Photo: FMLN VP candidate at 'celebration' of 9/11 attack

El Salvador's largest newspaper has just published a photograph of FMLN vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren leading a September 15, 2001 "celebration" of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States.

The montage of three photos, appearing here, appeared yesterday in El Diario de Hoy in San Salvador. The photo on the top left shows a semi-nude FMLN activist in a mask and stars-and-stripes cape marching with the American flag flying upside down. The bottom left photo FMLN militants burning an American flag in front of San Salvador's national cathedral.

In the photo at right, FMLN vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, in the light blue shirt, claps and cheers as the American flag burning takes place.

Fox News reports that Salvadorans fear losing remittances

Fear of losing the ability to receive money from family members working in the US are causing many Salvadorans to re-think their support for FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes.

Fox News reports, "There have also been persistent rumors for years that if an FMLN candidate wins the presidency, the U.S. government will retaliate by deporting many of the 1 million Salvadorans who currently reside in the U.S. Last year about $3.8 billion was sent back to El Salvador from Salvadorans living in the U.S. Fear of these lost funds might explain why the polls -- which last summer so heavily favored Funes – have narrowed considerably."

“This is the first time you would have a left president in El Salvador and that’s creating I think a certain amount of consternation,” says Ray Walser of the Heritage Foundation.

Rep. Grijalva: 'the left has an opportunity to take control' of El Salvador and US should be neutral

Congressman Raul Grijalva's campaign to ensure American "neutrality" in the March 15 Salvadoran elections is a bid designed to help the FMLN win and to erode American influence in Central America.

In the words of DemocracyNow.org, which has championed the FMLN, Grijalva is trying to "reverse longstanding US interference" in El Salvador.

Grijalva (pictured) says in an interview with DemocracyNow, "the left has an opportunity to take control of a government," and the US shouldn't intervene.

Grijalva has voiced no objections to Cuban or Venezuelan "interference" in El Salvador's democratic process. Nor has he called on the FMLN to renounce its past alliances with the Soviet Union and Palestinian terrorist groups, or its continued sympathy with the Colombian FARC and Islamist extremists.

The Arizona Democrat is co-chair of the congressional Progressive Caucus.

CISPES orchestrated fringe lawmakers to sign 'neutrality' letter

The list of signers of a letter urging President Barack Obama to be "neutral" toward the Salvadoran elections contains a rogues' gallery of the most fringe elements of Congress's loony left.

One of the signers, Rep. Jim McDermott (pictured), took a junket to Iraq in 2002 on an anti-American propaganda trip paid for by Saddam Hussein's intelligence service.

CISPES, a front of the FMLN, coordinated the campaign to enlist lawmakers to sign, according to the group's website.

The only senator who signed the letter, Bernard Sanders of Vermont, is also the Senate's only openly avowed socialist.

Members of Congress include:

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who led the effort in support of the FMLN, and who says the US should be neutral in El Salvador because "the left has the opportunity to take control."
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL).
Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), an old endorser of CISPES and other FMLN front groups from the 1980s.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), a former aide to Rep. Ronald V. Dellums who helped the Cuban-backed regime in Grenada run counterintelligence against a suspected pro-US individual in the Grenadian government, and who worked with Dellums in Cuba to generate support for the regime and to discredit President Reagan's concerns that the island was becoming a Soviet ally.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), considered even by Democrats to be one of the looniest people in Congress.
Rep. Jim McDermott, pictured (D-WA), disgraced when he took a Iraq propaganda tour that was secretly financed by Saddam Hussein's intelligence service.
Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), who copped a plea last year to avoid a conviction for assaulting a woman at Dulles International Airport.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the only Muslim in Congress, he has shown an aversion to federal anti-terrorist legislation.

Click here for the full listing of congressional signers of the letter.

Congressional debate reverberates in El Salvador

Congressional concerns about a pro-terrorist government coming to power in El Salvador are reveberating in the Central American country as the March 15 presidential elections approach.

The FMLN's ties to terrorism and to state sponsors of terror are increasingly viewed with alarm in Washington. Friends of El Salvador are worried that if the FMLN wins, the US will be forced to treat the longtime ally as a hostile regime. (Photo: FMLN militant waves Venezuelan flag at Salvadoran presidential campaign rally)

"The participation of [FMLN vice presidential candidate] Salvador Sanchez Ceren in a protest against the United States after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks will be one of the core reasons to terminate remittances [to El Salvador from the US] and TPS [immigration privileges for Salvadorans], El Diario de Hoy reports.

"California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher stated yesterday on the floor of Congress that shortly after 9/11, the FMLN 'issued a communique that argued that the United States, due to its policies, was responsible for having been attacked by terrorists,'" according to El Salvador's leading newspaper.

"'Four days after 9/11,' Rohrabacher stressed, 'the FMLN organized a protest in the capital to celebrate the Al Qaeda terrorist attack and to burn the flag of the United States. The leader of that march was Salvador Sanchez Ceren, the current FMLN vice presidential candidate.'

"That action of Sanchez Ceren prompted United States authorities to consider the FMLN as a group that 'promotes violent anti-American acts.'

"If the FMLN wins the elections, an anti-terrorist law created in the wake of 9/11 will obligate the United States government to review its foreign relations with El Salvador and to consider severe measures, like terminating TPS and the flow of remittances of Salvadorans if they are tied to terrorist groups or promote violent anti-American actions," the report states.

Not just the conservative ARENA party is concerned. The center-left Christian Democrat Party (PDC) is also worried - and agrees with the analysis. "'The United States congressmen are clear because they handle important, real information,' according to Rodolfo Parker, secretary general of the PDC, 'it is not speculative to speak of the relation that the FMLN has with Hugo Chavez and of Chavez with narcoterrorism and the FARC.'

"He continued, 'What the United States values are changes toward the future, but an FMLN victory would be a change toward the past, in the entire relationship, so El Salvador would enter the network of 21st Century Socialism and narcoterrorism."

US fears El Salvador alliance with Hugo Chavez

"US Fears Alliance of FMLN and Hugo Chavez." That's the front-page headline of El Salvador's leading newspaper, El Diario de Hoy.

True enough.

Which is why the US should make sure the FMLN never is in a position to threaten democracy and freedom in the region.

Salvadorans voting the FMLN into power will be making a costly mistake. They will provoke the US into enforcing its own counterterrorism interests, and this means de-funding economies whose governments support terrorists.

El Salvador and the United States have a great partnership. It will be a terrible mistake for the Salvadoran voters to mess with it, since our countries have become so interdependent.

FMLN front group organizes election observers

"More than 60 members of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) have arrived in El Salvador as accredited international observers for the March 15 presidential election. These observers, some of whom have been in El Salvador monitoring the campaign for more than three months, are available for interviews starting immediately, as well as on election day on Sunday and throughout the week following the election. CISPES will maintain an Election Day Blog with first-hand observers' reports and other news from around El Salvador, including preliminary election results as they are available, at http://cispes.org/09electionsblog/."

This statement is from the CISPES website. CISPES is an FMLN front organization founded in 1980 to support a communist guerrilla victory in El Salvador. In 2008 the US alleged that CISPES was serving illegally as a "foreign agent" of the FMLN.