US troops "made Aristide leave".

There have been accusations to this effect (I heard on NPR today). No solid proof, but if it happened, it would be no surprise.

But really, given the rest of the mischief this Administration has been up to, this is small-fry stuff. Just good ol' US house cleaning in the Western Hemisphere. As American as mom and apple pie!

Regime Change
Overthrowing Govts. that are not bowing to the Multi-Natl. Corps. is of course not a new event at all. The CIA has been doing that for many years during Repubs and Dems Admins. No matter how times it is done I still cringe when the Admins and Media call it protecting Demcracy &/or Freedom.

I head that it was the States Department diplomats that looked like soldiers because they were armed. They had to move up the time table of when Aristide was to leave because of the rebels were moving in closer to Aristide's palace.

I don't know the first thing about haiti, but this is one time where I don't see what the Bush administration would have anything to gain by doing anything shady there. I mean there is no oil or anything is there?

And most of the people there look happy that he's gone.

Do some research.
Why the CIA is involved directly or indirectly the coups it does. This was another one and there are Capitalist reasons for it.

Please explain the reasons for the CIA to support a coup, as I am a layman when it comes to this.

HAITI: DRUGS,THUGS, THE C.I.A.,DETERRENCE OF DEMOCRACY
HAITI: DRUGS,THUGS, THE C.I.A., AND THE DETERRENCE OF DEMOCRACY


From _Censored:_The_News_That_Didn't_Make_the_News_and_Why_, The 1994 Project Censored Yearbook, edited by Carl Jensen and Project Censored (NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994), pp. 79-81.]

Sources:
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Date: 11/1/93
Title: "Key Haiti Leaders Said To Have Been in the CIA's Pay"
Author: Tim Weiner

PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
Dates: 10/20/93; 11/2/93
Titles: "What's Behind Washington's Silence on Haiti Drug Connection?";
"A Haitian Call to Arms"
Author: Dennis Bernstein

SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
Date: 11/3/93
Title: "The CIA's Haitian Connection"
Authors: Dennis Bernstein and Howard Levine

LOS ANGELES TIMES
Date: 10/31/93
Title: "CIA's Aid Plan Would Have Undercut Aristide in '87-88"
Author: Jim Mann


SYNOPSIS: After the October 30, 1993 deadline to restore duly-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide passed unrealized, observers reported an increasing sense of fear and despair. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed since the 1991 bloody mlitary coup which ousted Aristide. Few Americans are aware of our secret involvement in Haitian politics, nor the impact those policies have had on the US.

Some of the high military officials involved in the coup have been on the CIA's payroll from "the mid-1980s at least until the 1991 coup..." According to one government official, "Several of the principal players of the current situation were compensated by the US government."

Further, the CIA "tried to intervene in Haiti's election with a covert- action program that would have undercut the political strength" of Aristide. The aborted attempt to influence the 1988 election was authorized by then-President Ronald Reagan and the National Security Council. The program was blocked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a rare move.

Next, a confidential Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) report revealed that Haiti is "a major transshipment point for cocaine traffickers" who are funneling drugs from Colombia and the Dominican Republic into the United States. The DEA report also revealed that the drug trafficking, which is bringing one to four tons of cocaine per month into the US, [or 12-48 tons per year] worth $300-$500 million annually, is taking place with "the knowledge and active involvement of high military officials and business elites."

According to Patrick Elie, who was Aristide's anti-drug czar, Haitian police chief Lt. Col. Michel Francois is at the center of the drug trade. Francois' "attaches" reportedly have been responsible for a large number of murders and violence since the coup.

The revelations offer a disturbing look into CIA and State Department policy toward Haiti. Elie stated that he was constantly rebuffed by the CIA when he tried to alert it to the military's drug trafficking: "All we were met with was stonewalling, and in fact we were told there was going to be no more cooperation between the US and Haiti, but at the same time... the CIA continued to cooperate with the Haitian military." Elie reported how the CIA-created Haitian National Intelligence Service (NIS)--supposedly created to combat drugs--was actually involved with narcotics-trafficking, and "functioned as a political intimidation and assassination squad."

The Clinton administration's silence on the Haitian drug flow has led some congressional critics, such as John Conyers (D-MI), to suggest that his silence reflects de facto support for the drug-trafficking Haitian military and a reluctance to substantively support the democratically- elected Aristide.

SSU CENSORED RESEARCER: Sunil Sharma

COMMENTS: Investigative author Dennis Bernstein's charges that the US government's ongoing relationship with drug-trafficking dictators and their associated henchmen is peraps one of the most important and under- reported stories of our time.

"President Clinton's continuing silence on the Haitian military's involvement in a one-billion-dollar a year illegal cocaine operation-- and the mainstream media's acceptance of this silence--is causing untold suffering in Haiti and the US," Bernstein said. "In fact," he continued, "it is this silence about the drugs that allows the military to continue to skirt the embargo with massive amounts of drug-money, to torture and assassinate thousands of Haitians, and to wreak havoc in this country by continuing to import tons of cocaine onto US soil. The US created, funded, and trained Haiti's drug-dealing death squad--the National Intelligence Service--which apparently was conceived to destabilize President Aristide.

"Democracy doesn't exist without a free and unfettered press that isn't afraid to ask the difficult questions and then to publish the answers to those questions without checking informally with the state department and the CIA. The press's continuing failure to report adequately on illegal intelligence operations and CIA-sponsored drug-running and assassination coup teams may ultimately lead to the death of democracy, not only in Haiti but in the US.

"The only people to gain from the press's limited reporting of the Haiti drug story and related US complicit silence are drug-traffickers and their supporting death-squads and dictators, as well as collaborating smugglers and related criminals involved in a billion-dollar-drug operation."

Bernstein concludes that "The soaring number of crack addicts in the US and Haiti--and their families--and the victims of addict robberies and murders will definately not benefit from the silence---and lack of good reporting."

PBS' "Frontline," one of the nation's most acclaimed investigative television programs, produced a well-documented, hour-long special, on November 9 [1993], titled "Showdown in Haiti," which examined President Clinton's foreign-policy initiative in Haiti. Ironically, the otherwise hard-hitting documentary didn't mention drugs or the CIA.

NeoCons pull off another Regime change.
Published on Tuesday, March 2, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
Why They Had to Crush Aristide
Haiti's Elected Leader was Regarded as a Threat by France and the US

by Peter Hallward

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected president of Haiti in November 2000 with more than 90% of the vote. He was elected by people who approved his courageous dissolution, in 1995, of the armed forces that had long terrorized Haiti and had overthrown his first administration. He was elected by people who supported his tentative efforts, made with virtually no resources or revenue, to invest in education and health. He was elected by people who shared his determination, in the face of crippling US opposition, to improve the conditions of the most poorly paid workers in the western hemisphere.

Aristide was forced from office on Sunday by people who have little in common except their opposition to his progressive policies and their refusal of the democratic process. With the enthusiastic backing of Haiti's former colonial master, a leader elected with overwhelming popular support has been driven from office by a loose association of convicted human rights abusers, seditious former army officers and pro-American business leaders.

It's obvious that Aristide's expulsion offered Jacques Chirac a long-awaited chance to restore relations with an American administration he dared to oppose over the attack on Iraq. It's even more obvious that the characterization of Aristide as yet another crazed idealist corrupted by absolute power sits perfectly with the political vision championed by George Bush, and that the Haitian leader's downfall should open the door to a yet more ruthless exploitation of Latin American labor.

If you've been reading the mainstream press over the past few weeks, you'll know that this peculiar version of events has been carefully prepared by repeated accusations that Aristide rigged fraudulent elections in 2000; unleashed violent militias against his political opponents; and brought Haiti's economy to the point of collapse and its people to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.

But look a little harder at those elections. An exhaustive and convincing report by the International Coalition of Independent Observers concluded that "fair and peaceful elections were held" in 2000, and by the standard of the presidential elections held in the US that same year they were positively exemplary.

Why then were they characterized as "flawed" by the Organization of American States (OAS)? It was because, after Aristide's Lavalas party had won 16 out of 17 senate seats, the OAS contested the methodology used to calculate the voting percentages. Curiously, neither the US nor the OAS judged this methodology problematic in the run-up to the elections.

However, in the wake of the Lavalas victories, it was suddenly important enough to justify driving the country towards economic collapse. Bill Clinton invoked the OAS accusation to justify the crippling economic embargo against Haiti that persists to this day, and which effectively blocks the payment of about $500m in international aid.

But what about the gangs of Aristide supporters running riot in Port-au-Prince? No doubt Aristide bears some responsibility for the dozen reported deaths over the last 48 hours. But given that his supporters have no army to protect them, and given that the police force serving the entire country is just a tenth of the force that patrols New York city, it's worth remembering that this figure is a small fraction of the number killed by the rebels in recent weeks.

One of the reasons why Aristide has been consistently vilified in the press is that the Reuters and AP wire services, on which most coverage depends, rely on local media, which are all owned by Aristide's opponents. Another, more important, reason for the vilification is that Aristide never learned to pander unreservedly to foreign commercial interests. He reluctantly accepted a series of severe IMF structural adjustment plans, to the dismay of the working poor, but he refused to acquiesce in the indiscriminate privatization of state resources, and stuck to his guns over wages, education and health.

What happened in Haiti is not that a leader who was once reasonable went mad with power; the truth is that a broadly consistent Aristide was never quite prepared to abandon all his principles.

Worst of all, he remained indelibly associated with what's left of a genuine popular movement for political and economic empowerment. For this reason alone, it was essential that he not only be forced from office but utterly discredited in the eyes of his people and the world. As Noam Chomsky has said, the "threat of a good example" solicits measures of retaliation that bear no relation to the strategic or economic importance of the country in question. This is why the leaders of the world have joined together to crush a democracy in the name of democracy.

*Do the American sheep care about this? NO!!!

For those who give a damn.
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/chomdemenh2.htm