{"id":56713,"date":"2014-12-08T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=56713"},"modified":"2014-12-08T08:17:34","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T13:17:34","slug":"dec-8-1994-forgotten-by-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=56713","title":{"rendered":"Twenty years ago today"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Stars & Stripes<\/a> wrote an article three years ago about the confrontation between US troops and the Cuban refugees they were supposed to be protecting. Bill Clinton was president and he remembered how Cuban refugees had sunk his reelection for the governorship of Arkansas after the Mariel Boatlift between April 15 and October 31, 1980. So when another huge exodus from Cuba began in 1994, Clinton tried to hide the problem by sending refugees to Guantanmo. When the camps filled up there, he shipped them to the Canal Zone and the US built detention camps there on the Army’s “Empire Range” – the large training area. he put inexperienced infantrymen in charge of managing the burgeoning camps. <\/p>\n

The Cubans became impatient at being detained in the camps while the wheels of the immigration bureaucracy ground slowly and they rioted on occasion, burning tents and stealing soldiers’ military vehicles. Of course, the soldiers were unarmed except for riot batons;<\/p>\n

Inside the camp, the Cubans tied the gates shut and pushed bleachers from the soccer field against the fence.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally we got the word,\u201d Epley said.<\/p>\n

He and two other soldiers went to work on the gate. By now the Cubans were hurling the drainage rocks at the U.S. troops. A few rocks broke through the fence. One of them hit a soldier in the face.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got nailed,\u201d Epley recalled. \u201cBroke his jaw.\u201d<\/p>\n

They got the gate open slightly, and Epley raced through. He charged at a group of rioters, screaming, with his baton in the air. The sight of the crazed American soldier sent them scurrying.<\/p>\n

\u201cMove out!\u201d Amerine yelled.<\/p>\n

The Cubans retreated around the corner of the dining facility. Marching three abreast with their riot shields up, as if in a parade, Amerine\u2019s 1st Platoon walked along the back of the dining facility.<\/p>\n

As they turned the corner and faced the soccer field, they finally saw what they were facing: hundreds and hundreds of angry rioters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sky filled with a dark cloud of stones,\u201d Amerine wrote later.<\/p>\n

Another soldier, Spc. Robert Young, wasn\u2019t far behind. He\u2019d been in the Persian Gulf War and was one of the few combat veterans in the company.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d never seen anything like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sun is gone,\u201d Young recalled. \u201cThousands and thousands of rocks.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But you should go read the rest of the story and about the bravery of the Americans when confronted with a situation they had never faced before. I noticed that Mogadishu hadn’t influenced the folks in leadership positions to give the troops the tools that they said they needed that day in Panama to protect themselves – you know stuff like riot shotguns. There was very little about it in the news when it happened and there will be even less about it on the twentieth anniversary today. But it’s worth remembering with the growing numbers of illegal immigrants currently being rounded up and put in refugee camps these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Stars & Stripes wrote an article three years ago about the confrontation between US troops … Twenty years ago today<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-illegal-immigrants","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}