Bush Names Negroponte (of Iran/Contra fame) Iraq Ambassador

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-us-ambassador,0,611059.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

WASHINGTON -- President Bush named John Negroponte, the United States' top diplomat at the United Nations, as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Monday and asserted that Iraq "will be free and democratic and peaceful."

Bush announced the nomination in an Oval Office ceremony.

At the United Nations, Negroponte, 64, was instrumental in winning unanimous approval of a Security Council resolution that demanded Saddam Hussein comply with U.N. mandates to disarm.

While the resolution helped the Bush administration make its case for invading Iraq, the Security Council eventually refused to endorse the overthrow of Saddam, opting instead to extend U.N. weapons searches.

"John Negroponte is a man of enormous experience and skill" and "has done a really good job of speaking for the United States to the world about our intentions to spread freedom and peace," said Bush.

..more..

assigning Kissinger to head up the 9-11 commission.

We keep seeing all the same names over and over. The same corrupt, criminal bastards keep handing power to one another, and handing out pardons as needed. They're not leaving in November, either- no matter who gets elected.

and then proceeded to install all the heavyweights that had been in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations. "It was as though they had been preserved in amber.". . .my favorite Clarke quotation.

Appointing Negroponte is about as reasonable as appointing Kissinger to the 9/11 commission. Sheesh. These guys are such criminals. It's incomprehesible.

I swear he and the rest of the country are on different tracks.

some background:


Iran/Contra Rehab
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020311&s=corn

<snip>
John Negroponte was US Ambassador to Honduras and facilitated a clandestine quid pro quo deal, under which the Reagan Administration sent aid to Honduras in return for Honduran assistance to the contras, at a time when Congress had banned the Administration from assisting the contras. Negroponte's embassy also suppressed information about human rights abuses committed by the Honduran military. Negroponte is currently our UN ambassador.
<snip>

Scandal? What Scandal?
Bush's Iran-Contra appointees are barely a story
http://www.fair.org/extra/0109/iran-contra.html

<snip>
John Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, covered up human rights abuses by the CIA-trained Battalion 316. He is Bush's choice for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and, as Extra! went to press, was expected to clear Senate confirmation hearings.
<snip>

personal info. until he started talk about betting on coups and terrorism like he was at the horse track.

A BIGGER, BADDER SEQUEL TO IRAN-CONTRA

Jim Lobe, AlterNet

Just like Ollie North and his cohorts, a small network of officials are pursuing a covert foreign policy agenda -- except their aims are vastly more ambitious.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16597

The specter of the Iran-Contra affair is haunting Washington. Some of the people and countries are the same, and so are the methods ? particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy.
Boiled down to its essentials, the Iran-Contra affair was about a small group of officials based in the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that ran an "off-the-books" operation to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. The picture being painted by various insider sources in the media suggests a similar but far more ambitious scheme at work.

Taken collectively, what these officials describe and what is already on the public record suggests the existence of a disciplined network of zealous, like-minded individuals. Centered in Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith's office and around Richard Perle in the Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon, this exclusive group of officials operates under the aegis of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

This network includes high-level political appointees, such as Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who are scattered around several other key bureaucracies, notably in the State Department, the NSC staff, and most importantly, in Cheney's office.
...more..

from Washington
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=DC&last=Negroponte&first=John

from NY
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=NY&last=Negroponte&first=John

though I'm not really familiar with: FONG, MATTHEW K (R) CA.
I guess there must be something nefarious about they guy..

If we are going to have someone be a most tempting target to the Iraqi guerrillas, Negroponte is not a bad choice. :evilgrin:

I have no doubt Negroponte will go back to what he does best, orderign murders and covering up the murders "his people" committ.

VERY much like Hans Frank.

In fact, if an alliance of Free Nations was to do to Imperial American what the Old American Republic did to Hitler, I imagine we would get to see just how much Hans Frank and John Negroponte were alike in "imminent arrest" situations, too.

Again I have no doubt that these two very similar felons and monsters would behave like the spiritual kin they are...

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.

and what did Bush pull during the nominating process?

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.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/John%20Negroponte

not to mention not allowing the nun to testify.......

that is an excellent article.

Then Kerry can boot his ass out..

Evil-Doers on the way! (Good riddance.)

On the one hand, a B.F.E.E. hanger-on continues to be rewarded with a high profile job, so they get to do their reward thing. Otoh, if he gets bombed in Baghdad, whoopsie, it's one less man-who-knew-too-much.

:mad:

Example #12,648 of how Republicans can be as Bad As They Wanna Be while Democrats always get the colonoscopy, even after their dependable and pathetic bleatings for "America is tired of negativism" bipartisanship.

ABC just ran several minute long hagiography of Negroponte, saying how much his UN colleagues respect him for his hardline stance vis a vis Saddam just before the war...they showed the clip of him: "Saddaam will be disarmed--one way or another"

but guess what they somehow forgot?

his entire Central America history, as well as the shenanigans they pulled during his confirmation hearings a few years ago.

shameless, shameful, or both?

it's ALWAYS about the media

that's a major point in John Dean's book: scandal after scandal from this admin has been COMPLETELY ignored by the media

Bush Appoints Former Criminals to Key Government Roles

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2003/11.html

John Negroponte, the new ambassador to the UN, served under Reagan as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. He is known for his role in the cover up of human rights abuses by CIA trained paramilitaries throughout the region. Coincidentally, Honduran exiles associated with the paramilitary forces that had been living in the US, were exported to Canada prior to Negroponte's Senate confirmation hearing, thus rendering their testimony unavailable.

is brought to Iraq "Watch us fuck you again and again..."