Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

And he's bringing Death Squads for dessert.

Got this from Atrios. Bush seems to think his appointment of John Negroponte as US ambassador to Iraq reaffirms that the country "will be free and democratic and peaceful." I concur. The Iraqis should just relax and take his word for it. Someone show me one thing that suggests the Negroponte appointment would send the wrong message to your average Iraqi.

Oh wait...

A career diplomat with 37 years in the foreign service, Negroponte served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. As ambassador, Negroponte dedicated himself to Reagan's anti-Communist drive in the region, overseeing the extensive military build-up in Honduras, the Big Pine II joint military exercises that deployed thousands of U.S. troops in the country from 1983 to 1984, and the training of Contra forces on Honduran bases by CIA and Argentine advisors. During his ambassadorship, U.S. support for the Contras led Washington to invest tens of millions of dollars in aid to Hondura's military--then involved in a clandestine campaign to detain, torture and murder suspected subversives. According to the National Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras, dozens of Hondurans died or disappeared during the early 1980s at the hands of the CIA-trained intelligence unit Battalion 316, a death squad run by then-army chief and graduate of the U.S. School of the Americas, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez.

(NACLA [North American Congress on Latin America] Report On The Americas, "Back To The Future," Nov/Dec 2001 Vol. 35 Issue 3)

This can't be good for business...