<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcelo_montecino/5246561/” title=”Victims of Death Squads, Legal Aid Office, SAn Salvador 82 by Marcelo Montecino, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm1.staticflickr.com/3/5246561_ffb88b0ea1.jpg” width=”500″ height=”328″ alt=”Victims of Death Squads, Legal Aid Office, SAn Salvador 82″></a>

If you are of a certain age, you might remember Ronald Reagan.

And if you remember the Reagan years, you might remember the Iran-Contra Scandal.

In an effort to raise off-the-books money to fund conservative paramilitary groups in Central America, the Reagan Administration set up a money laundering system where weapons were sold to Iran, the cash bought drugs and the cash from the sale of the drugs was sufficiently laundered to give it to the Right-wing warriors south of the border–free of Reagan’s fingerprints. Much and more of these funds went to Nicaragua, but the dirty wars spread to other countries. One was El Salvador, where a brutal civil war flourished from 1979 to 1992.

A central feature of all the Central American conflicts during the Reagan/Pappy-Bush years was the Right-wing death squad. They killed anybody in their way from peasants to intellectuals to Bishops to Nuns. A lot has been written and documented about these conflicts. It is known who–in addition to Reagan’s off-the-books (and illegal) contributions–funded the death squads. In El Salvador much of that funding came from a few rich Salvadorian families with estates in Miami.

Funny thing.

It turns out that the folks funding El Salvadorian Death Squads contributed 40% of the capital that Mitt Romney needed to start Bain Capital.

Somehow, I am not surprised.

Over at the Huffington Post, Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler went into depth today about the blood money behind Mitt’s millions. It was a match made in grifter heaven: the Death-Squad-tainted-cash had to be cleaned up and Mitt needed investors. Ca-ching!

The more I learn about Romney, the more horrified I am at his easy and shameless immorality.

Cheers

[the photo, Victims of Death Squads, Legal Aid Office, SAn Salvador 82, was taken in 2005 by Marcelo Montecino. Back in the 1980s, the Catholic Legal Aid Office had hired a full-time photographer to take photos of Death Squad victims to help families find their loved ones. This went on for a little while until the Death Squads expressed their displeasure with the program. The photographer left. The surviving documentation of the Death Squad’s handiwork is still in El Salvador for review–and so are the surviving victims. Perhaps Bain Capital could set up a fund to help families still scared by the civil war–after all, their suffering made Bain possible.]