Human rights organization decries Bush NID nomination

For some reason, they don't think John Iran-Contra Death Squad Negroponte is the right man for the job.

"In Central America," [Sandra Coliver, executive director of the Center for Justice and Accountability] said, "Negroponte is indelibly remembered for his role in increasing the amount of U.S. aid to the Honduran military at the very time that the military's role in supporting brutal death squads was becoming abundantly clear. What kind of a message will this appointment send to the people of Central America? That the U.S. is willing to overlook massive human rights atrocities in the name of collecting intelligence in pursuit of U.S. national interests."
  NY Times article

I don't think we're concerned with the message we're sending Central America. Or, more accurately, I think we fully intend to keep sending the same message to Central America that we have been sending for decades. Central Americans know full well that the U.S. has a hypocritical stance on human rights. They are fully informed, even if Americans are not, on CIA activities in Central America.

Mr. Negroponte, 65, now ambassador to Iraq, is a career diplomat who has worked all over the world in his 40-year career. He has faced repeated scrutiny for his work as envoy to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, when Honduran military units, some trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, carried out kidnappings, torture and killings.

As the first director of national intelligence, Mr. Negroponte would oversee the C.I.A. and the other 14 agencies that are part of the nation's estimated $40 billion spying enterprise. The post is the centerpiece of intelligence reorganization undertaken chiefly because of the failure to warn of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

That was no failure. That was part of the program: Operation Gladio, PNAC, P2OG, Economic Destruction.