Quite a selection, John Negroponte as "Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Iraq" (and no, I am not making that title up). He made a smashing impression in a previous Ambassador gig:
From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, where he helped prosecute the contra war against Nicaragua and helped strengthen the military dictatorship in Honduras. Under the helm of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, Honduras's military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was disappearing dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion.
... On Negroponte's watch, diplomats quipped that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina. Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras.
...Yet, according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still missing.
Last week the United States Senate confirmed Negroponte's appointment 95-3, with 2 not voting.
John Kerry was one of the two to abstain. To be fair, it wasn't exactly a tight vote.
Among the leading lights of the Weenie Party who voted to confirm the appointment: Robert Byrd, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy, Carl Levin, Dianne Feinstein... Hell, except for three holdouts, they all went for it.
Nice bit of teamwork.
Democracy Now airs a recent speech by Noam Chomsky that notes Negroponte's experience as a "modern pro consul" was undeniably seen as a qualification, and that Honduras checked out of the coalition within days of his appointment.
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