-Caveat Lector-
Lying to Congress-we all know that is okay any more. In fact, that
makes him qualified to hold high office.
On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 17:20:19 EDT William Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
> <A
>
HREF="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010702&s=corn";>http://www.th
enation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010702&s=corn</A>
>
>
>
> COMMENT | July 2, 2001
>
>
> Elliott Abrams: It's Back!
>
> by DAVID CORN
>
> "How would you feel if your wife and children were brutally raped
> before
> being hacked to death by soldiers during a military massacre of 800
> civilians, and then two governments tried to cover up the killings?"
> It's a
> question that won't be asked of Elliott Abrams at a Senate
> confirmation
> hearing--because George W. Bush, according to press reports, may
> appoint
> Abrams to a National Security Council staff position that
> (conveniently!)
> does not require Senate approval. Moreover, this query is one of a
> host of
> rude, but warranted, questions that could be lobbed at Abrams, the
> Iran/contra
> player who was an assistant secretary of state during the Reagan
> years and a
> shaper of that Administration's controversial--and deadly--policies
> on Latin
> America and human rights. His designated spot in the new regime:
> NSC's senior
> director for democracy, human rights and international operations.
> (At press
> time, the White House and Abrams were neither confirming nor denying
> his
> return to government.)
>
> Bush the Second has tapped a number of Reagan/Bush alums who were
> involved in
> Iran/contra business for plum jobs: Colin Powell, Richard Armitage,
> Otto
> Reich and John Negroponte. But Abrams's appointment--should it come
> to
> pass--would mark the most generous of rehabilitations. Not only did
> Abrams
> plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress about
> the Reagan
> Administration's contra program, he was also one of the fiercest
> ideological
> pugilists of the 1980s, a bad-boy diplomat wildly out of sync with
> Bush's
> gonna-change-the-tone rhetoric. Abrams, a Democrat turned Republican
> who
> married into the cranky Podhoretz neocon clan, billed himself as a
> "gladiator" for the Reagan Doctrine in Central America--which
> entailed
> assisting thuggish regimes and militaries in order to thwart leftist
> movements and dismissing the human rights violations of Washington's
> cold war
> partners.
>
> One Abrams specialty was massacre denial. During a Nightline
> appearance in
> 1985, he was asked about reports that the US-funded Salvadoran
> military had
> slaughtered civilians at two sites the previous summer. Abrams
> maintained
> that no such events had occurred. And had the US Embassy and the
> State
> Department conducted an investigation? "My memory," he said, "is
> that we did,
> but I don't want to swear to it, because I'd have to go back and
> look at the
> cables." But there had been no State Department inquiry; Abrams, in
> his
> lawyerly fashion, was being disingenuous. Three years earlier, when
> two
> American journalists reported that an elite, US-trained military
> unit had
> massacred hundreds of villagers in El Mozote, Abrams told Congress
> that the
> story was commie propaganda, as he fought for more US aid to El
> Salvador's
> military. The massacre, as has since been confirmed, was real. And
> in 1993
> after a UN truth commission, which examined 22,000 atrocities that
> occurred
> during the twelve-year civil war in El Salvador, attributed 85
> percent of the
> abuses to the Reagan-assisted right-wing military and its
> death-squad allies,
> Abrams declared, "The Administration's record on El Salvador is one
> of
> fabulous achievement." Tell that to the survivors of El Mozote.
>
> But it wasn't his lies about mass murder that got Abrams into
> trouble. After
> a contra resupply plane was shot down in 1986, Abrams, one of the
> coordinators of Reagan's pro-contra policy (along with the NSC's
> Oliver North
> and the CIA's Alan Fiers), appeared several times before
> Congressional
> committees and withheld information on the Administration's
> connection to the
> secret and private contra-support network. He also hid from Congress
> the fact
> that he had flown to London (using the name "Mr. Kenilworth") to
> solicit a
> $10 million contribution for the contras from the Sultan of Brunei.
> At a
> subsequent closed-door hearing, Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton
> blasted
> Abrams for having misled legislators, noting that Abrams's
> misrepresentations
> could lead to "slammer time." Abrams disagreed, saying, "You've
> heard my
> testimony." Eagleton cut in: "I've heard it, and I want to puke." On
> another
> occasion, Republican Senator Dave Durenberger complained, "I
> wouldn't trust
> Elliott any further than I could throw Ollie North." Even after
> Abrams copped
> a plea with Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, he refused to
> concede that
> he'd done anything untoward. Abrams's Foggy Bottom services were not
> retained
> by the First Bush, but he did include Abrams in his lame-duck
> pardons of
> several Iran/contra wrongdoers.
>
> Abrams was as nasty a policy warrior as Washington had seen in
> decades. He
> called foes "vipers." He said that lawmakers who blocked contra aid
> would
> have "blood on their hands"--while he defended US support for a
> human-rights-abusing government in Guatemala. When Oliver North was
> campaigning for the Senate in 1994 and was accused of having ignored
> contra
> ties to drug dealers, Abrams backed North and claimed "all of us who
> ran that
> program...were absolutely dedicated to keeping it completely clean
> and free
> of any involvement by drug traffickers." Yet in 1998 the CIA's own
> inspector
> general issued a thick report noting that the Reagan Administration
> had
> collaborated with suspected drug traffickers while managing the
> secret contra
> war.
>
> So Bush the Compassionate may hand the White House portfolio on
> human rights
> to the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human-rights
> abusers. As
> Adm. William Crowe Jr. said of Abrams in 1989, "This snake's hard to
> kill."
>
>
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