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The Mexico Solidarity Network
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org
27 April 2004
John Negroponte's Iraq Nomination Being Rushed Through Senate Committee
Call Senators Now to Demand a Full Investigation Negroponte is the "Worst
Man for the Job"
Career diplomat John Negroponte has been nominated by President Bush to be
US Ambassador to Iraq. He would head the largest US embassy after what is
now admitted to be "limited sovereignty" is turned over to Iraq on June
30. Negroponte's record makes him uniquely unqualified for this important
posting.
· Negroponte was political officer at the US Embassy in Vietnam from
1964-1968, the height of the war, and during a period of extrajudicial
executions and gross human rights abuses, including massacres by the
infamous "Tiger Force" of the Army's 101st Airborne Division.
· Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985 during which he
oversaw a ten-fold increase in staff and an embassy that housed one of the
largest CIA deployments in all of Latin America. He lied to Congress
about his knowledge of the infamous Battalion 316 death squad, and managed
illegal aid to the Contras fighting the Nicaraguan government in direct
contravention of Congress' ban.
· Negroponte was ambassador to Mexico 1989-1993 where he shepherded the
North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to its conclusion. NAFTA has
caused one million Mexican farmers to lose their land and livelihoods and
undermined labor and environmental protections in Mexico, the US, and
Canada.
· Negroponte has served as US ambassador to the United Nations since
September 2001 during the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. He is guilty
of lying to the UN about justifications for the war and successfully
pressured Mexico and Chile to fire their UN ambassadors after they clashed
with him over the war.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a rushed hearing on
the nomination for Thursday, April 29, 2004. Negroponte's lack of
democratic credentials and his record of support for, or turning a blind
eye to, gross human rights violations, held up his nomination for UN
ambassador in 2001. But, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a
quick approval vote on Sept. 12, 2001, rushing him through during the
chaos following the tragedy of the day before.
We must not allow the Senate to sweep his horrible record under the rug a
second time. If one of your Senators is on the Foreign Relations
Committee, call and demand a thorough hearing and rejection of
Negroponte's nomination. If neither of your Senators are on the committee
call both Senators anyway and tell them to demand that Chairman Lugar and
Ranking Member Biden conduct a thorough hearing and reject the "worst man
for the job."
For a good background piece just released by the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, visit:
http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.20_Negroponte.htm
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 108th Congress:
Chairman: Richard G. Lugar (IN - R) (202) 224-4814
Ranking Member: Joseph R. Biden (DE - D) (202) 224-5042
Chuck Hagel (NE - R) (202) 224-4224
Paul S. Sarbanes (MD - D) (202) 224-4524
Lincoln Chafee (RI - R) (202) 224-2921
Christopher J. Dodd (CT - D) (202) 224-2823
George Allen (VA - R) (202) 224-4024
John F. Kerry (MA - D) (202) 224-2742; Campaign Hdqts:
(202) 712-3000
Sam Brownback (KS - R) (202) 224-6521
Russell D. Feingold (WI - D) (202) 224-5323
Michael Enzi (WY - R) (202) 224-3424
Barbara Boxer (CA - D) (202) 224-3553
George V. Voinovich (OH - R) (202) 224-3353
Bill Nelson (FL - D) (202) 224-3353
Lamar Alexander (TN - R) (202) 224-4944
John D. Rockefeller IV (WV - D) (202) 224-6472
Norm Coleman (MN - D) (202)-224-1152
Jon S. Corzine (NJ - D) (202) 224-4744
John Sununu (NH - R) (202) 224-2841
As additional background, here is a personal account, written in July
2001
by Sr. Laetitia Bordes, s.h.
NEW RIPPLES IN AN EVIL STORY
John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the next ambassador to the
United Nations? My ears perked up. I turned up the volume on the radio. I
began listening more attentively. Yes, I had heard correctly. Bush was
nominating Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed Honduran death
squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.
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 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 in1996 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. 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.
Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story.
Since President Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John
Negroponte, other people have suddenly been "disappearing", so to speak.
In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley
and Norman Kempster reported on the sudden deportation of several former
Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have
provided shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate
hearings. One of these recent deportees just happens to be General Luis
Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In February, Washington revoked
the visa of Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Since then, Discua
has gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.
Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed
horrifying to think that he should be chosen to represent our country at
the United Nations, an organization founded to ensure that the human
rights of all people receive the highest respect. How many of our
Senators, I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John Negroponte
really is?
--------------------------------------------------
Fragrance of Life, Odor of Death
All the while among
the rubble even, and in
the hospitals, among the wounded,
not only beneath
lofty clouds
in temples
by the shores of lotus-dreaming
lakes
a fragrance:
flowers, incense, the earth-mist rising
of mild daybreak in the delta--good smell
of life.
Itıs in America
where no bombs ever
have screamed down smashing
the buildings, shredding the peopleıs bodies,
tossing the fields of Kansas or Vermont or Maryland into
the air
to land wrong way up, a gash of earth-guts . . .
itıs in America, everywhere, a faint seepage,
I smell death.
November, 1972
--Denise Levertov
The Freeing of the Dust
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