By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 03 March 2006
John Negroponte, the US National Intelligence Director, provided
testimony on Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on
"global threats."
Negroponte, who was the US ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April
2005, was immediately promoted to his current position after his
presence in Iraq. Ironically, he warned the committee on Tuesday, "If
chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy were to be
defeated in that country ... this would have implications for the rest
of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world."
Warning of the outcome of a possible civil war in Iraq, Negroponte said
sectarian civil war in Iraq would be a "serious setback" to the global
war on terror. Note - he did not say it would be a "serious setback" to
the Iraqi people, over 1,400 of whom have been slaughtered in sectarian
violence touched off by the bombing of the Golden Mosque last week in
Samarra.
No, the violence and instability in Iraq would be a "serious setback" to
the global "war on terror."
But it's interesting for him to continue, "The consequences for the
people of Iraq would be catastrophic," whilst feigning his concern.
Because generating catastrophic consequences for civilian populations
just happens to be his specialty.
If we briefly review the political history of John Negroponte, we find a
man who has had a career bent toward generating civilian death and
widespread human rights abuses, and promoting sectarian and ethnic violence.
Remember when Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras, from 1981 to
1985? While there he earned the distinction of being accused of
widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human
Rights while he worked as "a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically
carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy," according to cables
sent between Negroponte and Washington during his tenure there.
The human rights violations carried out by Negroponte were described as
"systematic."
These violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by
operatives trained by the CIA. Records document his "special
intelligence units," better known as "death squads," comprised of
CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured and killed
hundreds of people. Victims also included US missionaries (similar to
Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq) who happened to witness many of the
atrocities.
Negroponte had full knowledge of these activities, while he made sure US
military aid to Honduras increased from $4 million to $77.4 million a
year during his tenure, and the tiny country became so jammed with US
soldiers it was dubbed the "USS Honduras."
It is also important to remember that Negroponte oversaw construction of
the air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the US. This air
base, El Aguacate, was also used as a secret detention and torture
center during his time in Honduras.
While Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras, civilian deaths
sky-rocketed into the tens of thousands. During his first full year, the
local newspapers carried no less than 318 stories of extra-judicial
attacks by the military.
He has been described as an "old fashioned imperialist" and got his
start during the Vietnam War in the CIA's Phoenix program, which
assassinated some 40,000 Vietnamese "subversives."
Negroponte's death squads used electric shock and suffocation devices in
interrogations, kept their prisoners naked, and when a prisoner was no
longer useful he was brutally executed.
Outraged at the human rights abuses by the Reagan-Bush administration,
in 1984 Nicaragua took its case to the World Court in The Hague. The
decision of the court was for the Reagan-Bush administration to
terminate its "unlawful use of force" in international terrorism and pay
substantial reparations to the victims. The White House responded by
brushing off the court's findings and vetoed two UN Security Council
resolutions that affirmed the judgment that all states must observe
international law.
In the middle of Negroponte's tenure in Iraq, the Pentagon (read Donald
Rumsfeld) openly considered using assassination and kidnapping teams
there, led by the Special Forces.
Referred to not-so-subtly as "the Salvador option," the January 2005
rhetoric from the Pentagon publicized a proposal that would send Special
Forces teams to "advise, support and possibly train" Iraqi "squads."
Members of these squads would be hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga militia
and Shia Badr militiamen used to target Sunni resistance fighters and
their sympathizers.
What better man to make this happen than John Negroponte? His experience
made him the perfect guy for the job. What a nice coincidence that he
just happened to be in Baghdad when the Pentagon/Rumsfeld were
discussing "the Salvador option."
Fast forward to present day Iraq, which is a situation described by the
Washington Post in this way: "Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the
morgue at midday Monday - blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed,
garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their
heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound."
The Independent newspaper from London recently reports that hundreds of
Iraqis each month are tortured to death or executed by death squads
working out of the Shia-run Ministry of Interior.
During the aforementioned committee hearing, Negroponte said that the US
is concerned about the purchasing of arms by Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez. Negroponte accused Chavez of using funds generated from the sale
of oil to purchase weaponry, saying, "It's clear that he is spending
hundreds of millions, if not more, for his very extravagant foreign
policy at the expense of the impoverished Venezuelan population."
Coincidentally, on the exact same day he said this, the US State
Department announced that the only new rebuilding money in its latest
budget request for Iraq is for prisons.
With no other big building projects scheduled for Iraq in the next year,
the State Department coordinator for Iraq is asking Congress for $100
million for prisons, while the Iraqi people languish with 3.2 hours of
electricity daily in the average home, staggering unemployment and
horrendous security, with most still dependent upon a monthly food ration.
Meanwhile John Pace, the Human Rights Chief for the UN Assistance
Mission in Iraq until last month, recently stated that he believes the
US has violated the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and is fueling the
violence via raiding Iraqi homes and detaining thousands of innocent
Iraqis. Pace estimates that between 80-90% of Iraqi detainees are innocent.
During an interview on Democracy Now!, when asked to described the role
of the militias in Iraq, Pace said "they first started as a kind of
militia, sort of organized armed groups, which were the military wing of
various factions. And they have - they had a considerable role to play
in the [security] vacuum that was created by the invasion."
He went on to describe their actions: "So you have these militias now
with police gear and under police insignia basically carrying out an
agenda which really is not in the interest of the country as a whole.
They have roadblocks in Baghdad and other areas, they would kidnap other
people. They have been very closely linked with numerous mass executions
..."
Pace, when asked if there were death squads in Iraq, replied, "I would
say yes, there are death squads," and "my observations would confirm
that at least at a certain point last year and in 2005, we saw numerous
instances where the behavior of death squads was very similar, uncannily
similar to that we had observed in other countries, including El Salvador."
What we're witnessing in Iraq now with these death squads and escalating
sectarian violence is the product of policies implemented by Negroponte
when he was the US Ambassador in Iraq.
But let us remove the covert operations factor for a moment.
For over a year now, Shia death squads have been killing Sunni en masse.
Thus, at first glance, the bombing of the Golden Mosque last week as
Sunni retaliation makes sense.
However, what doesn't make sense is the immediate showing of solidarity
between Shia and Sunni clerics following the bombing.
Let us now reinsert the covert operations factor into this equation.
Along with the showing of religious solidarity, there is widespread
belief by Shiite religious clerics both in and outside Iraq, as well as
belief in the Arab media, that US covert operations were behind the bombing:
* Shiite Cleric Muqtada Al Sadr blamed the United States occupation for
the current violence. He recently stated, "My message to the Iraqi
people is to stand united and bonded, and not to fall into the Western
trap. The West is trying to divide the Iraqi people. As God is my
witness, I hereby demand an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of
the occupation forces from Iraq."
* In another interview, Sadr stated, "We say that the occupiers are
responsible for such crisis [Golden Mosque bombing] ... there is only
one enemy. The occupier."
* Adel Abdul Mehdi, the Iraqi Vice President, held the American
Ambassador [Zalmay Khalilzad] responsible for the bombing of the Golden
Mosque, "especially since occupation forces did not comply with curfew
orders imposed by the Iraqi government."
He added, "Evidence indicates that the occupation may be trying to
undermine and weaken the Iraqi government."
* At a major demonstration in Beirut, prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric
and Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said America and
Israel are to blame for the sectarian divisions in Iraq, claiming that
the violence will offer further justifications for maintaining the
occupation of Iraq.
* According to the Saudi-based Arab News editorial, a civil-war scenario
may serve the interests of the Bush administration: "This may in the end
be what Washington wants, because if Iraq plunges into chaos, it could
be the Bush ticket out of the Iraq debacle, albeit paid for in rivers of
Iraqi blood as well the utter humiliation of the president's
administration and its neo-con agenda."
* Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, urged Iraqi Shia
not to seek revenge against Sunni Muslims, saying there were definite
plots "to force the Shia to attack the mosques and other properties
respected by the Sunni," and blamed the intelligence services of the US
and Israel for being responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque.
* Hoseyn Shari'atmadarit wrote in the Keyhan newspaper of Iran on
February 25 of several instances of documented covert operations carried
out by occupation forces in Iraq, including: "In Shahrivar two British
intelligence officers were arrested [in September 2005] at an inspection
post while carrying a considerable amount of explosives, detonators and
other equipment necessary to build a bomb. This event certainly shows
the direct involvement of the English intelligence service in the
bombings in Iraq ... The commander of the English military deployed in
Basra [then] issued an order to attack the police centre and release two
English saboteurs."
In the recent committee meeting, Negroponte told US senators he was
seeing progress in Iraq. He said, "And if we continue to make that kind
of progress, yes, we can win in Iraq."
Evidently the kind of progress John Negroponte sees in Iraq is not the
kind that benefits the Iraqi people. Because the only progress in Iraq,
apart from building prisons, is for the situation to continue growing
progressively worse by deepening sectarian divides, despite the best
efforts of religious leaders to create peace and unity.
Would civil war in Iraq be a "serious setback" for John Negroponte?
Because the sectarian violence happening in Iraq right now is already a
"serious setback" for the Iraqi people.
Thus, does Negroponte really care if there is civil war? Does he really
concern himself with the wellbeing of the Iraqi people? Or is his main
concern creating the catastrophe which keeps them divided?
www.truthout.org
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