; Whereas, in December 1980, four American churchwomen were raped and murdered by members of the Salvadoran National Guard, leading to President Jimmy Carter’s decision to temporarily cut off military aid to El Salvador; Whereas, in 1980, Salvadoran guerilla military groups formed the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), and announced plans for an armed insurrection, and through a series of coordinated military attacks, the FMLN seized control of numerous regions of the country and launched a full-scale attack on the Salvadoran Government on January 10, 1981; Whereas President Reagan responded to the FMLN’s attack by resuming and increasing military assistance to the Salvadoran Government, including funding for the formation of the Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalions, groups later identified by the UN-sponsored Truth Commission as the primary agents of war crimes ; Whereas, throughout the 1980s, the war between government, guerilla, and paramilitary forces resulted in systematic human rights violations, subjecting civilians to torture, mutilation, forced disappearance, summary executions, indiscriminate bombings, and mass rape, leading to the brutal killing of more than 75,000 Salvadorans; Whereas the Truth Commission found that more than 85 percent of the killings, kidnappings, and torture had been perpetrated by government forces, which included paramilitaries, death squads, and army units trained by the United States; Whereas the largest single massacre of civilians in modern Latin-American history was carried out on December 11, 1981, when the Salvadoran Army’s counterinsurgency battalion and other military forces occupied the village of El Mozote, and massacred approximately 1,000 civilians over a three-day period with guns, machetes, and bayonets, with more than 45 percent of the dead under 12 years old