EMPIRE OF CHAOS

FRIENDLY DICTATORS

Dictators and authoritarian governments that the United States helped put in power or supported, most often by overthrowing democratically-elected governments or suppressing populist movements.

Many of the world's most repressive dictators have been friends of America. Tyrants, torturers, killers, and sundry dictators and corrupt puppet-presidents have been aided, supported, and rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to US interests. Traditional dictators seize control through force, while constitutional dictators hold office through voting fraud or severely restricted elections, and are frequently puppets and apologists for the military juntas which control the ballot boxes. In any case, none have been democratically elected by the majority of their people in fair and open elections. They are democratic America's undemocratic allies.
They may rise to power through bloody ClA-backed coups and rule by terror and torture. Their troops may receive training or advice from the CIA and other US agencies. US military aid and weapons sales often strengthen their armies and guarantee their hold on power. Unwavering "anti-communism" and a willingness to provide unhampered access for American business interests to exploit their countries' natural resources and cheap labor are the excuses for their repression, and the primary reason the US government supports them.
They usually grow rich, while their countries' economies deteriorate and the majority of their people live in poverty. US tax dollars and US-backed loans have made billionaires of some, while others are international drug dealers who also collect CIA paychecks. Rarely are they called to account for their crimes. And, rarely still, is the US government held responsible for supporting and protecting some of the worst human rights violators in the world.

"These are some examples of repressive regimes being backed by the US: Algeria, where they annulled an election, they stole an election, they do systematic torture; Ethiopia, where there's mass hunger among the population, but where the US is building up the Ethiopian army and using them against Somalia; Saudi Arabia, the most religious extremist, anti-woman dictatorship in the world; Jordan, a torture center-the Jordanian intelligence outfit was, in the words of George Tenet, owned by the CIA, and both the CIA and Israel use it for torture; Rwanda, whose army and paramilitaries have been pillaging and raping and massively killing in the eastern Congo; Congo itself, Secretary of State Clinton went there and made a good denunciation of rape by the Congolese army, and as that was happening, the US was delivering weapons and training to that same Congolese army; Indonesia, where the army now de facto occupies and terrorizes Papua and has recently resumed assassinations in Aceh, the other end of the archipelago; Colombia, where army and army-backed militaries are the world's number-one killer of labor activists; Uzbekistan, massive torture backed simultaneously by the US and Russia; Thailand, where officers who-US officers who I spoke to use their US training in what they call "target selection" to assassinate and disappear Muslim rebels in the south; Nepal, where US Green Berets for years created old Guatemala-style civil patrols that carried out lynchings against pro-Maoist forces and civilians in the countryside; India, where the police do daily torture and where their own officers talk about using terror against villages in the Naxalite rebel areas; Egypt, one of the world's leading torture states and Israel's accomplice in the blockade and hungering of Gaza; Honduras, where the army recently staged a coup when the oligarchy's president, Zelaya, turned against his fellow oligarchs; Israel, which committed aggression against Gaza using US white phosphorus and cluster bombs as the US was-the US was shipping in new materiel as this, you know, attack was underway; and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where, as the British Guardian just reported, the security forces are doing systematic torture of Hamas people and other dissidents under CIA sponsorship. And that's only a partial list."

journalist Allan Nairn, 2010

FRIENDLY DICTATORS
(A PARTIAL LIST)

ARGENTINA
Jorge Rafael Videla
1976-1981

Jorge Rafael Videla, a senior commander in the Argentine Army, came to power in a 1976 coup, and began Argentina's 'dirty war'. All political and union activities were suspended, and wages were reduced by 60%.
During his dictatorship kidnapping, forced disappearance, widespread torture and extrajudicial murder of activists and political opponents as well as their families at secret concentration camps occurred. As many as 30,000 political dissidents vanished under his rule. Dissidents were tortured by Nazi and US-trained military and police. Survivors say the torture rooms contained swastikas and pictures of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
Videla was accused of the theft of babies born during the captivity of their mothers at illegal detention centres, offering them for illegal adoption by associates of the regime.
Videla sheltered many Nazi fugitives from the Third Reich along with his predecessor Juan Perón, Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay and Hugo Banzer of Bolivia. Argentina under Videla trained Nicaraguan contras for the US.
In 1985, two years after the return of a representative democratic government to Argentina, he was prosecuted for large-scale human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that took place under his rule.

BRUNEI
Hassanal Bolkiah
1967-present

Brunei is a monarchical dictatorship, under a State of Emergency since 1982. The Sultan allows Brunei to be the ClA's ears on the Malaysian-lndonesian border. Bolkiah was involved with the infamous Nugan Hand Bank of Australia, a 1960s-70s CIA front for South East Asian drug operations and money laundering. The Sultan lives in a palace that may have cost as much as a billion dollars, while over 90% of his subjects live in abject poverty. Those who protest such inequalities don't fare well with the authorities.

BOLIVIA
Hugo Banzer
1971-1978

The US government supported the 1971 coup led by General Hugo Banzer that toppled President Juan José Torres of Bolivia. Torres had displeased Washington by convening an "Asamblea del Pueblo" (People's Assembly or Popular Assembly), in which representatives of specific proletarian sectors of society were represented (miners, unionized teachers, students, peasants), and more generally by leading the country in what was perceived as a left wing direction. After Banzer took power, the US provided extensive military and other aid to the Banzer dictatorship as Banzer cracked down on freedom of speech and dissent, tortured thousands, "disappeared" and murdered hundreds, and closed labor unions and the universities. Torres, who had fled Bolivia, was kidnapped and assassinated in 1976 as part of Operation Condor, the US-supported campaign of political repression and state terrorism by South American right-wing dictators.

BRAZIL
Humberto Branco
1964-1967

Brazilian President Joao Goulart sought to trade with communist countries, supported the labor movement, and had limited the profits multi-national corporations could take out of the country. The United States encouraged senior Brazilian military officers to seize power and to back army chief of staff General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco as coup leader. General Branco led an April 1964 coup of the constitutional government of President Goulart and was installed as first president of the military regime, immediately declaring a state of siege and arresting more than 50,000 political opponents within the first month of seizing power, while the US government expressed approval and re-instituted aid and investment in the country.

CAMBODIA
Pol Pot
1976-1979

The bombing of Cambodia by the US from 1969 to 1972, left 600,000 civilians dead, millions of refugees, tens-of-thousands dying from disease and starvation, and the Cambodian economy and culture in ruins. Cambodians blamed the US and the puppet regime of Lon Nol for the country's destruction, and gradually sided with the guerrilla army of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, which finally defeated Lon Nol, and took power in April, 1975. Once in power, Pol Pot emptied the cities, forcing the people into the countryside. Virtually all educated people were killed and more than 1.5 million people perished in this "holocaust". Only when the Khmer Rouge was ousted by Vietnam in 1979, did the terror stop. Washington continued to take steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a counter force to the Vietnamese. International relief agencies were pressured by the US to provide food and humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge, which had fled to Thailand.

CHILE
Augusto Pinochet
1973-1990

Augusto Pinochet assumed power in Chile following a United States-backed coup in 1973 that overthrew the democratically-elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende and ended 150 years of civilian rule. The bloody coup, during which Allende took his own life, was carefully managed by the CIA. Tens of thousands of Chileans were tortured, killed, and exiled during Pinochet's rule. Despite Chile's human rights record, the U.S. government continued to support Pinochet with international loans. Even the state-sponsored assassination of Chile's former Ambassador to the U.S., Orlando Letelier, in the United States, did not convince the U.S. to break with Pinochet.
Under the influence of the free market-oriented neoliberal economist Milton Friedman and his "Chicago Boys", Pinochet's military government implemented economic liberalization, banned trade unions and privatized social security and hundreds of state-owned enterprises. Economic inequality dramatically increased. His fortune grew considerably during his years in power through dozens of bank accounts secretly held abroad and a fortune in real estate. He was later prosecuted for embezzlement and tax fraud.
In a 1988 plebiscite, 56% voted against Pinochet's continuing as President, which led to democratic elections for the presidency and Congress. After stepping down in 1990, Pinochet continued to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 10 March 1998, when he retired and became a senator-for-life.
Pinochet was arrested under an international arrest warrant on a visit to London on 10 October 1998, but was never convicted and never served time in jail.

CUBA
Fulgencio Batista
1952-1959

Cuban Army Sergeant Fulgencio Batista seized power in a 1952 coup. His regime was quickly recognized by President Dwight Eisenhower. With the support of Batista, Mafia boss Meyer Lansky developed Havana into an international drug port. Cabinet offices were bought and sold and military officials made huge sums on smuggling and vice rackets. Havana became a fashionable hot spot where America's rich and famous drank and gambled with mobsters. In 1953, Fidel Castro led an armed group of rebels in a failed uprising. Castro temporarily fled the country and Batista struck back with a vengeance. Freedom of speech was curtailed and subversive teachers, lawyers and public officials were fired from their jobs. Death squads tortured and killed thousands of "communists". Batista was assisted in his crackdown by Meyer Lansky and other members of organized crime who believed Castro would jeopardize their gambling and drug trade. Batista was finally overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Rafael Trujillo
1930-1961

The US occupied the Dominican Republic in 1916 and created the National Guard to put Rafael Leonidas Trujillo into power. As dictator of the Dominican Republic for 30 years, Trujillo had a penchant for self-adulation, and put his personal stamp on everything. Trujillo won the 1930 presidential election with more votes than there were registered voters, but because he was anti-communist, Washington was happy. He invoked anti-communism to justify mass deportations, torture and summary executions. Workers who asked for wage increases were labeled communists, and shot on the spot, as were farmers who tried to stop Trujillo from confiscating their land. He eventually controlled over 80% of the country's sugar plantations, using slave labor provided by neighboring Haiti to keep profits high. In 1937, he decided to blame depressed sugar prices on the Haitian workers, and massacred 20,000 them. Trujillo was finally assassinated by the CIA in 1961 after he attempted to have President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela murdered because of his criticism of Trujillo's brutal regime.

EGYPT
Hosni Mubarak
1981-2011

Hosni Mubarak assumed the presidency of Egypt after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Mubarak was Egypt's longest-serving ruler in modern times, his dictatorship lasting 30 years.
Throughout his years in power, he maintained the unpopular policy of peace with Israel and accommodation with the West. His government was the frequent target of domestic opposition, ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to secular and liberal dissidents. His ties with the United States and Israel drew criticism from across the region, especially during the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon and Israel's Gaza offensive in 2008-2009. Domestic opponents accused Washington of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses, corruption and the Mubarak regime's failure to enact badly needed reforms. The U.S. foreign aid of more than $1 billion during Mubarak's reign was second only to U.S. foreign aid to Israel.
Mubarak stepped down after 18 days of demonstrations during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, and was ordered to stand trial on charges of negligence for failing to halt the killing of peaceful protesters during the revolution. In 2012, an Egyptian court sentenced Mubarak to life imprisonment, but he was acquitted by Egypt's top appeals court and was released in 2017.

EGYPT
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
2014-present

General Abdel el-Sisi trained in the United Kingdom and the United States Army War College. After the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and election of Mohamed Morsi to the Egyptian presidency, Sisi was appointed Minister of Defence by Morsi in 2012.
In 2013, as Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Sisi was involved in the military coup that removed Morsi from office. He dissolved the Egyptian Constitution of 2012 and proposed a new constitution and new parliamentary and presidential elections. The Sisi government cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist supporters and later on opponents. In 2013, police carried out the Rabaa massacre, killing hundreds of civilians and wounding thousands.
Sisi retired from the military and ran and won the presidency in 2014. Sisi's government has given the Egyptian military unchecked power, and many have labeled him a dictator.
In the 2018 presidential election, Sisi, facing only nominal opposition, won reelection.
U.S. foreign aid to Egypt ($1.6 billion in 2013) is second only to U.S. foreign aid to Israel ($3 billion in 2013).

EL SALVADOR
Alfredo Cristiani
1989-1994

President Alfredo Cristiani was a member of El Salvador's rich coffee oligarchy - the " Fourteen Families". His presidency in 1988 represented the beginning of a 20-year period of ARENA Party rule. He was closely linked to right-wing death-squad leader and ARENA founder Roberto D'Aubuisson, who planned and ordered the assassination of the Archbishop Oscar Romero. It is estimated that more than 70,000 civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military and D'Aubisson's death squads.

ETHIOPIA
Emperor Halie Salassie
1930-1974

Under Emperor Halie Selassie's long rule, Ethiopia remained in the dark ages. Just after his overthrow in 1974, the annual per capita income was $90, the literacy rate was 7% and Ethiopia was the poorest nation in Africa. Under Selassie, Ethiopia received more US aid than any other African country. When Selassie faced an uprising in the province of Eritrea, the US sent advisors and arms to help him smash the revolt. In return for our support, Selassie provided the United States with a naval base in the Red Sea.

GERMANY
Adolf Hitler
1933-1945

Adolf Hitler was elected German Chancellor in 1933. Hitler initiated World War II, was responsible for killing 20 million civilians and prisoners of war, as well as the deaths of almost 30 million soldiers and civilians during military action, and planned the holocaust of European Jews. Under a presidential order, US companies were licensed to trade with the Nazis. As German bombs fell on London and Nazi tanks rolled over US troops, ITT was designing and building Nazi phone and radio systems as well as supplying crucial parts for German bombs. In addition to ITT, other US companies traded with the Third Reich including General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and the Chase National Bank. The same companies that traded with Hitler were supplying the US with its armaments, and some corporate leaders threatened to withdraw their support if President Roosevelt exposed them. Henry Ford was a good friend of Hitler's. His book 'The International Jew' had Inspired Hltler's Mein Kampf.

GREECE
George Papadopoulos
1967-1974

In 1967, a military coup headed by ex-Nazi George Papadopoulolis, overthrew the democratic government of Andreas Papandreou. Papadopoulos had been on the CIA payroll for 15 years when he came to power, and during WWll he was a captain in the Nazi Security Battalions, whose main purpose was to catch members of the Greek Resistance.
Papadopoulos' regime imposed martial law. The press was subjected to harsh censorship. Thousands of the regime's political opponents were thrown into prison or exiled.
The military government dissolved political parties and clamped down on left-wing organizations and labor unions. Torture of political prisoners in general, and communists in particular, was carried on, including severe beatings and the pulling out of fingernails.
Papadopoulos excused these actions as necessary to save the nation from a "Communist takeover." The regime was supported by the United States because of its staunchly anti-Communist stance.

GUATEMALA
Efrain Rios-Montt
1982-1983

In 1954, the U.S. government executed a CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Jacobo Árbenz, at the behest of the United Fruit Company, the single largest land owner in Guatemala, and installed the first of a line of brutal right-wing dictators. In 1982, General Efrain Rios-Montt became military dictator of Guatemala. President Ronald Reagan called Rios-Montt "a man of great personal integrity and commitment, who wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice." In fact, during his short but brutal reign, Rios-Montt was accused of terrible human-rights abuses, targeting the indigenous population with widespread massacres, rapes and torture, in what has been called a Guatemalan genocide.

HAITI
Francois Duvalier
1957-1971
Jean-Claude Duvalier
1971-1986

In 1957 Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier became Haiti's President-For-Life, establishing a strategic relationship with the US that lasted until 1971, when he was succeeded by his son Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. During the 30 years that they ruled with an iron hand, 60,000 Haitians were killed and countless more were tortured by the Duvaliers' Tonton Macoutes death squads. While Haiti became the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the Duvaliers enriched themselves by stealing foreign aid money. Baby Doc made Haiti into a trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine. As long as Papa and Baby Doc were anti-communists, they could do no wrong in the US government's eyes. Their regime finally ended in 1986, when Baby Doc fled angry mobs of Haitians for asylum in France, with a fortune estimated at $400 million. It has been estimated that under Baby Doc's rule 40,000 Haitians were murdered.

HONDURAS
Roberto Suazo Cordova
1982-1986

Honduras was the original "Banana Republic", its history inextricably intertwined with that of the US-based United Fruit Company. By 1985, Honduras was getting $231 million in U.S. aid, primarily because President Suazo Cordova, working with the US Ambassador and the Honduran military, allowed Honduras to become a training center for U.S. funded Nicaraguan contras. The Reagan Administration claimed ignorance of these human rights violations. Many high ranking government and military personnel during and after Suazo's term were drug traffickers.

INDONESIA
Muhammad Suharto
1967-1998

In 1965, Indonesian President Muhammad Sukarno was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup by General Muhammad Suharto and other senior military officers. Indonesian government forces with collaboration of some civilians perpetrated mass killings over many months. The CIA acknowledged that the massacres ranked as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th Century. Estimates of the number of civilians killed range from a half million to three million. The US had detailed, ongoing knowledge of the mass killings, and provided the Indonesian army with thousands of names of Sukarno supporters and other leftists, and that the US officials then checked off from their lists those who had been murdered.

IRAN
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
1953-1979

The 1953 Iranian coup overthrew the democratically-elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom (MI6) and the United States (CIA). The Shah (Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi) transitioned from a constitutional monarch to a dictator, relying heavily on United States government support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979.

MOROCCO
King Hassan II
1961-1999

King Hassan ll of Morocco lived in absolute luxury, while the unemployment rate in Morocco was over 20%, and 95% of the population lived in abject poverty. In 1975, Hassan took his nation into a war in the Western Sahara. Although the International Court of Justice ruled that Morocco has no historical claims to the territory, the US continued to back Hassan diplomatically and financially in his war to annex the area. The US also took an active role in stopping coup attempts against the King. During the Cold War, Hassan allied Morocco with the United States. There were close and continuing ties between Hassan's government and the CIA. The period from the 1960s to the 1980s was labeled the 'years of lead' and saw thousands of dissidents jailed, tortured, exiled or forcibly disappeared and killed.

NICARAGUA
Anastasio Somoza Garcia
1937-1956
Anastasio Somoza Debayle
1967-1979

The U.S. Marines invaded Nicaragua in 1912, and stayed until 1933, fighting but never defeating the revolutionary Augusto Sandino. They created the Nicaraguan National Guard and installed Anastasio Somoza Garcia in power. Then Sandino, who had signed a truce and put down his arms, was assassinated by Somoza. President Franklin Roosevelt said, "Somoza may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch." Corruption, torture, and wholesale murder of dissidents continued for 45 years under two generations of Somozas, for after Somoza Garcia was gunned down in the streets in 1956, his son Anastasio Somoza Debayle took control. The Somozas plundered Nicaragua and became millionaires. The younger Somoza, made $12 million a year buying the blood of his people and selling it abroad at a 300% mark-up. In 1972 after an earthquake killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, Somoza had his National Guard seize $30 million in international relief supplies and sold them to the highest bidder. Near the end of his reign, he aerially bombed his own capital to stay in power, but he was overthrown in 1979 by a rebel group who called themselves the Sandinistas, after the revolutionary hero his father had slain.

NIGERIA
Sani Abacha
1993-1998

General Sani Abacha was a corrupt and repressive dictator supported by Nigeria's oil wealth. Shell Oil provides most of the country's wealth, extracting oil from the Ogoniland region, causing severe environmental destruction in the process. More than 700 Ogoni environmentalists protesting the destruction of their way of life, were executed. In November 1995, environmental leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 associates were hanged despite an international outcry. Shell supported Abacha's policies by its silence. Despite an outcry that Nigerian oil be boycotted, the US government refused to do so.

PANAMA
Manuel Noriega
1983-1989

General Manuel Noriega became commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Panama in 1983, and for the next six years was more powerful than the President. He was the kind of ruthless leader the US favored in the rest of Central America. Noriega was collecting $100 thousand a year as a CIA asset. Noriega's drug dealing was revealed by a 1975 DEA investigation. During the Reagan era, Noriega collaborated with Oliver North on covert actions against Nicaragua, training contras and providing a transshipment point for CIA supported operations that flew weapons to the contras and cocaine into the US. But when he fell foul of the US because he failed to support their plan to invade Nicaragua -- the U/S. withdrew aid and imposed sanctions.
When Noriega annulled Panama's 1989 elections, citing CIA interference, the U.S. under George HW Bush invaded Panama in December 1989, and removed Noriega. He was taken prisoner, stood trial in Miami on charges of drug trafficking and was sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment.
The invasion of 26,000 American troops led to over 4,000 Panamanian deaths and installed a regime with similar close links to drugs, plus a willingness to alter Panama Canal treaties to serve US interests.

PARAGUAY
Alfredo Stroessner
1954-1989

Alfredo Stroessner seized power in Paraguay in 1954. Stroessner was a great admirer of Nazism, and this showed not only in the refuge he offered to many Nazi war criminals, such as Joseph Mengele, but also in his ruthless methods.
From the Nazis the Paraguayan military learned the art of genocide. The native Ache Indians were in the way of American and European corporations who planned to exploit the nation's forests, mines, and grazing lands. The Indians were hunted down, parents killed, and children sold into slavery. Survivors were herded into reservations headed by American fundamentalist missionaries, some of whom had participated in the hunts.
Between 1962 and 1975, Paraguay received $146 million in U.S. aid. In 1971, high ranking members of the regime were implicated in the Marseilles drug ring, with Paraguay their transfer point for shipments from France to the US. After a 1989 coup, Stroessner took refuge in Brazil.

PHILIPPINES
Fernando Marcos
1965-1986

Ferdinand Marcos was a Nazi collaborator. Despite his record as murderer, fake WWll hero and Nazi agent, he was elected Philippine President in 1965. Under Marcos, the Philippine national debt grew from $2 billion to $30 billion, but US corporations in the Philippines prospered, perhaps explaining why the US didn't protest Marcos's imposition of martial law in 1972. The Marcoses enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle, and they salted away billions of dollars in the course of their US-backed rule between 1965 and 1986.
The Carter Administration increased military aid to Marcos by 300%, and called him a "soft dictator". By 1977, the armed forces had quadrupled and over 60,000 Filipinos had been arrested for political reasons. Yet, in 1981, Vice President George Bush praised Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principals and to the democratic processes". Marcos was overthrown in 1986 by followers of Corazon Aquino, widow of an assassinated opposition leader.
The Philippine government continues to try to recover stolen Marcos' billions from Swiss bank accounts and other locations - without success.

PORTUGAL
Antonio Salazar
1932-1968

Antonio de Oliveira Salazar worshipped Hitler and Mussolini, but after they lost, he joined the Allies and became a card-carrying member of NATO. However, his secret police, the PIDE, were much like the Gastapo; concentration camps were set up for "enemies of the state", news organizations were merely propaganda machines, and all schools had their lesson plans carefully monitored by "Big Brother".
In 1970, 30% of the population was illiterate, and the infant mortality rate was the second worst in Europe. Most of the land was held by 5% of the population, the vast majority of Portuguese worked in agriculture, and all union activities were forbidden. Portugal was the last stronghold of European colonialism. The U.S. openly backed Portugal's colonial claims, due to the strategic importance of military bases such as the one in the Portugese Azores. Salazar died in 1968, after 40 years in power.

RWANDA
Paul Kagame
1994-present

Rwandan President Paul Kagame fought in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army, becoming a senior Ugandan army officer after Museveni's military victories carried him to the Ugandan presidency. Kagame joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and the United States supported the RPF in its invasion of Rwanda from Uganda from 1990 onward. It trained Paul Kagame and helped cover-up his and the RPF's serial crimes, including the shooting-down of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane in 1994, which was the seminal event that initiated the Rwandan genocide.
The United States and its allies and the UN did not intervene to stop the bloodshed in Rwanda. They supported Paul Kagame at all times. And as he was on the road to victory and wanted no outside interference, the United States and the rest of the "international community" obliged him, viewing the huge bloodbath as acceptable "collateral damage". The United States and its allies deliberately forced the reduction of UN troops as the genocide escalated.
The Kagame-RPF conquest of Rwanda was followed in 1996 by an invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo [the DRC, which had been known as the Democratic Republic of Zaire through May 1997]. This war has continued up to the present day, with the collaboration of Uganda, and the United States, Canada and the Britain.
The numbers of victims of the continuing Kagame-led assault on the DRC have been immense. A mortality study published in January 2009 estimated the "excess death toll in DR Congo since 1998 to be 5.4 million.
Paul Kagame is possibly the greatest mass murderer alive today. He is celebrated as the Abe Lincoln of his war-torn country, and highly regarded and honored in the United States, Britain, and Canada.
As long as Paul Kagame remains a useful tool of U.S. power in central Africa, he will remain beyond prosecution.

SAUDI ARABIA

King Abdul Aziz (Ibn Saud)
1932-1953

King Saud
1953-1964

King Faisal
1964-1975

King Khalid
1975-1982

King Fahd
1982-2005

King Abdullah
2005-2015

King Salman
2015-2017

Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS)
2017-present

Saudi Arabia is an absolute dictatorship ruled with the iron grip of medieval feudalism. Control over the lives of Saudi citizens is total and arbitrary. Women have few rights, and those who are charged with adultery are stoned to death. Torture is common, and executions by hanging or beheading are public.
Ever since the modern US-Saudi relationship began in 1945, the U.S. has been willing to overlook many of the kingdom's more controversial aspects as long as it kept the oil flowing and supported U.S. national security policies. Since World War II, the two countries have been allied because of the Saudi's pro-West stance, its opposition to communism, maintenance of stable oil prices, support of Saudi investments in Western economies, and its multi-billion-dollar purchases of weapons produced by the United States, Britain, France and Israel.
The hypocrisy is that Western democracies, that are the world's most vocal advocates for freedom and democracy, support the policies and actions of one of the most brutal undemocratic regimes in the world, including its barbaric bombing and immiseration of Yemen.
Since 2015, the Saudi/UAE/US-coalition has launched over 230,000 airstrikes in Yemen, killing civilians and targeting hospitals, schools, markets, and camps for the internally displaced.
Over 600,000 civilians have been killed or injured in Yemen since the coalition began its attacks. The U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition's blockade of Yemen has triggered an epidemic of disease and famine across the country.
When MbS came to power in 2017, he accelerated the siege of Yemen with the obvious intent to cause a genocidal famine of the resisting population.
By early 2018, the aerial bombardment of Yemen had destroyed at least 421,911 houses, 930 mosques, 888 schools, 327 hospitals and health facilities, while leaving more than 4 million people displaced.

SPAIN
Francisco Franco
1939-1975

General Francisco Franco, a staunch conservative, was infuriated when a Republican alliance of socialists, Marxists, and liberals won Spain's first free elections in 1936, so he decided to restore order by force. Franco's Nationalists were losing the civil war, but military support from Hitler, Mussolini, and the US corporations that backed Hitler, turned the tide in his favor. Italy and Germany sent trucks to Franco's fascists, but many more trucks were supplied by Ford, General Motors and Studebaker. The US claimed neutrality but didn't stop these companies from aiding Franco. The failure of the US and other democratic nations to assist Spain's democratic government was ultimately responsible for Franco's victory in 1939. Under Franco, all political parties and labor unions were banned, books were burned, and dissenters were tortured and executed. The US considered Franco a Cold War ally and sank millions into the country.

UGANDA
Idi Amin
1971-1979

Idi Amin was a non-commissioned officer in the British Army in Uganda. Because of his loyalty to Britain and his strongly anti-communist stance, Amin was picked by the British to replace the elected Ugandan government in a 1971 coup. Amin brutalized his people with British and US military aid and with Israeli and CIA training of his troops. The body count of his friends, the clergy, soldiers, and ordinary Ugandans rose daily, but the West ignored his cruelty. As he continued to demand more aid and sophisticated weapons, he finally lost support. In 1979, his quest for more power led him to invade Tanzania. In retaliation, he was overthrown by an invading Tanzanian / Ugandan army. Amin fled to Saudi Arabia, where he lived in a villa outside Jeddah.

UGANDA
Yoweri Museveni
1986-present

In power in Uganda since 1986, Yoweri Museveni has been celebrated in the West, but his 30-year presidency has been marred by human rights abuses, suppression of political opposition at home, and involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other Great Lakes region conflicts.
Museveni's regional strategic alliances date back to the overthrow of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Tutsi refugees from Rwanda and the Congo joined the rebels from Uganda, overthrew Idi Amin, and brought Museveni to power. Later some of these troops fought in the Rwandan civil war, and helped to bring Paul Kagame to power there.
In 1998, Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to overthrow the government. The official reasons Uganda gave for the intervention were to stop a "genocide" in the DRC in concert with Rwandan forces.
Troops from Rwanda and Ugandahave plundered the country's rich mineral resources and timber since 1998.
In 2005, the International Court of Justice in The Hague found the Ugandan state guilty of plundering natural resources during its five-year occupation of the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, enriching Ugandan politicians and Congo and Uganda military brass.
The US aid accounts for almost half of Uganda's national budget, and Museveni has used the threat of pulling its troops out of peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as a bargaining chip to persuade the U.S. to continue supporting him in power.

VIETNAM
Ngo Dinh Diem
1955-1963

Ngo Dinh Diem came to power in a rigged election in 1955. Diem, had once lived in the US and had connections in Washington because of his anti-communist views. He founded the Can Lao Party (CLP), a secret police force overseen by his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and Nhu's wife, Madame Nhu. The three were notorious for their ineptitude and cruelty. Diem oppressed the Vietnamese people so badly that many of them turned to the communists for protection from his ruthless rule. Diem alienated urban professionals by suppressing all opposition to his regime. He alienated peasants by canceling local elections, forcing them off their land and moving them into "agrovilles" surrounded by barbed wire, that bore a striking resemblance to concentration camps. In an effort to keep Diem in power, the US tried to persuade him to make political and military reforms, which he refused. Diem was finally overthrown and assassinated in 1963.

ZAIRE (DR CONGO)
Mobutu Sese Seko
1965-1997

When Zaire's first elected President, Patrice Lumumba embraced socialism, US companies feared they might lose control of Zaire's precious cobalt, copper, and diamonds. The CIA deposed Lumumba, attempted to assassinate him, and replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko who completed the job for the United States. From 1965, Mobutu had been the US's main man in Central Africa. Mobutu amassed an estimated $5 billion personal fortune at his nation's expense. He is perhaps the only world leader who could pay his national debt from his own bank account. In fact, there seems to be no division between his pocket and the national treasury. In 1974, when the US sent $1.4 million to assist troops fighting a civil war, Mobutu pocketed the entire sum. And no foreign company sets itself up in Zaire without a tribute to Mobutu. Although Zaire has more resources than most other countries in the region, it is the fifth poorest. Malnutrition takes the lives of one-third of Zaire's children, and one child out of two dies before age five. But Mobutu has vowed to keep the world safe for democracy and according to Amnesty International, in the name of anti-communism, he imprisons and tortures, often without trial, anyone who threatened his power base. While some members of Congress grumbled about giving assistance to Mobutu, they continued to reward his work against communism and his warm reception of American corporations.

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