Negroponte and the escalation of
death By Dahr Jamail
As
part of a massive staff shakeup of US President
George W Bush's Iraq team last week, it was
announced that John Negroponte, the current
national intelligence director who also
conveniently served as the ambassador to Iraq from
June 2004 to April 2005, is being tapped as the
new deputy secretary of state.
It is a
move taking place at roughly the same time when
Bush is to announce his new strategy for Iraq,
which most expect entails an escalation of as many
as 20,000 troops, if not more. Bush has
already begun preparations to
replace ranking military commanders with those who
will be more supportive of his escalation.
The top US commander in the Middle East,
General John Abizaid, will likely be replaced by
Admiral William Fallon, currently the top US
commander in the Pacific. General George Casey,
currently the chief general in Iraq, will be
replaced by army Lieutenant-General David
Petraeus, who headed the failed effort to train
Iraqi security forces. Thus those not in favor of
adding more fuel to the raging fire are to be
replaced with those who are happy to oblige.
The former National Security Agency
director and veteran of more than 25 years in
intelligence, retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell,
who happens to be an old friend of Vice President
Dick Cheney (who personally intervened on his old
buddy's behalf), will succeed Negroponte as
national intelligence director. McConnell, willing
to oblige his neo-con pal Cheney, may prove more
hawkish regarding Iran than Negroponte was.
The timing of this move is what should
raise eyebrows, and for two main reasons. First,
Negroponte is relieved of his job of intelligence
director as the drums of war continue to be
pounded by the diehard neo-conservatives, and
Negroponte wasn't playing quite loud enough to the
Tehran tune. McConnell may well be able to carry a
louder tune for his pal Cheney, which may come in
the form of a sonata of manufactured intelligence
to justify an attack on Iran, which is important
as time is growing short for Cheney and company.
Second and more immediate, the transfer of
Negroponte into the State Department comes
conveniently just as the announcement of the
escalation of troops in Iraq is planned. Bush
needs someone with experience in managing
escalations and he needs look no further than this
man. It is Negroponte who oversaw the
implementation of the "Salvador Option" in Iraq,
as it was referred to in Newsweek in January 2005.
Under the "Salvador Option", Negroponte
had assistance from his colleague from his days in
Central America during the 1980s, retired Colonel
James Steele. Steel, whose title in Baghdad was
counselor for Iraqi security forces, supervised
the selection and training of members of the Badr
Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest
Shi'ite militias in Iraq, to target the leadership
and support networks of a primarily Sunni
resistance.
Planned or not, these death
squads promptly spiraled out of control to become
the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or
not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies that
turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are
generated by the death squads whose impetus was
Negroponte. And it is this US-backed sectarian
violence that largely led to the hell-disaster
that Iraq is today.
Under president Ronald
Reagan in the early 1980s, Negroponte was the US
ambassador to Honduras, where he played a major
role in US efforts to topple the Nicaraguan
government. The political history of Negroponte
shows a man who has had a career bent toward
generating civilian death and widespread
human-rights abuses, and promoting sectarian and
ethnic violence.
In Honduras 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".
The violations Negroponte oversaw in
Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Records
document his "special intelligence units", better
known as "death squads", composed of CIA-trained
Honduran armed units who kidnapped, tortured and
killed hundreds of people. Negroponte had full
knowledge of these activities while making sure US
military aid to Honduras increased from US$4
million to $77.4 million a year during his tenure.
Under his watch, civilian deaths skyrocketed into
the tens of thousands.
Negroponte has been
described as an "old-fashioned imperialist" and
got his start during the Vietnam War in the CIA's
Phoenix Program, which was responsible for the
assassination of some 40,000 Vietnamese.
At roughly that time, Steele was commander
of the US Military Adviser Group in El Salvador.
He also smuggled weapons to the Contra insurgents
in Nicaragua and lied about it to the Senate
Intelligence Committee, as documented in the final
report of the Iran-Contra special prosecutor.
As a result of the work done by
Negroponte, assisted by Steele, during the winter
of 2004 and early spring 2005, daily life in Iraq,
as described by the Washington Post, looks like
what the death squads generated in Central America
under their watchful eyes: "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."
Obviously it is better for Iraqi militias
and resistance groups to be fighting one another
instead of uniting to battle occupation forces.
The age-old strategy of divide and conquer applied
yet again.
Negroponte's strategy and
oversight of the dirty war in Honduras assisted in
producing a "victory" there, but it has failed
dismally in Iraq. Nevertheless, when one has an
administration that refuses to accept reality,
bringing him back into the fold of the State
Department may be a signal that it is willing to
see much more blood seep into the sands of Iraq in
the hope that it will produce something akin to
stability.
Negroponte's appointment
signals that Bush hopes to tap into his
experiences from the medium-intensity war in
Central America to do the same once again in Iraq.
Coupled with the changes in the military and
diplomatic team in Iraq, it is a clear signal that
the US administration is ready, willing and able
to head down the course of massive and
indiscriminate escalation. It must be stopped.
Dahr Jamail has reported from
inside Iraq and is a Middle East expert. He writes
for Asia Times Online and Inter Press Service and
is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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