Harkin does not believe Aristide was kidnapped

[windansea]

Among those who said they had spoken by phone with Aristide Monday were Reps. Charles Rangel of Harlem and Maxine Waters of California, and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, all Democrats.

Reached Monday evening, a spokeswoman for Harkin said: "Senator Harkin does not believe that was kidnapped, and he does believe that he resigned."

But the spokeswoman, Allison Dobson, added that Harkin thought Aristide resigned "under tremendous pressure that built up" after the Bush administration failed to send troops to protect him last week.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woaris0302,0,3712814.story?coll=ny-homepage-big-pix

[Tinoire]

1. Tremendous pressure of an escort of US Marines

holding a gun to his head is more like it.

What's with the pussy-footing? Seems certain people are afraid to call a spade a spade? Have they no courage?

Thank God for the Congressional Black Caucus. The same ones, the only ones, who were brave enough to stand by Clinton when everyone else jumped ship.

[tom_paine]

5. You know, I will never forget the CBC's last act of the Old Republic

The way they got up and walked out to protest the Imperial Coronation was amazing!

I don't always agree with the CBC, but their act was a wonderful final tribute to the Old American Republic we all grew up in and loved so well.

[Tinoire]

6. I know! I wish I had copied all those articles.

They definitely get an A+ for the courage to stand up for what they believe in. That was a wonderful tribute. I'll never forget it. Wish I had taped it...

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

10. the CBC was the only group that stood up to the coup

everyone else whimped out in one day.

[seemslikeadream]

2. Haiti teeters near anarchy

.

Graham said, at the least, the United States should halt deportation of Haitians who have been arrested for being illegal residents of the United States. In addition, he said, Haitians rescued at sea should be asked if they want to apply for refugee status and, if so, should be allowed to enter the country to make application.

The Coast Guard on Friday returned to Haiti 531 Haitians who had been intercepted at sea near their nation's coast since Feb. 21.

"It is plain to all of us here today that we have a real crisis on our hands ...," said Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. "One way or another, the United States is going to have to get involved to resolve this mess. We can do it sooner and minimize the loss of life and property destruction or we can do it later when we will be sending body bags to dispose of the dead and Coast Guard cutters to pick up Haitians at sea."

Graham said Haiti should be added to the list of U.S. intelligence failures. He said U.S. troops "performed brilliantly" when sent to Haiti. But the United States was "too little, too late" when it came

All three senators, Graham, Dodd and Tom Harkin of Iowa, said the administration made a mistake when it imposed an embargo on Haiti.

"I have repeatedly warned the administration, since 2002, that its policy of embargoing virtually all economic assistance to the government of Haiti was going to backfire ...," Dodd said. "The very institution that we should be looking to preserve public order there, the Haitian National Police, have neither the training, the equipment, nor the will to do the job."
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/02/28/Worldandnation/Haiti_teeters_near_an.shtml

[w4rma]

3. How does one get folks to believe you if you are kidnapped

by the executive branch of the U.S. government?

An interesting query.

[Brotherjohn]

4. It's really irrelevant whether we technically 'kidnapped" him or not.

We refused to send in the Marines until he resigned and left the country.

We basically told him: "You're a dead man unless you leave" and acted in such a way to insure that this would indeed be the case.

We could have sent in the same troops at the same time, and said we'd protect him. That would have prevented any further bloodhsed as well, in addition to upholding democracy.

It is not our place to judge what kind of job Aristide was doing. He was the democratically elected leader of Haiti, he was ousted by coup once before, and we, with the backing of other Caribbean nations and a unanimous UN Security Council resolution, send 20,000 Marines in to restore his government.

What backing did we have this time to collapse it, which is basically what we did?

[windansea]

8. thats a more realistic interpretation of events

but yesterday I saw many posts that implied Aristade was led away at gunpoint in handcuffs

[Brotherjohn]

12. The "handcuffs" report was denied by Aristide, and this fact was...

... related to the press by Reps. Rangel and Waters, at the least. Anyone parrotting this was simply guilty of shoddy journalism. I read many many stories on this yesterday and not a single one that made this claim.

Of course, I read in a thread here that FOX News was making the claim that Maxine Waters had been saying that, even though she discounted that rumor from the beginning (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/01/1921235). But that's Fox News for you.

The facts of this story were very clear from the beginning, and nothing I saw painted it as anything but the U.S. acting to ensure the overthrow of Aristide.

[windansea]

13. apparently Harkin thinks resignation was voluntary

I tend to trust him more than Waters, and Rangel seems to be backing off a bit

But Rep. 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.

http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.asp?y=2004&dt=0303&pub=Utusan_

[Brotherjohn]

19. You agree that my interpretation is more realistic. I appreciate that...

But what I'm also saying is that, for all intents and purposes, Aristide was "kidnapped". It was simply, as he put it, a "modern way to have a modern kidnapping". It was more subtle.

While Harkin does not agree that it was "kidnapping", he's merely measuring his words. But from the original post, a Harkin spokesperson "added that Harkin thought Aristide resigned 'under tremendous pressure that built up' after the Bush administration failed to send troops to protect him last week." It sounds to me like Harkin, while being diplomatic, thinks that Aristide was essentially removed from power by the U.S.

The facts are:
1) Aristide was told that he should resign, and that the U.S. would not back him
2) The White House stated that it would "not act until a viable political solution is in place." (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-27-bush-haiti_x.htm)
3) Troops were not sent as the rebels closed in on Port au Prince
4) Aristide was taken out of the country on a plane provided by the U.S.
5) Troops were sent in as soon as Aristide left.

Aristide, whether you like him or not, was the democratically-elected leader of Haiti. He did NOT want to leave. The United States created conditions that meant if he were to stay, he would have been killed.

They might as well have held a gun to his head.

[windansea]

22. I wouldn't say US "created" the conditions

that led to Aristide departure...cutting back our aid and support to Aristide certainly had an effect...here's a TNR article that offers some plausible explinations



Ten years ago, U.S. forces invaded Haiti and restored President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Yesterday, rebels undid our handiwork, forcing Aristide into exile and throwing Haiti's future into uncertainty. In 1994, Aristide duped the White House into believing he was a Caribbean Mandela; he was, in fact, a megalomaniacal demagogue. After his return to power, he presided over the disintegration of democracy in Haiti; by any standard, the remaining years of his presidency were a disaster. All of which might appear to call into question Bill Clinton's decision to invade Haiti and install Aristide in 1994. In fact, far from casting doubt on his decision, history has vindicated Clinton's intervention. Aristide may have been a thug, and Haiti may now be better off without him, but restoring him to power was the right thing to do.

Overthrown in a military coup just seven months after winning his country's presidency with two-thirds of the vote, Aristide spent his exile stumping across the United States and attracting admirers on Capitol Hill. He said all the right things to his American hosts--about cultivating the rule of law, about building a middle class, and about adhering to a constitution. He was modest, too. Though his Washington backers argued that he should get three extra years in office to compensate for his exile, he vowed not to stay on past 1995, because doing so might appear to prolong Haiti's tradition of dictatorship. "I think there is more grandeur in stepping down," he told The New Yorker. "It's the constitutional thing to do and it's the statesmanlike thing to do."

But his supporters--Clinton among them--ignored evidence that Aristide was not the voice of reason he proclaimed to be. As a populist clergyman, he had already shown a tendency to rely on mobs. In 1993, the director of Human Rights Watch pointed out that during his brief stint as president, Aristide had refused to condemn 25 lynchings perpetrated by his followers, and that "he condoned threats of popular violence against the judiciary and the legislature." In a memoir released that same year, Aristide said that representative democracy was not an "indispensable corollary" to human rights.

Turns out Aristide was merely saying what his American hosts wanted to hear. He never nurtured the civil institutions that form the cornerstones of democracy--such as a market economy, an independent judiciary, and a functional bureaucracy. Meanwhile, he started arming militias loyal to his party, Lavalas. He had to be persuaded by several heads of state to leave office at the end of his term in 1995, which he did reluctantly and only after anointing a successor (and surrogate) in René Préval. When the constitutional liberals of Lavalas grew frustrated with his puppetry of Préval, Aristide formed his own political faction whose singular ideology was fealty to him. In 2000, he rigged 14 of 19 legislative elections; he soon rigged his own return to power. He has completely undone what modest democratic traditions Haitians struggled to build in the early 1990s.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=kushner030104

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

11. don't forget who armed the rebels too

who trained them, who gave them support, who gave them weapons and money...

[maggrwaggr]

7. "resign or you'll be killed"

I'd call that "under duress"

[windansea]

9. most likely he would have been killed

but not by US State Department security services that escorted him to the airport

[bigtree]

14. "A highwayman points a pistol to my ear and declares, "Stand and deliver!

Or I will shoot you and you will be a murderer."

-Abraham Lincoln

[windansea]

15. well...believe who you like

I trust Harkin 1000 times more than Aristide...I think after his 20 hour plane ride he started suffering from resignation remorse

[bigtree]

16. Harkin was interperting Aristide's words

Why do you give more credence to Harkin's interpretation rather than accept Aristide's own words?

Here we go again. A non-black, non-Haitian gets more credence than black leaders here and the black leader of Haiti.

[windansea]

18. even Rangels is backing off

you want to believe Aristade and Waters be my guest

Aristide changed his story after he was out of harms way

[Brotherjohn]

20. The fact that he changed his story after he was out of harms way...

... at the very least leads credence to the idea that he was being coerced and threatened.

[windansea]

24. or he could be playing games n/t

[TreasonousBastard]

17. This whole mess is too muddy...

to figure out yet.

Everyone's spinning and too many are covering their asses.

So far, I have no doubt that there are too many in the administration who actively hate Aristede and did what they could to get him out. Even our ambassador down there admits he doesn't like the guy.

I'm not sure we'll get all the details, but there should be a smoking gun somewhere about just who financed and trained these "rebels" who just happened to run the last coup, and some are Tontons Macoute veterans.

Bringing back the Macoute is, I suppose, far preferable to an ineffective, leftist President who has been laboring under an economic embargo. Just look at what they're trying to bring back into Venezuela.

At the very least, these useless pricks should accept the refugees.

[xxqqqzme]

21. I hope many of U

saw Maxine Waters on Tavis Smiley last night. She was so outraged, I am amazed she stayed seated. She could barely contain her anger and disgust @ the Kriminal Klan in power.

[eablair3]

23. Can someone ask Harkin why media can't go interview Aristide and his wife?

I'd really like to see them get interviewed on live tv in a free setting.

I'm sure Pacifica Radio would travel to go interview him. Why can't people visit Aristide, who they say is free and who they say freely and willingly resigned?