Maybe Chavez Is Right

Before we blow off the leader of Venezuela as some kind of neo-Marxist nut job for claiming that Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is a “professional killer,” let’s take a closer look, OK (and yes, I know Chavez cries about this from time to time to mobilize anti-U.S. sentiment a la Castro).

This takes you to a CounterPunch article describing Negroponte’s role as U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, a time in which (as stated in the article) U.S. aid to Honduras grew from $5 million to $100 million, primarily so the country could be used as a staging ground for the “Contra” forces in the ‘80s which waged war against the Nicaraguan-backed Sandinistas under Daniel Ortega.

As noted in the article…

At the time Mr. Negroponte was in Honduras, Honduras was a military dictatorship. Kidnapping, rape, torture and executions of dissidents was rampant. The military top and middle ranks were U.S-trained at the School of the Americas (SOA), the Harvard version of the CIA, based in Fort Benning, Georgia. According to Human Rights Watch, graduates of the SOA are responsible for the worst human rights abuses and torture of dissidents in Latin America. Some of its 60,000 graduates are notorious Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia and Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, Honduras security police chief and later Honduran top military commander.

In Honduras the army intelligence unit, Battalion 3-16, which was involved in kidnappings, rape, torture and killing of suspected dissidents. In 1995 Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson of The Baltimore Sun unearthed massive and substantiated evidence from various sources pointing the finger at Mr. Negroponte knowledge of the crimes. The reporters also found that hundreds of Hondurans "were kidnapped, tortured and killed in the 1980s by a secret army unit trained and supported by the CIA"(2). Reliable evidence from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Honduras alleged that Negroponte oversaw the expansion of U.S training camp and military base on Honduran territory, where US-trained Contras terrorists, and where the military secretly detained, tortured and executed Honduran suspected dissidents.

And lest anyone think that this was an isolated occurrence, Steven D. at The Booman Tribune wrote this post documenting the relationship between Negroponte and Colonel James Steele, who served as advisor on Iraqi security forces while Negroponte was then U.S. ambassador to that war-ravaged country. The article notes Steele’s association with The Wolf Brigade, a group composed of Shia and Kurdish fighters along with some of Saddam Hussein’s Baathists put together to quell the Sunni insurgency in early 2005.

And a CBS News report in the Booman post dated from October of last year notes a morgue on Kerbala overflowing with dead bodies coming from Baghdad executed by Shiite death squads, with the relatives from the Sunni minority too terrified to claim their dead lest they be targeted also.

I would say that this raises enough questions about Negroponte (and Steele also) for a congressional investigation at the very least. But of course the time for all of this was prior to Negroponte’s confirmation as Deputy Secretary of State.

It is unlikely that this is merely a monstrous set of coincidences, with no evidence linking Negroponte directly to anything while horrendous human rights violations seem to occur in any location where he is appointed to represent this country.

And we are truly foolish if we think this goes unnoticed by the rest of the world, particularly Chavez, who is ascendant among Latin American leaders, like it or not.