[NYTr] US sics death-squad diplomat on Pakistan

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Workers World - Oct 1, 2007
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/pakistan-1004

U.S. sics death-squad diplomat on Pakistan

By Heather Cottin

John Negroponte is at it again. This time he is conducting coercive
diplomacy in Pakistan, a possible weak link in U.S. imperialism’s
expansionist strategy for the Middle East and Asia.

The man who ran the contras in Nicaragua, built death squads in Central
America, and hid the torture, rape and murder of U.S. missionaries in
Honduras in the 1980s has been very busy since the Bush administration
began.

Three days after 9/11, the Senate confirmed Negroponte as U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. In Senate hearings on his nomination,
Negroponte claimed to have forgotten what he did in Central America. He
forgot that more than 300,000 Central Americans were murdered under his
watch.

In 2004 George W. Bush appointed Negroponte to be U.S. ambassador to
Iraq. Under his watch, the death squads emerged.

PBS NewsHour of Feb. 2, 2005, confirmed that it was Negroponte who, as
U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, had “helped carry out the
Reagan administration’s covert strategy to crush the Sandinista
government in neighboring Nicaragua.”

In February 2005, Negroponte was made the first director of national
intelligence, a sort of CIA/FBI/NSA/Homeland Security czar. He set up
“mission managers” to plan strategy against Venezuela, Cuba, the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran.

By this January he was back in the State Department as deputy secretary
of state, troubleshooting for U.S. imperialism in South Asia.
Negroponte had been pulled out of his position as security czar in the
U.S. to deal with another crisis. Pakistanis had begun to come out into
the streets to demand freedom from their dictator, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf. Washington was worried Musharraf could not keep the lid on
popular protest.

Pakistan is a key country for U.S. imperialism in Asia. Bordering
Afghanistan, Iran, China and India, this nation of 160 million people
has the fifth-largest army in the world. Its population is seething
with anger against U.S. imperialism for its brutal war against the
Iraqi people. They are especially angry because longtime U.S. support
for military dictatorships in Pakistan has left 40 percent of the
people living on less than one dollar a day and another 40 percent on
less than two dollars a day. Pakistanis lack public health, education
and decent housing; they get low wages and face massive joblessness.

In January, the U.S. killed many civilians when it bombed a region in
Pakistan that was allegedly a Taliban stronghold. President Musharraf
did nothing to stop the bombing.

Back in the early years of the Afghan war, the Pakistani army balked at
attacking its own people in northern Pakistan. Washington is worried
that the huge army will not follow its orders, and this concerns
Negroponte, too. Pakistan is near the oil fields of Eurasia, not just
in Iran but in neighboring Tajikistan, one of the former Soviet
republics rich in oil and natural gas.

The U.S. war on Iraq and the threat of war against Iran is, as former
Federal Reserve Bank head Alan Greenspan just admitted, about oil. And
key to the imperial game the U.S. is playing for oil is its control
over Pakistan.

The foreign policy establishment is working to destroy the historical
connections between Pakistan and China, because imperialism has its
sights set on China, too. “The U.S. needs Pakistan to acquiesce to a
U.S. encirclement of China,” said one Pakistani militant, “but the
Pakistani people see the Chinese as their brothers and sisters.”

Washington desperately needs all its pawns in line for Project
Checkmate, a highly confidential strategic planning group at the
Pentagon tasked with “fighting the next war,” with its focus on Iran.
(London Sunday Times, Sept. 23) Project Checkmate is a successor to the
group that planned the 1991 Gulf War air campaign. It was quietly
reestablished in June.

Negroponte is “Johnny on the spot” for Project Checkmate. His object is
to facilitate the next war against Muslim people and, if Musharraf
proves too unstable, to bring in a government in Pakistan that will
submit completely to U.S. demands.

Pakistanis are weary of their government and their poverty. They oppose
U.S. wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. They are no longer silent
and are not under control. They are awakening and nothing John
Negroponte can do will change that.

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