Bush 'enforcer' for Iraq

Bush 'enforcer' for Iraq
By Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard, in Baghdad
14 April 2004

The American governor of Iraq is to be replaced within weeks by a controversial diplomat, the Evening Standard has learned.

Paul Bremer is to give up his post as leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority when sovereignty is handed over to a new Iraqi governor on 30 June - a deadline which George Bush has insisted will not be postponed.

He will be replaced as America's most senior representative in Iraq by John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the UN and one of Washington's most controversial figures. His appointment - expected to be announced officially within days - came as the hostage crisis which is sweeping Iraq escalated, with the discovery of four mutilated bodies.

<snip>

Nominating Mr Negroponte to head the authority is one of the most controversial appointments President Bush could have made. Before being approved by Congress to serve as America's representative at the UN, he faced days of grilling over allegations that at the very least he turned a blind eye to CIA-backed death squads which operated in Honduras when he was ambassador there.

The notorious "Battalion 3-16" was involved in dozens of "disappearances" as part of a dirty war on Left-wingers in Honduras, designed to support the Right-wing Contra rebels in neighbouring Nicaragua.

More: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/10219037?version=1

TYY

Lots of Mukhabharat talent to draw on...we'll have an Iraqi El Mozote in no time.

What do you think? Congressional Medal of Honor for Bremmie?

I propose in this instance a special commemorative medal be fashioned for him out of the teeth and bones of Iraqi children.

Bush considered. The man may have violated the law all to hell and gone in the 1980s, but he's more or less respected as a voice for coalition building. If Bush hadn't gone with Negroponte, he would have gone for Wolfowitz or Blackwill and you want to see controversy? It actually mightn't have been such a bad thing to put Wolfie in charge - at least they'd have gotten him the hell out of Washington.

"The man may have violated the law all to hell and gone in the 1980s, but he's more or less respected as a voice for coalition building."

If you were an Iraqi involved in trying to build a delicate governing and legal coalition, which must be based on either force or trust, would you want the American representative to be someone who "violated the law all to hell and gone"? If you weren't Chalabi I mean.

whose he kidding?

There can no longer be any doubt or equivocation; the Bush regime is a neonazi evil that must be fought. There can be no 'let's wait until we can vote him out' talk. There will be no voting him out. By this thumbing of his nose to any semblance of justice and truth, the little Emperor is making a statement that we cannot miss. By appointing this murderer to Iraq, Bush is signaling the whole world that a brutal dictatorship is all the Iraqis have to look forward to. We must fight this horrible evil - and "evil" is the right word.

TYY :kick:

The sooner, the better.. what have we got to lose?

His actions meet and rise to the criteria of HC&M.

Death squads, all the worst of the Reagan era in Central America. He and Chalabi will see eye to eye, as they both ought to be in prison for their many crimes.

Pardoned by one Bush to do the dirty work of another. Your BFEE at work.

This is an horrific choice on b*sh's part (like 99.9% of his choices, of course).

Reprehensible.

TYY :kick:

all rolled into one. I believe they are installing a KNOWN criminal to derail the supposed handover of Iraq to the Iraqis. How Negroponte will do that is anyones guess (but it will involve mass atrocities).