Negroponte Counter-ponte

Today, Bush nomated John Negroponte for the new position of National Intelligence Director. This is a terrible idea. The historical events to which Negroponte is associated are not what would be expected for any political appointment. Yet, the Bush has repeatedly re-employed criminals like Negroponte (i.e., Oliver North, Pointdexter). In fact, this is the third position Negroponte has held within the Bush Administration. First, he was appointed as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Once the U.S. invaded Iraq, Negroponte was moved from the U.N. to be the new ambassador to Iraq. Now, to the National Intelligence Director (aka the Intelligence tsar). Negroponte has an abysmal human rights record in his prior career working for the Reagan Adminstration. While ambassador to Hondouras, he turned a blind eye to the human rights abuses of the Houndouran government including death squads that were in force across Central America (I have a particular interest in this because I have met people who were forced to flee El Salvador and someone tortured by U.S. supported Salvadoran Army, whom I met on my trip to rural El Salvador). In addition, Negroponte was intimately involved in the Iran-Contra scandal (as many other current Bush Administration officials were). The shamefulness of appointing Negroponte to any position is immediately apparent to anyone willing to remember the past, lest it happen again. It demonstrates the callous disregard of international law and the U.S. constitution (which gives the power of allocating funding to Congress which was so disregarded by the Reagan administration in Iran-Contra whereby the Administration funded the Contras in Nicaragua in violation of an act of Congress specifically prohibiting this).