Blast from the Past

In-line with his narrow, ridiculous, unilateral & ultra-rightwing policies, President Bush recently nominated John Negroponte to be our first intelligence director. While Negroponte’s current position as ambassador to Iraq probably pulled the most weight in his selection for nomination, the Republicans seem to have looked over a little blip on his resume called the Iran-Contra scandal.

Serving under the Reagan administration as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, Negroponte was really involved in paramilitary ops doing all he could to eject the Sandinistas from Nicaragua. Unfortunately (but as expectedly from such hard right-leaning conservatives), that also included ignoring the civilian atrocities being committed by the US-trained Contras & Hondurans.

While I dare not challenge Negroponte’s patriotism or competency for the new job, I side with the many Central Americans outraged by his nomination. Certainly insensitive to our isthmus neighbors, it’s simply just immoral to reward and elevate the position of someone who has willing allowed such human rights abuses to occur under his watch. I wonder how this’ll affect the war on drugs.