http://oglobo.globo.com.br

by Gonçalo Brandão, Lead Correspondent for American Affairs

By now, news is starting to filter across the world wide web and television of the successful bombing attack against the Hawthorne Army Depot (HWAD) near Hawthorne, Nevada, a U.S. Army Joint Munitions Command ammunition depot in one of the few remaining habitable parts of rural Nevada that remained an extremely important storage facility for the US Army's ability to wage war beyond a period of approx. thirty days. This is perhaps unsurprising, considering the facility's nickname as the "World's Largest Depot", both in terms of size (occupying nearly 150,000 acres of land) and the sheer quantity of pieces of ammunition it stored, but, what is perhaps more surprising is the sheer totality of its destruction by a "terrorist" (we use the word carefully due to the possible biases present in its use in this case) organization widely perceived as disorganized and chaotic.  How could random bands of passionate rebels so completely destroy the largest ammunition depot in the world? How, indeed, when the facility was make up of thousands of hardened bunkers?

We may never know precisely how the attack was carried out, or by who, but we can know this much: any such attack, considering the apparent totality of the Depot's destruction as determined by satellite imaging (believe me, there's not much left but several thousand craters and a couple hundred of very large ones), would have required a level of organization and coordination utterly unprecedented in the history of military sabotage.

That much is clear, at least according to an EALN cell's statement on the matter on local usenet newsgroups (or perhaps it was simply due to the total incompetence of the US military, or the corporate contractors of Day & Zimmermann Hawthorne Corporation hired to protect the facility) - this was not meant at a terrorist attack. It was a planned, surgical strike against a military facility, with minimal civilian casualties.

The question remains: does the crippled US government even have the ability to stop them? 

(Edit: the attack itself occured on March 10, notably an anniversary of the first paper money circulated by the US government.)

>> Date: Mon, March 11 1992, 12:00:00 -0400
>> From: =?ISO-2386-5?N?John_S j=T8ui?=    john.d.s@ucla.net
>> Cc: politics.talk@students.ucla.edu

[+]
>>
>> This is not an act of terrorism. This is a warning. 

>> The HWAD has been destroyed, and with it, the largest storage of ammunition available to the imperialist, fascist United States military, by comrades dissatisfied with the injustices of their own government.

>> This is not a strike to create terror. Do not be afraid. We do not target civilians. We will not target civilians.

>> We are citizens of the United States government, and armed comrades of the EALN, who seek nothing but the following:

>> 1. The immediate cessation of the illegal American occupation and puppeteering of the former territories held by the nations of Canada, Mexico, the occupied territory of Greenland, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Guyana, Suriname, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and a others as applicable, and the subsequent holding of fully and completely democratic elections free of any interference.

>> 2. The holding of completely free and democratic elections in the territory of the United States, absent of any interference

>> 3. The disarmament of the imperialist armed forces of the United States of America as they currently exist

>> 4. Legal guarantees of non-interference in the elections of American peoples

>> Anything less, and we will continue our war in the defense of the inalienable rights of the people to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". We will not accept any less. The people will not accept any less.

>> Inevitably, we will be accused of being violent, terrible terrorists. This is patently false. We attacked a military target, killing only those who willingly signed up to work for the US government at this facility, an obvious target. We will do so again. We are, nonetheless, saddened by the loss of any civilians working at the facility; this is why we chose very early Sunday morning to attack, a time when as few would be present at the facility as possible, and offer our sincere condolences.




>> Remember: this is a war. This is not and will not be an isolated incident until the demands of the people of the Americas are submitted to.
>> Everything for everyone, nothing for us!
>> Death to all enemies of the working people!