Thursday, February 17, 2005

Human Rights

Sorry, I try to keep the political content off of here, but...

Bush just nominated John Negroponte as the new intelligence chief. I first came across his name 10 years ago when The Sun published an exposé of human rights abuses that took place during his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras.

The evidence that Negroponte turned his head when human rights abuses were occuring is not totally conclusive, but certainly damning enough for the Senate to oppose his nomination as Director of Intelligence. There must be a reason Bush keeps appointing people who are either blindly loyal or mushy on human rights. Imagine an America in 2007 with Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, John Negroponte as Intel Chief, Donald Rumsfeld (or someone worse) as Secretary of Defense, 60 Republican Senators, and two newly appointed Supreme Court Justices. He won't even need Condoleeza Rice to go around the world selling his next scheme; he can just go right ahead and do it.

If you live in Maryland, I urge you to call, write, fax, and e-mail Barbara Mikulski and Paul Sarbanes to ask them to oppose the nomination of John Negroponte as Director of Intellligence.

Paul Sarbanes
senator@sarbanes.senate.gov
Phone: 202-224-4524

Barbara Mikulski
e-mail: http://mikulski.senate.gov/contactme/mailform.html
Phone
: 202-224-4654

Update: Here's the 1995 article from the Baltimore Sun that documents Negroponte's negligence in Honduras. Why am I not surprised that Bush would nominate someone who suppressed intelligence on human rights abuses by a CIA-trained Honduran army intelligence unit as Director of Intelligence? If I could write screenplays like this, I'd be making three times the GDP of Honduras.

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