US troops 'made Aristide leave'

[ithacan]

US troops 'made Aristide leave'
The Australian: Australia's Daily National Newspaper
From correspondents in Paris
March 01, 2004

HAITIAN leader Jean Bertrand Aristide was taken away from his home by US soldiers, it was claimed today.

A man who said he was a caretaker for the now exiled president told France's RTL radio station the troops forced Aristide out.

"The American army came to take him away at two in the morning," the man said.

"The Americans forced him out with weapons.

"It was American soldiers. They came with a helicopter and they took the security guards.
<more>

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8833298%5e1702,00.html

[RetroLounge]

1. So much for spreading Democracy

eom

[Rebel_with_a_cause]

16. in his (Bush's) own hemisphere. eom

[cprise]

2. I hope the news in Cuba and Venezuela are

...giving this plenty of coverage.

What a sordid affair.

[pinniped]

3. An ABC cameraman (fearing for his safety) who didn't want to give...

his name reported to have seen him being led away restrained.

[JusticeForAll]

4. I remember when * was campaigning in 2000

He really pissed me off that we were headed back toward a policy of isolationism and that we would not, as he called it, "meddle" in the affairs of other countries.

Any involvement he has with another country turns matters for the worse.

I wish he would just go away.

[I AM SPARTACUS]

8. when he said that he wasn't it favor of "nation building"...

...Smirko omitted his demonstrated strong belief in "demolition of democracy"...

[PurityOfEssence]

23. He's not nation building, he nation killing

They're going to patch up Iraq and make it look like some constituent republic, but it's going to be a neutered supplicant from which we extract mineral wealth as we use it as a base for further shenanigans. The last thing they want is a real government there with a will of its own.

I don't think they can get away with it without it blowing up in their faces, but I DO think that they have a good chance to make it look functional enough to skate through the elections.

[NC_Nurse]

5. So I guess...

we're "nation-building" again....:puke:

[Vitruvius]

6. See also DuctapeFatwa's thread at

at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x391034#391306

[Sugarbleus]

12. Thanks for the link to Ductapes thread. What I still don't get is

WHY the bushites want Aristide out? What's in it for Bushco?

I realize this "conservative capitalist" government doesn't like anything that hints at social responsibility (socialism)...But,again, what does this Bush/conservative coup hope to gain in Haiti by overthrowing their prez?

Just curious.

[berry]

13. Lots of speculation on the US motives on Pacifica-Houston tonight.

One that seems quite possible (though horrific) is that this is step one, and that they'll try to topple Chavez in Venezuela again, and this is all building up to a finale of getting Castro. Who knows? Maybe this is Plan B for an October surprise in case Plan A fails. "Freeing" Cuba just before the election might look like a good plan to these creeps. And it also would explain why sometimes *Bush has been comparing himself to JFK. What a triumph that would be (they probably think)--outdoing Kennedy. That'll show the Democrats. Augh. Just trying to think the way they may be thinking makes my head hurt....

Of course, I may be wrong. But it's hard not to figure that Cuba figures in this somehow. What with new clampdowns on travel and trade there too. Oh--someone said that there are a lot of Cuban doctors working in the Haitian countryside (where they are sorely needed and greatly appreciated), so I guess Aristide may have been getting "too friendly" with our enemy, Castro. With "you're with us or against us" logic, this would make Aristide also the enemy, I guess.

Another suggestion that someone offered was that *Bush wanted to undo absolutely everything that Clinton ever did. Racism was also mentioned, as well as captitalist greed for cheap labor, and some ugly drug-CIA motives.

But whatever the motive, I hope there is a trail for all the dirty deeds and that this will end up toppling *Bush. It's not just the Black Caucus that is ANGRY this time. Harkin, Dodd, Delahunt(spelling?), Dewine, and Jan Schakowsky (spelling?) were also mentioned as being furious as the lies that Powell was handing out. Others too, probably.

[Sugarbleus]

14. Berry, thanks much for that assessment..it helps a lot eom

[berry]

15. Hi Sugarbleus. I wanted to add a correction.

There is something odd about DeWine--he's probably on the wrong side of this this issue (i.e., supporting the opposition). It was Rangel who mentioned him, but he may have gotten it wrong (or I misunderstood). I do think that the Black Caucus has been blindsided by this betrayal of Aristide, and by Powell's blatant lies. They seem not to have been expecting this--even though in hindsight it matches the attempts to topple Chavez, so shouldn't surprise anyone, really.

Also, there's a lot of the same speculation I listed over at a poll in GD. I just found it now. You might want to look at it. (I'm reading any Haiti thread and article I can find.)

[Voltaire99]

21. Nice summary, Berry (n/t)

[PATRICK]

24. Iraq dominoes in the Caribbean?

They must be joking. NO oil even, bigger basketcase, little effect on the big guys Cuba and Venezuela.

Maybe this is an assessment experiment to see what went wrong in Iraq?

The real question might be what's in Haiti for the BFEE. Totally hapless cheap labor and a completely prone nation to turn into anything they want. That hardly seems enough. The repetition of the ME debacle in our own backyard seems even worse unless they need to take Cuba to win Florida.

It all seems so mindless, cruel and incompetent. Business as usual in the Bush White House.

At least we won't lose troops there?

[niceypoo]

25. Bush wants Aristide out because C-L-I-N-T-O-N

Clinton helped Aristide to power. Bushes first year was spent undoing anything Clinton he could wreck. Its classic Booooosh reactionaryism

[WaywardSon]

7. Would you've really liked to have seen...

him strung up? It was too late for anything else unfortunately. I wish him well.

[I AM SPARTACUS]

11. I would have preferred that the Smirko Gang didn't jam Haiti's...

economy for the last few years. I would've preferred that the Smirko Gang didn't arm and encourage the armed thugs that represent the monied interests promoting this bogus "popular revolt".

I would've preferred that the US administration at least TRY to support democracy and a better world for the poor, rather than the rich.

[0007]

9. What a depressingly squalid piece of news if this is true!

Morally repulsive to say the least -

[uhhuh]

10. The chimp hates nation building

He likes nation destroying though.

[Rebel_with_a_cause]

17. He hates democracy

We know that for a fact.

[windansea]

18. Aristade turned into a thug

direct Aristade quote

""Yes, we have less (support) than we had in
1990 ... but I think the 30,000 gangsters want
to keep me in power against the majority of
the Haitian people," Aristide said. "And if you
compare the millions Dollars I have and what
the one who comes behind me can get —
there you will see a huge margin of
difference."

http://www.oplpeople.com/message/1034.html

[Toucano]

20. No source in that post.

Please be careful windandsea. There's a lot of conficting information out there. With no source listed, that quote is suspect.

Did you see Charles Rangel on "This Week"?

"We are just as much a part of this coup d'état as the rebels, as the looters, or anyone else," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-01-haiti-bush_x.htm

I know one thing for certain: If a Bush is involved, something wrong has been done.

[windansea]

22. supposedly that quote came from an AP interview

but I don't have lexis nexis,,,heres more info from Reporters without borders site

Nearly 30 Haitian journalists have fled abroad in the past three years after being threatened by Aristide supporters and two journalists have been murdered. As a result, Aristide has been put on the Reporters Without Borders worldwide list of 42 predators of press freedom

Haiti - 2003 Annual Report

Impunity continued to hold sway in Haiti. It gave government supporters a free hand to harass and attack the press and opposition. Facing growing opposition, President Aristide's government tried to use fear to hold on to power. More journalists were forced into exile. The investigations into the deaths of Jean Dominique and Brignol Lindor did not progress. On the contrary, their killers continued to threaten the families of both journalists.

At least 40 journalists were physically attacked or threatened in 2002. The Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH) put the figure at more than 60. Some had reported on the collapse of the cooperative savings schemes in 2002, which ruined tens of thousands of small savers and in which the government was allegedly implicated at the highest level. It was amid such scandals that Israël Jacky Cantave of Caraïbes FM was kidnapped in July in what Cantave viewed as a government warning to the press. After Cantave was threatened and forced into exile, a warrant was issued for his arrest for not cooperating with investigators.
The year ended with demonstrations demanding President Aristide's resignation and growing tension, in which journalists paid the price. Seven journalists had to go into hiding in Gonaïves after covering one of the first big anti-government demonstrations. They were threatened by the Cannibal Army, a "popular organisation" led by Amiot Métayer which terrorized this northern town ever since Métayer broke out of prison in August 2002. After initially promising to rearrest him, the government apparently preferred to use him as a blunt instrument against its opponents.
Métayer had been arrested because of his violent attacks on the opposition during a supposedly spontaneous reaction to what was portrayed as an attempted coup d'etat on 17 December 2001. An Organisation of American States (OAS) enquiry published in July concluded not only that it was not a coup d'etat but also that police officers were accomplices to the attack staged on the presidential palace. The enquiry also stressed that the ensuing violence against the opposition had been carried with logistic support from the authorities. Those targeted on 17 December 2001 included some 10 journalists who afterwards went into exile. The increasingly discredited government could try to repeat this kind of operation, in which it poses as the victim in order to have a pretext for cracking down on the opposition and press.

http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=6197

thats just one RWB article...many more here

http://www.rsf.fr/sinequa_en.php3?iFullTextQuery=haiti&iLanguage=engli ...

[windansea]

19. even Carter saw thru Aristade

sorry but I wouldn't call the guy "democratically elected" based on these reports

re: 1995 election

The Carter Center report on the ensuing election -- written by Carter confidant and former National Security Council advisor Robert Pastor -- documents the disgraceful conduct of the Aristide government and his Lavalas party. "Of the 13 elections I have observed, the June 25 Haitian elections were the most disastrous technically, with the most insecure count," Pastor said in the report. "I personally witnessed the compromise of one-third of the ballot boxes in Port-au-Prince."

According to the report, the election was riddled with graft, fraud and chaos, with widespread irregularities, ballots burned, hundreds of voting stations never opened and tens of thousands of people never able to vote.

The report, issued by the Atlanta-based Carter Center, exposes Aristide's one-party "Lavalas" rule, with its widespread corruption, mismanagement and ballot manipulating, particularly in the June 25 election. Aristide's allies swept local and parliamentary seats in that balloting.

President Carter's critique of Aristide is especially startling, considering the long political association between the two. When Aristide won Haiti's 1990 presidential election, the Carter Center was at the forefront of groups supporting the results

A critical part of Aristide's plan for seizing total power in Haiti has been his illegal and authoritarian command of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) that conducted the fraudulent June election. Sensing trouble in March, Carter visited Haiti and was formally rebuffed by Aristide. Unofficially, he was greeted by hostile crowds and vicious graffiti, all engineered by Lavalas street gangs intent on embarrassing the former U.S. chief executive

http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/1248.pdf

and these reports on 2000 election from politics and elections.com


Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide won election as president of Haiti again, winning 92% of the vote according to the country's electoral council. All major opposition parties boycotted the election.

Aristide's Lavalas Family Party won all nine Senate seats that were contested, giving it all but one seat in the upper house. Lavalas Family also won 80% of the House of Assembly seats in may, June and July legislative elections. Opponents charge that those elections were rigged to enable Aristide to govern with, effectively, one-party rule.

Aristide was first elected in 1990, ending nearly 200 years of dictatorship. A bloody army coup kicked him out seven months later, followed by a terroristic military government, and than an invasion by U.S. troops to restore Aristide to power.

Opposition activist Evans Paul said ballot boxes were stuffed and tally sheets altered to make it look like a higher turnout. Some polls closed hours early for lack of voters.

more...

http://www.politicsandelections.com/international/hai.htm

[hippiechick]

26. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=391034&mesg_id=391034