Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
February 26, 2004
Virginia Tilly
The Deeper Meaning of the Wall
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
February
26, 2004
Haiti's Lawyer:
US
is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
By AMY GOODMAN and
JEREMY SCAHILL
The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti
charged today that the US government is directly involved in
a military coup attempt against the country's democratically
elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based
attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government
since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow
Aristide are being backed by Washington.
"I believe that this is a group
that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence
services of the United States," Kurzban told the national
radio and TV program Democracy Now!. "This is clearly a
military operation, and it's a military coup."
"There's enough indications from
our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United
States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before
this military operation started," Kurzban said. " The
United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo."
If a direct US connection is proven,
it will mark the second time in just over a decade that Washington
has been involved in a coup in Haiti.
Several of the paramilitary leaders now
rampaging Haiti are men who were at the forefront of the US-backed
campaign of terror during the 1991-94 coup against Aristide.
Among the paramilitary figures now leading the current insurrection
is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number 2 man in the FRAPH
paramilitary death squad.
Chamblain was convicted and sentenced
in absentia to hard-labor for life in trials for the April 23,
1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of Raboteau and the
September 11, 1993 assassination of democracy-activist Antoine
Izmery. Chamblain recently arrived in Gonaives with about 25
other commandos based in the Dominican Republic, where Chamblain
has been living since 1994. They were well equipped with rifles,
camouflage uniforms, and all-terrain vehicles.
Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's
leadership was Haitian Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed
and machine-gunned to death with his bodyguard and a driver on
Oct. 14, 1993. According to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence
Memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights "FRAPH
members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable
met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14
October to discuss plans to kill Malary." Emmanuel "Toto"
Constant, was the founder of FRAPH.
An October 1994 article by journalist
Allan Nairn in The Nation magazine quoted Constant as saying
that he was contacted by a US Military officer named Col. Patrick
Collins, who served as defense attache at the United States Embassy
in Port-au-Prince. Constant says Collins pressed him to set up
a group to "balance the Aristide movement" and do "intelligence"
work against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was
working with CIA operatives in Haiti. Constant is now residing
freely in the US. He is reportedly living in Queens, NY. At the
time, James Woolsey was head of the CIA.
Another figure to recently reemerge is
Guy Philippe, a former Haitian police chief who fled Haiti in
October 2000 after authorities discovered him plotting a coup
with a group of other police chiefs. All of the men were trained
in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup. Since
that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding
deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National Palace
in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against
police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over the following
two years.
Kurzban also points to the presence of
another FRAPH veteran, Jean Tatun. Along with Chamblain, Tatun
was convicted of gross violations of human rights and murder
in the Raboteau massacre.
"These people came through the Dominican
border after the United States had provided 20,000 M-16's to
the Dominican army," says Kurzban. "I believe that
the United States clearly knew about it before, and that given
the fact of the history of these people, [Washington is] probably
very, very deeply involved, and I think Congress needs to seriously
look at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency
and the Central Intelligence Agency has been in this operation.
Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group
of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last
week or two."
Kurzban says he has hired military analysts
to review photos of the weapons being used by the paramilitary
groups. He says that contrary to reports in the media that the
armed groups are using weapons originally distributed by Aristide,
the gangs are using highly sophisticated and powerful weapons;
weapons that far out-gun Aristide's 3,000 member National Police
force.
"I don't think that there's any
question about the fact that the weapons that they have did not
come from Haiti," says Kurzban. "They're organized
as a military commando strike force that's going from city to
city."
Kurzban says that among the weapons being
used by the paramilitaries are: M-16's, M-60's, armor piercing
weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "They have
weapons to shoot down the one helicopter that the government
has," he said. "They have acted as a pretty tight-knit
commando unit."
Chamblain and other paramilitary leaders
have said they will march on the capital, Port-au-Prince within
two weeks. The US has put forth a proposal, being referred to
as a peace plan, that many viewed as favorable to Aristide's
opponents. Aristide accepted the plan, but the opposition rejected
it. Washington's point man on the crisis is Roger Noriega, Undersecretary
of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.
"I think Noriega has been an Aristide
hater for over a decade," says Kurzban, adding that he believes
Noriega allowed the opposition to delay their response to the
plan to allow the paramilitaries to capture more territory. "My
reaction was they're just giving them more time so they can take
over more, that the military wing of the opposition can take
over more ground in Haiti and create a fate accompli," Kurzban
said. "Indeed, as soon as they said, 'we need an extra day,'
I predicted, unfortunately, and correctly, that they would go
into Cap Haitian (Haiti's 2nd largest city) and indeed the next
morning they did."
The leader of the "opposition"
is an American citizen named Andy Apaid. He was born in New York.
Haitian law does not allow dual-nationality and he has not renounced
his US citizenship. In a recent statement, Congressmember Maxine
Waters blasted Apaid and his opposition front, saying she believes
"Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and
then blame the government for the resulting disaster in the belief
that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against
President Aristide and his government."
"We have the leader of the opposition,
who Mr. Noriega is negotiating with, who Secretary Powell calls
and who tells Secretary Powell, you know, 'we need a couple more
days' and Secretary Powell says 'that's fine,'" says Kurzban.
"I mean, there's some kind of theater of the absurd going
on with this opposition where it's led by an American citizen,
where they're just clearly stalling for time until they can get
more ground covered in Haiti through their military wing, and
the United States and Noriega, with a wink and nod, is kind of
letting them do that."
Kurzban says that because Aristide's
opponents rejected Washington's plan, "the next step clearly
is to send in some kind of UN peacekeeping force immediately."
"The question is," says Kurzban.
"Will the international community stand by and allow a democracy
in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup
of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations
of human rights?"
Democracy
Now! is a nationally-syndicated
radio and TV program broadcast on Pacifica Radio, NPR, community
TV stations and Free Speech TV Channel 9415 of the DishNetwork.
Mike Burke and Sharif Abdel Kouddous contributed to this report.
They can be reached at: mail@democracynow.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|