I don't recall Boortz being used as a source on this BBS. <hr color=red> glynch, I also selected the news articles from the <i>Washington Post</i> and <i>NY Times</i> that illustrated de Villepin (France) was active in the Haiti situation. I know the <i>Monroe Doctrine</i> was mentioned in the other Haiti thread, but it appears that the U.S. consulted France on Haiti and they are in agreement.
<a HREF="http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/02/16/haiti.aristide.ap/">Aristide no stranger to struggle</a> <i>.......He has also been criticized for endorsing "necklacing," a gruesome method of execution where gasoline-soaked tires are thrown over a person's neck and set ablaze. Just Wednesday, former Aristide strongmen necklaced a man in Gonaives, the heart of the current unrest and cradle of Haiti's independence 200 years ago. <b> "The burning tire, what a beautiful tool! ... It smells good. And wherever you go, you want to smell it," Aristide said September 27, 1991</b>...............</i>
Mango, you perhaps consider the conservative regime in France to be real liberal, since like vitually the whole world , they opposed the unnecessary war in Iraq. However, I don't really consider them to be reliable when in comes to Haiti. I still view this as an excuse by the conservaties in the US to put in their guys, who have a track record that is probably worse than Aristide, who apparently was not still the real humanitarian he was when the CIA deposed him during the Bush I regime back in the early 1990's. I tend to agree with Landau that Aristide has committed rights abuses that as we usually do, we held him held to standards different than we do with those who policies the US finds useful. I guess we'll see if the previous torturers and human rrights violators installed previously by Bush I and are among those returning to power have reformed this time around. As the article by Landau says, one advatage the new guys have is that if they play ball with us we will give the poor bastards in Haiti some money, won't block OAS loans and won't be trying to overthrow them continuously. Aristide's Haiti was getting the Iraq sanc tions treatment without the ruse of wmd's and imminent threat.
Do we get to rebuild their nation too? I suspect that their oil revenues will the cover the costs and that Halliburton can be talked into some more no-bid contracts. Nation Building GWB Style!!!
God point, no worries. It is another potential profit center for Halliburton. On this one, given the history, I guess I think we, the American people deserve the cost-- if it would help the Haitian people. I just hope too much doesn't gets skimmed off by Carlyle and Halliburton. However, let's face it most of the construction will probably just be another US military base.
BTW this wholeUS kidnapping story is at least as interesting as J Lo's love life. Do you think the NY Times, the Wash Post or the Networks might send some actual reporters down to Haiti to snoop around and try to see if there are any credible witnesses to either corroborate or debunk Aristides claims. I guess they don't do journalism like that.
I think I see a new pattern here. Send in the marines first and then debate about whether it is a good idea or not. There is now no need to worry about pre-invasion cooked intel or any other weak pretexts for invasions. You go GWB!!! Venezuela should be scared, very scared. They have oil.
Don't fall for Washington's spin on Haiti By Jeffrey Sachs Published: February 29 2004 20:15 | Last Updated: February 29 2004 20:15 The crisis in Haiti is another case of brazen US manipulation of a small, impoverished country. Much of the media portrayed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as an undemocratic leader who betrayed Haiti's democratic hopes and thereby lost the support of his erstwhile backers. He "stole" elections and intransigently refused to address opposition concerns. As a result he had to leave office, which he did on Sunday at the insistence of the US and France. Unfortunately, this is a very distorted view. President George Bush's foreign policy team came into office intent on toppling Mr Aristide, and their efforts were apparently consummated on Sunday. Mr Aristide was long reviled by powerful US conservatives such as former senator Jesse Helms, who obsessively saw him as another Fidel Castro in the Caribbean. Such critics fulminated when President Bill Clinton restored Mr Aristide to power in 1994, and they succeeded in forcing the withdrawal of US troops from Haiti soon afterwards, well before the situation in the country could be stabilised. In terms of help to rebuild Haiti, the US Marines left behind about 8 miles of paved roads in Port-au-Prince and essentially little else. In the meantime, the so-called "opposition," a coterie of rich Haitians linked to the preceding Duvalier regime, former (and perhaps current) CIA operatives and decommissioned officers of the brutal Duvalier army disbanded by Mr Aristide, worked Washington political circles to lobby against him. In 2000, Haiti ran parliamentary and then presidential elections, unprecedented in their scope. The parliamentary elections went off adequately, although not perfectly. Mr Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, clearly won the election, although candidates who won a plurality rather than a majority, and who should have faced a second-round election, also gained seats. Objective observers declared the elections broadly successful, albeit flawed. Mr Aristide won the presidential election later that year. The US media now reports that those elections were "boycotted by the opposition," and hence not legitimate, but this is a cruel joke to those who know Haiti. In fact, Haiti's voters elected Mr Aristide in late 2000 with an overwhelming mandate and the opposition, such as it was, ducked the elections. Duvalier thugs hardly constituted a winning ticket and as a result, they did not even try. Nor did they have to. Mr Aristide's foes in Haiti benefited from tight links with the incoming Bush team; and thereby followed one of the great recent scandals of US foreign policy. The Bush team told Mr Aristide it would freeze all aid unless he agreed with the opposition over new elections for the contested Senate seats, among other political demands. The wrangling led to the freezing of $500m in emergency humanitarian aid from the US, the World Bank and other multilateral organisations. The tragedy, or joke, is that Mr Aristide had agreed to compromise, but the opposition simply came up with one excuse after another - it was never the right time to hold new elections, as proposed by Mr Aristide, because of "security" problems, they said. Whatever the pretext, the US maintained its aid freeze and Haiti's economy, cut off from bilateral and multilateral financing, went into a tailspin. All this is now being replayed before our eyes. As Haiti slipped into deeper turmoil last month, Caribbean leaders called for a power-sharing compromise between Mr Aristide and the opposition. Once again, Mr Aristide agreed and the opposition balked, saying instead that the president had to leave. US Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly pressed opposition leaders to accept a compromise but they refused again. But rather than defending Mr Aristide and dealing with opposition intransigence, the White House announced the president should step down. The ease with which another Latin American democracy crumbled is stunning. What, though, has been the role of US intelligence agencies among the anti-Aristide rebels? How much money went from US-funded institutions and government agencies to help the opposition. And why did the White House abandon the Caribbean compromise proposal it had endorsed just days before? These questions have not been asked. Then again, we live in an age when entire wars can be launched on phony pretenses, with few questions asked in the aftermath. What should happen now is unlikely to pass. The United Nations should help restore Mr Aristide to power for his remaining two years in office, making clear that Sunday's events were an illegal power grab. Second, the US should call on the opposition, which is largely a US construct, to stop all violence, immediately and unconditionally. Third, after years of literally starving the people of Haiti, the long-promised and long-frozen aid flows of $500m should start immediately. These steps would rescue a dying democracy and at least help avert a possible bloodbath. The writer is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University link
I feel like this would be a big story and the news outlets covered it for an hour...and then are like ok.....Juts hope its not a big coverup that screws bush in the election...
I guess no more cell phones for Aristide. Where is the NY Times? You would think that they might try to interview him as they have "All the News That is Fit to print".
