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April 20, 2004 – As the Baltimore
Sun
reported back on June 18, 1995:
"Time and again during his tour of
duty in Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was confronted
with evidence that a Honduran army intelligence unit, trained by
the CIA, was stalking, kidnapping, torturing and killing
suspected subversives."
But not only did John Dimitri
Negroponte, during his reign as the US Ambassador to Honduras, not
take action to deal with the situation, but, under his watch,
evidence and information regarding the abuses was kept from
Congress. Instead, reports on the human rights situation were
falsified.
As the Sun reported:
"’There are no political prisoners
in Honduras,’ the State Department asserted falsely in its 1983
human rights report.
"The reports to Congress were carefully crafted to convey the
impression that the Honduran government and military were
committed to democratic ideals."
As the
UK’s Guardian reports, Negroponte was, "linked with the illegal
contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua."
The Guardian reports that Negroponte’s
predecessor as Ambassador to Honduras states, "Negroponte would have
had to be deliberately blind not to know about human rights
violations..." He said that upon his departure, he prepared a
briefing book for Negroponte on the situation to prepare him for his
position, and that briefing contained a warning about the,
"escalation of human rights issues."
But after Negroponte stepped in, all of
the human rights violations and abuses were cleansed from the public
record, and, in fact, the groups trained by the US were among those
reportedly most guilty of the violations.
One of his aides during the time, Rick
Chidester, told the Sun that he had heard, "allegations about vans
coming up to police cells and taking out people they [the Honduran
military] didn't want ... and shooting them… I had allegations that,
as part of the interrogation techniques, torture was being used."
He included the allegations, which he
said, "came from too many credible sources to be ignored," in his
draft of the 1982 human rights report to be submitted to Congress.
All of this information was removed from the final report.
Even an incident that John Negroponte
knew of from direct involvement, the abduction of a journalist and
his wife, who were, "locked in secret cell for a week, and beaten
and tortured with electric shocks," was not included in the report.
Instead, as the Sun reports, "the1982 report asserted: ‘No incident
of official interference with the media has been recorded for
several years.’"
It was one thing when, upon taking
office in 2001, President Bush made this man our Ambassador to the
UN – where he has served until now. That was merely a massive insult
and affront to human rights and the people of Central America who
had suffered the massive abuses that Negroponte reigned over and
covered for.
But now, America must realize what his
appointment as our new Ambassador to Iraq means for what is about to
happen over there.
As one man whose son had been abducted
in Central America under Negroponte's watch by the very group the US
had trained - Battalion 316 - presciently said back then, after
desperately trying to get anyone on Negroponte's team to help with
the situation to no avail, "We felt like we were screaming in the
desert. No one heard us. No one would help us."
"…screaming in the desert."
Well, he was screaming, but not in the
desert. But for the people of Iraq, that’s exactly what is about to
be.
Negroponte has proven himself as the
go-to-guy when you want to forget human rights and pound down on a
people with an iron fist and have it all covered up for you.
As Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch told
the Guardian, "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 (as Ambassador to the UN.)"
Now, one must do more than just wonder
what this man’s appointment to the Iraq post means for the people of
Iraq.
As it has been shown that Iraq did not
have the WMD’s the President had used to lead us to war in Iraq, the
administration has fallen back more and more upon justifying the war
based on Saddam’s reign of terror and human rights violations.
But now, as it is an election year and
the President wants the Iraqi insurgents quieted, he is appointing a
man who, in the past, has shown he will allow and cover for, if not
help provide for the facilitation of, the most grotesque human
rights violations imaginable for the furtherance of US foreign
policy.
Negroponte’s record is clear. You can
read a more in depth summary in
this excellent article written for New Republic by Sally Wildman
which tells how, under Negroponte’s watch, "the Honduran government
(was) guilty of ‘engaging in a practice and policy of systematic and
gross human rights violations including disappearances,
extrajudicial execution, and torture,’" and Negroponte’s "commitment
to America's policy of silence," with regard to covering up the
abuses.
The need for silencing and squelching
the opposition groups with brutal tactics that the public never
hears about now exists in Iraq as it once did in Central America.
Negroponte’s appointment as Ambassador
to Iraq is a horrible, horrible occurrence, and shows what is next
in the Iraq War for America.
We asked the question a long time ago, and it is more pertinent
now than ever: has Saddam been replaced with nothing more than a
Saddam who happens to reside in Washington? The use of Negroponte
clearly shows that success in Iraq - or anywhere else - is
impossible under the Bush administration. Their complete lack of
morality, integrity, and disregard for human rights, their
Israel-like fixation on force, force, and nothing but brutal force,
and complete lack of understanding that the only way to win over a
people is to win over a people - not torture and kill them - is a
clear indication of a basic lack of understanding as to how the
world, the people in it, and foreign policy works. Quite simply, the
Bush administration must be replaced by one that values human rights
and understands diplomacy if success is to happen in Iraq.
And a note to the ball-less Democratic
Party: Why is your candidate not making this a huge issue,
especially with the Latin vote such a big issue – and quite simply
with the moral imperative of this? And yes, John Kerry is very
familiar with all of this, as he was one of the people who led the
charge against Reagan’s policies in Central America in the 1980’s.
Which proves once again that only
Moderate Independents seem to actually care about things like
morality and taking stands on useful issues. The rest of the nation
either sits by idly in ignorance or knowingly does nothing as we our
nation, yet again under the Bush family's guidance, sets on a course
than can only come back to bite us horribly in the future - not to
mention is an appauling abomination of everything to do with decency
and basic human values. | 
