GEORGE BUSH has appointed John Negroponte, his former
man at the United Nations, as governor-in-chief in Iraq. Negroponte is an
expert in bloody repression, stretching back four decades.
From 1964-1968, during the US war on Vietnam, he was a
political affairs officer at the US Embassy in Saigon. Such positions were
often covers for CIA operatives and political assassins.
From 1969-1971, he was aide to Henry Kissinger who
supervised the saturation bombing of Vietnam and attacks on Cambodia and
Laos. Kissinger sacked Negroponte after he said the US was making too many
concessions to the Vietnamese in ‘peace’ talks.
President Reagan’s
dirty war
Concessions weren’t on the agenda when Negroponte became
"ambassador" to Honduras from 1981-1985 during President Reagan’s
dirty war in Central America. Human rights abuses increased substantially
after he took up his job and the embassy became a base for the CIA-organized
Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which claimed
some 50,000 lives.
Negroponte helped organise right-wing death squads that
killed tens of thousands in El Salvador and Honduras to prop up
pro-capitalist, pro-landlord, pro-US dictatorships. In Nicaragua they fought
the radical Sandinistas who were having a revolutionary impact in this
impoverished region.
Under Negroponte, military aid to Honduras grew
twenty-fold, building up the Honduran armed forces, building bases, air
fields and supply dumps. The military-dominated regime carried out murderous
attacks on union leaders and other opponents.
Money from the US also funded right-wing killers in El
Salvador and, in violation of restrictions imposed by the US Congress,
right-wing Contra mercenaries in Nicaragua armed via the Honduran military.
Tortured
A CIA-trained and equipped Honduran unit, Battalion 316,
kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of Hondurans. A Baltimore Sun expose
says that reports prepared by the embassy under Negroponte’s supervision
"were crafted to leave the impression that the Honduran military
respected human rights."
Negroponte even dismissed as ‘unfounded’ details about
Battalion 316’s deadly activities by the exiled head of Honduran military
intelligence. Death squads in El Salvador killed 40,000 in one year alone,
including an archbishop and 32 nuns who were tortured then thrown out of a
helicopter.
Now Negroponte will be an imperial proconsul, with all
the powers associated with ruling Iraq under military occupation. The
embassy, in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, will be the largest ever
by any country in the world, with a staff of nearly 4,000. It’s a palace of
an occupying force, keeping power and profits in ‘safe’ hands, not an
embassy.
Negroponte thinks he knows how to snuff out Iraqi
resistance to US occupation. He knows all about mass killing, covert
operations and death squads. But this callous imperialist’s appointment
could increase resistance throughout Iraq.
It’s Sovereignty But Not As We Know It
“I HOPE they will understand that in order for this government to get up and running – to be effective – some of its sovereignty will have to be given back, if I can put it that way, or limited by them.
“It’s sovereignty but [some] of that sovereignty they are going to allow us to exercise on their behalf and with their permission.”
That was US secretary of state Colin Powell tying himself in knots trying to convince Iraqis and the rest of the world that power would be transferred to the Iraqi people after 30 June.
