Negroponte, a Torturer's Friend

suzy, I like you, I really do, but even if the Jewish homeland was in South Texas, radical Muslim extremists would still target it for terrorism. This is no new issue, and the US is not responsible for it. This goes back to the Crusades, and to biblical times. If you want to blame someone, blame Abraham, who cast out his concubine Hagar, and their illegitimate son Ishmael. These radicals still hold a grudge over this fairy tale.

This is a very disturbing and troubling article. From the piece:

Negroponte, currently U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., was U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s and was intimately involved with Reagan's dirty war against the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. Reagan waged much of that illegal contra war from Honduras, and Negroponte was his point man.

According to a detailed investigation the Baltimore Sun did in 1995, Negroponte covered up some of the most grotesque human rights abuses imaginable.

The CIA organized, trained, and financed an army unit called Battalion 316, the paper said. Its specialty was torture. And it kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of Hondurans, the Sun reported. It "used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves."

The U.S. embassy in Honduras knew about the human rights abuses but did not want this embarrassing information to become public, the paper said.

It seems to me, your president has a nasty habit of choosing players with very dirty and questionable backgrounds.

The atrocities in Central America during Ronald Reagan's administration were covered in depth in the UK during these years and left many Britons scratching our heads in disbelief.

But, we had our own cross to bear during this time by the person called Lady Thatcher.

"even if the Jewish homeland was in South Texas, radical Muslim extremists would still target it for terrorism"
Well, I don't know about that, but whatever the case may be, why do WE, a supposedly secular nation (or one could argue, Christian) insist on being in the middle of a war between religious extremists? Why don't we just butt out? I know people say because Israel is the "lone democracy" over there. Thank God we don't have that kind of democracy here, I say.
Last week W. overturned four decades of U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict by endorsing Ariel Sharon's version of an expansionist Israel. Then, Sharon ordered the assassination of a second top Palestinian leader. Let's see what's happened since:
First, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, who just met with Bush, said he was shocked, and added this :
"Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before in the region. At the start some considered the Americans were helping them. There was no hatred of the Americans. After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it. People have a feeling of injustice. What's more, they see Sharon acting as he pleases, without the Americans saying anything. He assassinates people who don't have the planes and helicopters that he has. The despair and feeling of injustice are not going to be limited to our region alone. American and Israeli interests will not be safe, not only in our region but anywhere in the world".
Then, King Abdullah of Jordan, whose father was a long-time, reliable stooge of the United States and a former CIA agent, who was in California, abruptly refused to meet with President Bush in Washington:
Jordan's King Abdullah II has postponed a White House meeting with U.S. president George Bush this week, questioning America's commitment to the Middle East peace process. Last night's surprise snub from one of Washington's closest allies comes amid Arab anger at Bush for endorsing an Israeli proposal to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, but keep Jewish settlements on other West Bank land claimed by the Palestinians. The palace statement said the Abdullah-Bush meeting would not be held "until discussions and deliberations are concluded with officials in the American administration to clarify the American position on the peace process and the final situation in the Palestinian territories, especially in light of the latest statements by officials in the American administration."
Third, Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, canceled a planned U.S. visit this week, too.
(I got this stuff from some website but was unable to copy the link before my computer crashed, and crashed again. I'm not going to risk another crash to find the site, so you can take my word for it or look this up yourself). Sorry!
I don't see these kind of actions as being very humanitarian, and these leaders seem to back up that presumption. It hurts me that our attitude in the region is bringing us to this. I think we can do better, and I think it's time to put some real and honest thinking to the topic, instead of sticking with the status quo.

Why does a secular nation (quite possibly influenced by a strong right-wing Christian lobby) get involved in what seems to be a religious war? Hmm...maybe because it hits close to home. If you don't think there are many powerful radical Christians pulling strings in the USA, you are naive. Why support Israel? They are the lesser of two evils. If you want real answers, call up Dubya. Holy wars are nonsensical by nature.

Ever heard the term "enough is enough!"? At one time, some of the various Arab nations decided to attack Israel and they were rebuffed by a superior Israeli army. A whole lot of land was captured by Israel, but they did not want it. They gave it back. Would any other nation in the region have been as gracious? I doubt it.

Anyway, Hamas is a known terrorist organization and america is at war with terrorism. I personally feel it should have been an American helicopter that killed the Hamas leader, but that's neither here nor there. The violonce will continue in the middle east as long as Muslim and Jews co-exist there.

I didn't write that one, either, but copied and saved it to my notepad before another computer crash. It came from a link through TomPaine.com.
" If you want to blame someone" That's just it, Cav, I don't want to blame anyone, but I do think we need to look at our responsibilities to the region, if we must have any. You know, I just think we need to stop doing this kind of stuff. I think we need to be more honest, and our actions should benefit everyone, not just the chosen ones we feel will benefit us most, somehow.

John Negroponte
Can we expect John Poindexter and Ollie North to come out of military retirement to help Negroponte continue his methods? BTW, Negroponte does not speak any arabic languages; ain't that going to be a big help?---BBB

John Negroponte
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

John Dimitri Negroponte has been the United States ambassador to the United Nations since September 2001. He is a career diplomat who served in the US Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997. On April 19, 2004, Negroponte was nominated by US President George W. Bush to be US ambassador to Iraq after the June 30 handover.

His appointment to the UN post was a controversial one because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras and his covering up of human rights abuses in Honduras in the 1980s. He is seen by many as a terrorist sponsor for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua. He is also acused of inciting Contra attacks on civilians.

Negroponte graduated from Yale University. He later served at eight different Foreign Service posts in Asia, Europe and Latin America; and he also held important positions at the State Department and the White House. From 1997 until his appointment as ambassador to the UN, Negroponte was an executive with McGraw-Hill. He speaks five languages.

From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

Negroponte supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. But in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.

In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two with a contact in the Honduran armed forces The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any US involvement, despite Negroponte's participation in the scheme. Other documents uncovered a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

During his tenure as US ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and he claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.

Speaking of Negroponte and other senior US officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of US activities in Honduras:

Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.

The Suns's investigation found that the CIA and US embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy's annual human rights report did not contain the full story.

When President Bush announced Negroponte's appointment to the UN shortly after coming to office, it was met with widespread protest. However, the Bush administration did not back down and even went so far as to try to silence potential witnesses. On March 25, the Los Angeles Times reported on the sudden deportation from the United States of several former Honduran death squad members who could have provided damaging testimony against Negroponte in his Senate confirmation hearings. One of the deportees was General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In the preceding month, Washington had revoked the visa of Discua who was Honduras' Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Nonetheless, Discua went public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.

Upon learning of Negroponte's nomination, Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch in New York commented:

When John Negroponte was ambassador he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights by this appointment.

Fact: After questioning Negroponte about the very issues in the initial post in this thread, the Senate foreign relations committee unanimously approved him and the full Senate unanimously confirmed his appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Remember that liberal Democrats serve on the committee as well as in the Senate. So how bad could this guy be?

Following is a recent article that is not an intentional effort to smear him.

Posted 4/13/2004 3:02 PM

Negroponte could be U.S. ambassador to Baghdad

McGentrix
Mcgentrix, you never fail my expectations of you.

BBB

I Remember Negroponte
by William Rivers Pitt

"The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity."
-- Tacitus

July 27, 2001 (APJP) -- A wise friend recently offered the reminder that the best weapon anyone can bring to bear upon that which they oppose is a long memory.

I was fifteen years old in 1987, working behind the snack bar of a public golf course. A battered old television was propped up in the corner, and it was on all the time during the Iran-Contra hearings. I pulled sodas and served coffee and shot the breeze with the regulars, and I watched every damned minute of those hearings.

It is then, I think, that the first true stirrings of my current political ideology rose up and peered with furrowed eyebrows at Lt. Colonel Oliver North. I was young, and not able to understand fully the scope and magnitude of what was happening. Despite that, it was clear to me, and from what I could tell it was likewise clear to the nation, that something had gone fundamentally wrong in the White House.

And then, of course, the wheels came off. The hearings degenerated into long, lazy afternoons filled with softball questions tossed up to North and his lawyers. Hunter Thompson best described the scene in 'Generation of Swine':

"By the end of the Thursday session, North had been fed so many home run balls that he and his lawyer were laughing out loud and slapping each other on the back every time Nields asked a question - and then North would give another 20 minute speech about how much he loved his wife and his children and his uniform and, above all, his commander-in-chief, The President."

North was a hero, the hearings went seemingly nowhere, Reagan served out his term, and later on a number of the leading lights within the scandal were given Presidential pardons by George Herbert Walker Bush. I finished out the summer at the course and proceeded to grow up, a bit wiser for having watched it all unfold.

That boy has grown into a man who happens to have become a teacher of history. It is my job to recall with alacrity the details and individuals that have coursed through our national events. Simply put, I get paid to have that long memory. I remember Iran-Contra.

I remember the Walsh Report, and have read it many times. It can be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/

The Walsh Report describes the whole sordid deal rather succinctly in its Executive Summary, which reads in part below:

"The Iran/contra affair concerned two secret Reagan Administration policies whose operations were coordinated by National Security Council staff. The Iran operation involved efforts in 1985 and 1986 to obtain the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East through the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran, despite an embargo on such sales. The contra operations from 1984 through most of 1986 involved the secret governmental support of contra military and paramilitary activities in Nicaragua, despite congressional prohibition of this support.

"The Iran and contra operations were merged when funds generated from the sale of weapons to Iran were diverted to support the contra effort in Nicaragua. Although this 'diversion' may be the most dramatic aspect of Iran/contra, it is important to emphasize that both the Iran and contra operations, separately, violated United States policy and law. The ignorance of the 'diversion' asserted by President Reagan and his Cabinet officers on the National Security Council in no way absolves them of responsibility for the underlying Iran and contra operations."

So much good reading here for an historian! So much to remember. What the Walsh Report does not speak to, what it glosses over, are the wretched facts of our involvement in Central America during this time. This omission is pressing today, because the ghosts of Iran-Contra have come back to haunt us.

John Dimitri Negroponte stands today as the nominee to represent the United States at the U.N. Negroponte is currently the Executive Vice President for Global Markets at McGraw Hill Companies, Inc., and served for 37 years with the United States Department of State as a career diplomat.

One of his diplomatic postings was as the American Ambassador to Honduras. He served there from 1981 to 1985, at the height of the Iran-Contra actions taking place in Central America. If nominated, Negroponte will join Elliot Abrams in the governmental service. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress for his role in covering up the operation for the President and Vice President.

Eyewitness accounts have allowed us, with the passage of time, to understand the horrors that occurred in Honduras because of the direct actions of the Reagan administration. Eyewitness accounts tell us what Negroponte and Abrams surely knew at the time.

One such eyewitness is Sister Laetitia Bordes, a nun who worked in Central America during the 1980s and the 1990s. She has written a book entitled 'Our Hearts Were Broken.' Sister Bordes describes Honduras and Ambassador Negroponte in words we all need to hear:

"My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary.

"Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women. John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered.

"Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter.

"Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.

"John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country.

"The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the Salvadoran military.

"In 1994, the Honduran Human Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents. It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for.

"I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in 1996, Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Four children had been captured with the women.

"They were turned over to the Salvadoran military and their whereabouts are unknown. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights. But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy."

There are still many threads from Iran-Contra waving in the wind. To be sure, a vital area of interest is the sudden and irreversible incapacitation of CIA Head William Casey. Casey knew where the bodies were buried, and who knew what, and when. But Casey was delivered insensate to his Maker without ever having The Questions put to him under oath.

Someday, perhaps, we will know the whole ugly truth. We will finally understand what Reagan meant to America.

In the meantime, we must rise up as one voice and denounce in the strongest terms the nomination of John Negroponte to be our Ambassador to the United Nations. Such a man, with such a bloody history, can not be allowed to represent this nation before a body that stands for the protection of human rights.

Our reputation on the world stage is tarnished enough as it is. We rush pell-mell towards the status of full-fledged pariah. At the very least, the nomination of Negroponte would further sully our flag. At worst, the nomination of Negroponte would wipe away some of the darkest crimes ever committed by any American administration in all of our history.

It cannot happen. Call your Senators, your Congressional representatives. Call the head of the Democratic Party in your state.

Call them, and tell them: I remember John Negroponte.

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010727Negroponte.html

Hmmm Deecups, now who should we give the most credibility to?

The Associated Press plus the bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations committee plus the bipartisan U.S. Senate? Or the American Politics Journal, one of the most blatantly anti-conservative, anti-Bush, pro radical liberal, and prone to yellow journalism sources out there?

Tough call huh?

Dear foxfyre- You are free to stalk me with your rightwing ramblings until the cows come home, but the idea you would support a true human rights criminal and gangster of the worst order, is a comment on the lack of values in your character.

Be forwarned foxfyre. Everytime you copy and paste a thread that supports Negroponte, I will copy and paste one that damns his character.

We can do this until Deecups is ready to retire which will be 42 more years, so begin.............,

William Rivers Pitt is from MA.
A very smart and observant man.
Not his fault that only mush stories get printed in the mainstream press! I would like to hear what he has to say no matter where it's printed!

Deecups, when you post in every thread, you can't really expect to be able to accuse some one of "stalk(ing) me with your rightwing ramblings until the cows come home"

See you make a post then others get to respond. Maybe you haven't figured that part out yet, but this is at least the second time I have seen you accuse someone of "stalking" you.

Hi McGentrix- I have never used that term before on this message board, sorry to disappoint you.

I do challenge you to show where I did use it -- no hurry on my part, as I have years..........

But Deecups can save you much time: you will come up empty handed.

Night night. :wink:

God, I just can't come to terms with how simplistic and juvenile your argument is. It is bordering on dementia. You've used it before, with regards to Isreal vs Hamas issues, etc. It still astounds me.

Terrorists are evil, therefore, invading Iraq (a nation with no terrorist connections) was clearly justified. Please. I really don't know how to respond.

"(a nation with no terrorist connections)"


WHAT?!

You're kidding, right?

LOL!!!

Poor McGentrix is 0 for 10 on this thread.

Saddam Hussein showed no reluctance to support terrorism per se during his career. The fact that he gave money to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists and had a close working relationship with the PLO was well known, and something he admitted. The Iraqi regime maintained a terrorist training camp at Salman Pak near Baghdad where foreign terrorists were instructed in methods of taking over commercial aircraft using weapons no more sophisticated than knives (interesting thought that). Saddam also harbored Abu Nidal and other members of his international terror organization (ANO) in Baghdad. Abu Nidal died under suspicious circumstances in Baghdad in August 2002, an apparent multiple gunshot suicide. Abd-al-Rahman Isa, ANO's second in command based in Amman, Jordan, was kidnapped September 11, 2002, and has not been heard from since. Coalition forces did recently apprehend ANO member Khala Khadr al-Salahat, the man who reputedly made the bomb for the Libyans that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He was hiding out in Baghdad. Another bomb maker, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was also a Baghdad resident. He was one of the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who had fled there after being detained briefly by the FBI. Recent document finds in Tikrit show that Iraq supplied Yasin with both money and sanctuary. The 1993 WTC attack was masterminded by Yasin's associate Ramzi Yousef, who received financial support from al Qaeda through Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key 9/11 planner.

There is also the case of Abu Zubayr, an officer in Saddam's secret police who was also the ringleader of an al Qaeda cell in Morocco. He attended the September 5, 2001 meeting in Spain with other al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, the 9/11 financial chief. Abu Zubayr was apprehended in May, 2002, while putting together a plot to mount suicide attacks on U.S. ships passing through the straits of Gibraltar. He has allegedly since stated that Iraq trained and supplied chemical weapons to al Qaeda. In the fall of 2001 al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan took refuge in northern Iraq until they were driven out by Coalition forces, and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda terrorist active in Europe and North Africa, fled from Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has reportedly been sent back to Iraq to coordinate al Qaeda activities there.

Iraq made direct payments to the Philippine-based al Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf group. Hamsiraji Sali, an Abu Sayyaf leader on the U.S. most-wanted terrorist list, stated that his gang received about one million pesos (around $20,000) each year from Iraq, for chemicals to make bombs. The link was substantiated immediately after a bombing in Zamboanga City in October 2002 (in which three people were killed including an American Green Beret), when Abu Sayyaf leaders called up the deputy secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, Husham Hussain. Six days later, the cell phone used to call Hussain was employed as the timer on a bomb set to go off near the Philippine military's Southern Command headquarters. Fortunately, the bomb failed to detonate, and the phone yielded various contact numbers, including Hussain's and Sali's. This evidence, coupled with other intelligence the Philippine government would not release, led to Hussain's expulsion in February 2003. In March, ten Iraqi nationals, some with direct links to al Qaeda, were rounded up in the Philippines and deported as undesirable aliens. In addition, two more consulate officials were expelled for spying.

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