Some additional information on the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly School of the Americas):
The WHISC serves the specific purpose of training paramilitary forces from Latin American countries; this is apparent. The trainees are taught in counterinsurgency, low-intensity warfare, and psychological warfare. These are topics that are also taught to American Special Forces, yet, incidentally, there are few to no complaints about this. Regardless, these topics are taught in a context preparing them for use against leftist- specifically, Marxist- uprisings.
It has been asserted above that this furthers American interests by maintaining instability in such potential international powerhouses as Mexico, Columbia, and Peru. It is curious, then, that these countries, who must obviously be suffering from the turmoil caused by these soldiers, continue to send their soldiers to Fort Benning for training. After all, if it is so apparent that near-rebellion is the American goal, then these countries must be aware. In addition, the soldiers are used in such a manner by their parent nations as to prevent the very turmoil mentioned above; in fact, the soldiers are used to suppress the rebellions that would further the dissatisfaction of the natives.
It is true that some of the methods used by the graduates of the WHISC are somewhat less then beatific. Yet, it is important to note that these methods are, in fact, quite effective at combating the left-wing insurgencies they're trained to suppress. Also, a quick look at the War in Vietnam and its aftermath, especially on the intellectual elite (read: intelligent), shows that the results of a successful rebellion of this type are terrible to behold. Given this data, it is easily acknowledged that the actually fairly sparse crimes of the SoA graduates are a lesser evil then the ones against whom the crimes are committed.
As mentioned above, the crimes committed by SoA graduates are, in fact, rather low in number, especially when compared to the number of graduates. As mentioned above, some 60,000 persons have graduated from the WHISC; yet, less then 1000 of them have even been accused of crimes. Some quick math shows that less then 2% of the graduates have even been alleged to have been involved in the unsavory activities so often used to justify the school's closing.
That said, the activities of that minority cannot be condoned. However, it is not fair to condemn the entire program because of the indelicacies of a select few.