates" section. These 476 alleged criminals include people that were merely charged with crimes but never convicted, as well as including non-commissioned officers, and soldiers that only attended orientation but never completed a full course. The Web site went so far as to include Augusto Pinochet in their list, acknowledging that he never attended the school, but claiming that he learned indirectly from it.

To put all this in perspective, the SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers and policemen since its creation. Therefore, the school has a "Notorious Graduate" human rights violator creation rate of approximately 0.8 percent. What of the other 99.2 percent? Perhaps they too have committed atrocities, but I am willing to guess that an organization as passionate as SOAW would have listed them as notorious if they were accused of even a single human rights violation. Ask yourself, what is more likely? Did the U.S. create a school that teaches soldiers to torture and oppress, where 0.8 percent become "notorious" murderers and the remaining 99.2 percent become mere murderers? Or did a few people abuse their power much like our own soldiers did at Abu Ghraib?

Tager's solution is to close SOA because of that 0.8 percent. Do we close down our whole military because a few bad apples acted atrociously? I will leave it to the readers to decide whether or not this small number constitutes a "School of the Assassins."

Daniel Freedman

Trinity '08