US involvement in Haiti!

sovtek

I've suspected this because I know that the US has been involved in coups there in the past.

"An October 1994 article by journalist Allan Nairn in The Nation magazine quoted Constant as saying that he was contacted by a US Military officer named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant says Collins pressed him to set up a group to "balance the Aristide movement" and do “intelligence” work against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was working with CIA operatives in Haiti. Constant is now residing freely in the US. He is reportedly living in Queens, NY. At the time, James Woolsey was head of the CIA.

Another figure to recently reemerge is Guy Philippe, a former Haitian police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered him plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs. All of the men were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup. Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over the following two years. "

Fionnan

Armed by the US? Why? THe rebels that r shown on TV seem to be armed with an assortment of weapons, most of them bolt-action rifles. Not quite one would expect from a US supplied force.

mike65

Inclined to say So What?

Maybe its true maybe its not.

The Haiti government is well worth deposing.

The sources seem to be of the type that would want the story to be true thats for sure....

http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:6ssb6PuP3soJ:www.yorku.ca/comcult/frames/staff/profiles/burke.html+Mike+Burke&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://www.google.com/search?q=Sharif+Abdel+Kouddous&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Mike.

sovtek

Originally posted by mike65
The Haiti government is well worth deposing.

Yes and "we" always support democracy too.

Redleslie

Originally posted by mike65
The Haiti government is well worth deposing.

Yeah down with democratically elected governments. Bring back Baby Doc Duvalier.

sovtek

Originally posted by Fionnan
Armed by the US? Why? THe rebels that r shown on TV seem to be armed with an assortment of weapons, most of them bolt-action rifles. Not quite one would expect from a US supplied force.

It's well known that the previous coup attempt in '94 was supported by the US. Then they went and put Aristide back in power when he capitulated to "reforms" wanted by the US government.
I'm not saying that it is necessarily true that they are doing it this time...but past is prologue.

sovtek

Originally posted by mike65
The sources seem to be of the type that would want the story to be true thats for sure....

http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:6ssb6PuP3soJ:www.yorku.ca/comcult/frames/staff/profiles/burke.html+Mike+Burke&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://www.google.com/search?q=Sharif+Abdel+Kouddous&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Mike.

I noticed you didn't do any searches on the reported members of the past and recent coup attempt.

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Louis+Jodel+Chamblain+US+intelligence&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

sovtek

Originally posted by Fionnan
Armed by the US? Why? THe rebels that r shown on TV seem to be armed with an assortment of weapons, most of them bolt-action rifles. Not quite one would expect from a US supplied force.

It's telling that the Ambassador to Haiti is Otto Reich. Of course he'd never tell a lie...
Do searches on Otto Reich, conviction, congress and Office for Public Diplomacy.
While your at it do searches on Otto Reich, venezuela, chavez and carmona.

mike65

Originally posted by Redleslie
Yeah down with democratically elected governments. Bring back Baby Doc Duvalier.

er no the Duvaliers were sick twisted corrupt bastards.

As for democratically elected governments I guess you'd back Robert Mugabe then?

Mike.

Redleslie

Originally posted by mike65
er no the Duvaliers were sick twisted corrupt bastards.

But at least their controversial style of leadership prevented Haiti from turning into another Cuba or something. What a nightmare that would have been.

As for democratically elected governments I guess you'd back Robert Mugabe then?

Last month Aristide who was re-elected in a disputed presidential election in 2000 (not unlike a certain idiot child president) said there'd be parliamentary elections within six months. The BBC said he has rejected opposition calls to resign (not unlike Tony Blair) and says he will serve out his full term in office, which ends in 2006. Doesn't sound very Mugabe to me.

I'm surprised you're apparently so anti-IRA given that your answer to any political problem seems to involve armed mobs running about murdering people.

Like the Venezuela "coup", there's something fishy going on here.

sovtek

Originally posted by mike65

As for democratically elected governments I guess you'd back Robert Mugabe then?

Mike.

Doesn't matter who I back and who i don't as I'm neither a Zimbo nor Haitian, but I know that the CIA should stay out of it. I could base my argument on their record of foreign intervention alone. That' s putting aside any questions of international law or even morality.

sovtek

And the plot thickens.

http://www.fair.org/counterspin/022004.html

DadaKopf

Originally posted by sovtek
It's telling that the Ambassador to Haiti is Otto Reich. Of course he'd never tell a lie...
Do searches on Otto Reich, conviction, congress and Office for Public Diplomacy.
While your at it do searches on Otto Reich, venezuela, chavez and carmona.

While you're at it, do a search for SOUTHCOM (US Southern Command) and Conference of American Armies (held in 1995, I think).

While you're at it, cross-search them with Argentina, Carlos Menem, CIA, General Jorge Videla, Allende, Pinochet, Sandanistas, MOSSAD - oh, the list goes on....

BattleBoar

Originally posted by sovtek
Doesn't matter who I back and who i don't as I'm neither a Zimbo nor Haitian, but I know that the CIA should stay out of it. I could base my argument on their record of foreign intervention alone. That' s putting aside any questions of international law or even morality.

I concur with Sovtek on this one. The CIA's record of intervention in governments is dismal at best. How about instead of spending time developing scenarios on how to arrange coups, they spend a little more time getting their intelligence correct...there's always THAT option. :rolleyes:

The US, in general, has a very poor record concerning intervention. The two most notable successes came only after the populations of those two countries were completely defeated, with wills broken, and after huge loss of life.

sovtek

Originally posted by Redleslie
The BBC said he has rejected opposition calls to resign (not unlike Tony Blair) and says he will serve out his full term in office, which ends in 2006. Doesn't sound very Mugabe to me.

The opposition have also refused to participate in new elections or to even share power. Both Aristide agreed to.
Then the US makes demands for Aristide, as terms for an end to sanctions, to include the opposition (forgot their name Democratic something or other, who largely represent business interests in Haiti) and then they refuse...meaning sanctions continue and Aristide unable to make improvements in infrastructure and social programs. One would almost think that they are an excuse not to drop sanctions. I won't say that though. I wouldn't want anyone to think me a conspiracy theorist.

mike65

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4462103&section=news

Mike.

Hobbes

Just announced on the news the US are going in.

BattleBoar

Originally posted by Hobbes
Just announced on the news the US are going in.

:rolleyes:

sovtek

So much for protecting democracy!

sovtek

Oh yeah...evidentally it was Guy Phillipe's birthday, what a present for a former death squad leader...a whole country.
I wonder how long those sanctions will be in place.

vorbis

yep Aristide's record in government was excellent, Haiti was only one of the poorest countries in the world while its neighbout the Dom Republic seems to be doing much better. I think that all that happened here was that the people got fed up of him and wanted him to go. As for being democratic, he changed electoral law in 2000 so that he could get himself elected a second time in highly disputed elections. Hardly democratic.

sovtek

He also had to relinquish most of his policies at the request of the US in '94 in return for getting rid of the people that bloodily overtook him (with help from the US), the same people that are now doing it again.
What were contested were 8 Senate seats...who had the audacity and nerve to actually resign when the opposition (who are allied with the "rebels") kicked up a stink.
Aristide's lust for power over the people of Haiti was evident when, after the rebels taking over several cities and killing many innocent civilians who supported Aristide, he actually agreed to an American brokered deal of sharing power with some of the same people that are now holding most of the country.
This was after years of sanctions, imposed by America, because they wanted the opposition included in new elections...which they refused.
So we have a democratically elected leader who basically capitulated to every demand made by the opposition and America now deposed by brute force and ransom. A great day for democracy indeed.

Victor

Interesting spin ... one wonders how much bravado and how much spin is involved int his.

http://home.eircom.net/content/reuters/worldnews/2657330?view=Eircomnet

Haiti's Aristide says he was abducted
From:Reuters
Monday, 1st March, 2004
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide says he was kidnapped by U.S. soldiers and left Haiti against his will, a claim dismissed by senior U.S. officials as nonsense.

"The allegations that somehow we kidnapped former President Aristide are absolutely baseless, absurd," said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flatly denied Aristide had been forced to leave. White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the charge "complete nonsense."

Aristide's charges were conveyed by phone to sympathetic U.S. lawmakers and other contacts who have accused the Bush administration of encouraging a rebel advance in Haiti that led to the ouster of a democratically elected government.

Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, and Randall Robinson, the former head of the black lobbying group TransAfrica, told the "Democracy Now!" U.S. public radio programme that Aristide called them from the Central African Republic, where he is in temporary exile.

"He was taken by force from his residence in the middle of the night, forced on to a plane, and taken away without being told where he was going. He was kidnapped. There's no question about it," Robinson said. "The president asked me to tell the world that it is a coup, that they have been kidnapped. That they have been abducted."

"He did not resign. He said he was forced out," Waters told "Democracy Now!". "He said it over and over again, that he was kidnapped, that the coup was completed by the Americans, that they forced him out."

But Representative Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat and like Waters a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said after talking by telephone with Aristide that interpreting his allegations of "kidnapping" was "subjective."

"They strongly suggested that he get out of town. The military helped him make the decision," Rangel told reporters as a Congressional Black Caucus delegation met in New York with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to discuss Haiti.

"President Aristide feels that it was a coup, that he felt he was kidnapped, that he was told by the United States authority that they could no longer protect his life," he said.

While there had been reports Aristide left Haiti in handcuffs, Aristide denied this, Rangel said. "He said he was not in handcuffs. He felt like he was in handcuffs."

Powell said U.S. authorities did not force Aristide onto the leased plane, that he went willingly and was not kidnapped. He expressed irritation at members of Congress claiming otherwise.

"It would have been better for members of Congress who have heard these stories to have asked us about the stories before going public with them so that we don't make a difficult situation that much more difficult," he said.

Powell said Aristide's security detail called on Saturday night with questions about how to protect him and his personal property and whether he could choose where he was going.

Aristide's preferred destination would not take him, so U.S. officials went through lengthy, difficult negotiations with various countries that led to an agreement by Central African Republic to accept him.

"Some 15 members of his personal security detachment were with him from his house to the airport, onto the plane with him, on to the refuelling locations and on to the Central African Republic and that's what's happened notwithstanding any cellphone reports to the contrary," Powell told reporters.

mike65

I blame the French for all this..letting it become independant I mean!

Mike.

Hobbes

Whole thing reminds me of "The revolution will not be televised".

sovtek

Originally posted by mike65
I blame the French for all this..letting it become independant I mean!

Mike.

Well they are right alongside the American's in storming Haiti the DAY he leaves office. Not so independent anymore.
I wonder if this will be termed "healing relations with America".

BattleBoar

How many times have nations tried to intervene in CIVIL wars, and how many times has it worked. How long will it take nations to figure out that if other people in another nation are intent on killing each other and you stand in the middle, all that's going to happen is they'll kill you instead.

sovtek

Originally posted by BattleBoar
How many times have nations tried to intervene in CIVIL wars, and how many times has it worked. How long will it take nations to figure out that if other people in another nation are intent on killing each other and you stand in the middle, all that's going to happen is they'll kill you instead.

Unless you're friends with the guys with the guns...which seems to be the case here.

mike65

Britain in Sierra Leone worked

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/deliver/document/13713

http://www.una-uk.org/UN&C/sierraleone.html

http://www.afrol.com/News/sil047_british_power.htm

though not if you are a marxist/leninist.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/sier-m20.shtml

http://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wdie-02/d02-77.htm

http://www.internationalism.org/wr/235_sleone.htm

etc

Mike.

bonkey

Originally posted by BattleBoar
if other people in another nation are intent on killing each other and you stand in the middle, all that's going to happen is they'll kill you instead.

So you're saying that intervention in the various genocides which occurred in Eastern Europe in the last two decades was a bad idea because there was no way it could have worked?

I would have been of the opinion that the intervention came too late...not that it should have been avoided.

Its not always a simple case of ppl just being intent on killing each other.

jc

Victor

Originally posted by BattleBoar
How many times have nations tried to intervene in CIVIL wars, and how many times has it worked. How long will it take nations to figure out that if other people in another nation are intent on killing each other and you stand in the middle, all that's going to happen is they'll kill you instead.

Often what is needed is an honest broker, someone from outside who won't take part in the petty bickering that has grown into outright murder. Do you honestly think the international community's indifference in Rwanda was correct? 1,500,000 bodies later?