Iran-Contra Figure to Lead Democracy Efforts Abroad

[G_j]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59235-2005Feb2?language=printer

Iran-Contra Figure to Lead Democracy Efforts Abroad

From News Services
Thursday, February 3, 2005; Page A25


Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair, was promoted to deputy national security adviser to President Bush.

Abrams, who previously was in charge of Middle East affairs, will be responsible for pushing Bush's strategy for advancing democracy.

The White House also announced yesterday that Faryar Shirzad, a deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, will take on added responsibilities for humanitarian affairs, stabilization and reconstruction efforts.

Prior to joining the NSC staff, Shirzad was assistant secretary for import administration at the Commerce Department. Before that, he was the lead coordinator of international trade policy for the Bush-Cheney transition team.
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[Democrat Dragon]

1. Abrams: All anti-war protestors should be put in concentration camps

and be executed by firing.

[AlCzervik]

2. How many of these assholes are they pulling out of mothballs?

I can imagine the groan when these names make it ober to the persian gulf.

[LynnTheDem]

3. The felony criminal finds employment with the bushCabal.

Has any US govt administration ever had so many criminals???

America may not have much inkling on IraqGate and Iran-Contra...but the rest of the world does, and they got your number a looooong time ago, Abrams. GOOD LUCK. You're gonna need it, MFer.

[G_j]

7. "A BIGGER, BADDER SEQUEL TO IRAN-CONTRA"

A BIGGER, BADDER SEQUEL TO IRAN-CONTRA

Jim Lobe, AlterNet August 13, 2003.

Just like Ollie North and his cohorts, a small network of officials are pursuing a covert foreign policy agenda -- except their aims are vastly more ambitious.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16597

The specter of the Iran-Contra affair is haunting Washington. Some of the people and countries are the same, and so are the methods ? particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy.
Boiled down to its essentials, the Iran-Contra affair was about a small group of officials based in the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that ran an "off-the-books" operation to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. The picture being painted by various insider sources in the media suggests a similar but far more ambitious scheme at work.

Taken collectively, what these officials describe and what is already on the public record suggests the existence of a disciplined network of zealous, like-minded individuals. Centered in Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith's office and around Richard Perle in the Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon, this exclusive group of officials operates under the aegis of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

This network includes high-level political appointees, such as Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who are scattered around several other key bureaucracies, notably in the State Department, the NSC staff, and most importantly, in Cheney's office.
...more..

[annabanana]

8. throw away the foil fedora on this one

And face the cold hard truth of what we're fighting.

[G_j]

10. yep

the BFEE would not be where it is today if Congress had done their job instead of whitewashing Iran/Contra.

[poe]

4. Our military strength and willingness to use it...-Eliot Abrams

Abrams remained an integral part of the tight-knit neoconservative foreign policy community in Washington that revolved around one of his early mentors, Richard Perle and former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Abrams was also a charter member of the Project for the New American Century, which issued its statement of principles about the need for a "neo-Reaganite" foreign policy in 1997.

Elliott Abrams, when serving as EPCC president, said that human rights should be a "policy tool" of the U.S. government. Working closely with Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress, EPCC together with the Christian Coalition and Family Research Council lobbied for the creation of a new permanent commission that focused on religious persecution. The main countries of concern listed in the congressional deliberations were China, Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, Laos, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, as well as general condemnation of Muslim nations. Abrams became a founding member of the commission and served as its chairman until mid-2001, when he joined the Bush administration.
Abrams has long rejected the peace process in the Middle East as a policy of appeasement. His Likudnik positions on Israeli-Palestinian tensions and Middle East restructuring are well-established in his writings in Commentary and his books. Abrams authored the chapter on the Middle East in the 2000 blueprint for U.S. foreign policy by the Project on the New American Century. Edited by PNAC founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy is a chapter-by-chapter playbook on how to deal with America's current and future adversaries.

In his chapter on the Middle East, Elliott Abrams laid out the "peace through strength" credo that has become the operating principle of the Bush administration. "Our military strength and willingness to use it will remain a key factor in our ability to promote peace," wrote Abrams, who became the director of Near East and North African affairs at the National Security Council. "Strengthening Israel, our major ally in the region, should be the central core of U.S. Middle East policy, and we should not permit the establishment of a Palestinian state that does not explicitly uphold U.S. policy in the region," Abrams asserted.
Judaism, according to Abrams, demands "apartness"-not in the sense of confining oneself to a physical ghetto but all necessary measures should be taken to prevent "prolonged and intimate exposure to non-Jewish culture." Abrams takes care to insist that his positions imply no "disloyalty" to the United States, but at the same times insists that Jews must be loyal to Israel because they "are in a permanent covenant with God and with the land of Israel and its people. Their commitment will not weaken if the Israeli government pursues unpopular policies."(29) In his controversial book, Faith and Fear: How Jews Can Survive in Christian America, Abrams describes himself as a "somewhat observant Conservative Jew."

//rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/abrams/abrams.php

[ComerPerro]

5. when are they gonna hire Ollie North?

Of course, he has a pretty sweet deal with Faux News currently.

And, to think: He should be in jail.

[annabanana]

9. already on the payroll....(are you kidding?).......n/t

[proud patriot]

6. Mike Malloy called this a slap in Kerry's face

:grr:

[sandnsea]

11. NSC Advisor under Condi

Not new to this administration. Almost all the Iran/Contra crooks are in this administration. How do you think we lost our UN human rights seat? Negroponte.

[G_j]

12. Who Is Elliot Abrams?

President Bush promoted Elliott Abrams to be his deputy national
security adviser. Abrams played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal
and pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress. We
speak with veteran investigative journalist Robert Parry who exposed
Iran-Contra in the 1980s.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/04/1537247

<snip>
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us who Elliot Abrams is?

ROBERT PARRY: Elliot is one of the true believers. He is one of the original neo-conservatives, back in the early 1980s when that was sort of a new concept. Elliot was someone who believed very strongly in the Cold War. He was first the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights under President Reagan, and then later became the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America. In both cases he was very tolerant of some of the very aggressive use of human rights violations in Central America to thwart leftist insurgencies, in El Salvador and Guatemala, in particular. He tended to focus more on the alleged human rights violations in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas. In fact, I had an interview with him once where he was saying that the worst human rights abuses in Central America at the time were occurring in Nicaragua. I pointed out that there were a lot more people being killed in El Salvador and Guatemala, but he stressed that the thwarting of civil liberties, the repression of one of the newspapers in Nicaragua represented the kind of human rights violation that was in some ways more insidious. So, he was very much a true believer in using whatever means necessary to win the Cold War.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bob, talk to us a little bit about what particularly was his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, and what he plead guilty to.

ROBERT PARRY: Well, Juan, he was in the job running the State Department's coverage of Central America at the time when Ollie North, who was then over at the National Security Council, was running the secret war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, support for the so-called Contra Movement that had been banned by Congress. There was something called the Bolen Amendment which prohibited this support going to the Contras. They were seen also as serious human rights violators. North continued that anyway, secretly. Elliot was privy to those secrets. After the Hasenfuss plane, the plane that was shot down in Nicaragua, and one survivor was Eugene Hasenfuss, and he began talking in October of 1986 about his involvement with this operation and the support from the White House. When Congress asked Elliot Abrams about these allegations, Abrams gave very deceptive testimony. He tried to be very narrowly accurate but was highly misleading and tried to create the impression that the White House was unaware of any such operation being run by Oliver North. So, that became the basis eventually after the Iran-Contra scandal broke wide open for bringing charges against Abrams. He eventually plead guilty to a lesser charge of withholding information from Congress.

<snip>
I think that the main point, though, of Elliot’s re-emergence here, is his attitude toward being basically, “the ends justifying the means,” which is what we saw in his behavior around Central America. Even the most severe human rights violations were somewhat excused or tolerated in the name of fighting the Cold War. And I think now the war on terror has taken on a similar cast where virtually anything can be tolerated as long as it advances that cause. I guess they would put it more positively as the cause of spreading democracy, but I think those kinds of extreme measures to achieve the ends would be part of what Elliot Abrams brings to the table, certainly a willingness to look the other way when horrendous acts occur, as long as they are helping to achieve a larger goal.
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[Straight Shooter]

13. I thought Abrams was considered a possible source of outing Plame.

Jeebus, if citizens would only pay attention for more than 30 seconds at a time as to what's going on in government, they would realize WTF is going on here.

I guess if you're going to be a criminal, then go all out and do it in a Republican administration, to ensure that you'll have many rewards and no punishment.

As for our Congress, almost useless. Empty suits, most of them. As the old Wendy's commercial used to ask, "Where's the beef?"

[G_j]

15. possible I guess

we know reckless or criminal acts are rewarded in this admin.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Democracy/Abrams? Kinda like Himmler/Human Rights.

An unindicted war criminal.