When our first book, Just the Facts: A civilian’s guide to US defense and security assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean, was published in 1998, we knew that we had made something useful. It was being used, not just by our target audience – the NGO sector – but by academics, journalists, congressional staffers, and even the Defense Department. The day the book was released, we got an order for 40 copies from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. They told me that they didn’t have this information compiled in one place.
From the valedictory blog post written by my boss, WOLA director Joy Olson, at the website of “Just the Facts,” the project we founded in the 1990s to monitor U.S. military aid in Latin America.
Tomorrow, the “Just the Facts” brand-name (a lousy one but we could never think of anything better) disappears. From now on, you can find the same data and analysis in the Latin America section of Security Assistance Monitor, a new, global military aid-monitoring site coordinated by the Center for International Policy. Once it’s fully up and running, the new site is going to be a greatly improved resource.
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