Until reading the Chomsky article I had no idea that Paul Wolfowitz was ambassador to Indonesia during the reign of Suharto, a dictator who's murderousness makes Saddam Hussein look like a rank amateur at political torture and the spilling of blood..
As Mark Zepezauer puts it in The CIA's Greatest Hits: "On a per-capita basis, East Timor is the greatest genocide since the Holocaust. Combined with the 1965 killings and other Indonesian atrocities, it puts Suharto in the first rank of twentieth-century mass murders, right up there with Hitler, Stalin, the Turks who massacred the Armenians in 1915 and the generals who run Guatemala."
A bit on Wolfowitz and Suharto's Indonesia;
Wolfowitz is worse on Indonesia, where he forged close ties with the intelligence and corporate elite. In May 1997, a year before Suharto was driven out of office, Wolfowitz told Congress of "the significant progress" Indonesia has made under the "strong and remarkable leadership of President Suharto". In an interview on PBS in February 2000, Wolfowitz was asked about General Wiranto, who had just been forced to resign after being named by Indonesian authorities as the mastermind of the 1999 military rampage in East Timor. He praised Wiranto as "the general who commanded the army during the first elections in Indonesian history". Wiranto "may have done bad things in East Timor or failed to stop bad things in East Timor, but that's what makes it so tricky," he added.
The case of Wolfowitz illustrates that support for dictators is not a solely a Republican policy; administrations of both Republicans and Democratic presidents have supported the corporate interests of their contributors rather than exporting the American ideal of Democracy.
East Timor, which was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons - a security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. "Paul and I," he said, "have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."
East Timor is a classic example of the bipartisan nature of US foreign policy during the Cold War - and the secrecy surrounding US military support for authoritarian leaders like president Suharto, who ruled Indonesia from the US-backed coup in 1965 until his downfall in 1998. There is an unbroken link from the Ford-Kissinger years, when the US backed Suharto's invasion of the former Portuguese territory. This continued through the Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras, when US policy focused on supporting Suharto's military and burnishing his image to the world.
I'd urge you to read the full links.
The present administration lied to the American people about a need to attack Iraq due to the threat of "weapons of mass destruction" and now is courting public opinion with talk of importing democracy to the middle east, starting with Iraq. Read about what Paul Wolfowitz sees as "Democracy". Things plainly are not looking too good...
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