By Erasmo Magoulas

This United States administration is shamelessly dropping mask that for many decades covered the real and heinous face of American Imperialism: a terrorist state, which export terrorism all over the planet.

During the past administrations the methods of controlling and exploiting overseas geo-economic resources and geopolitical areas were not different but at least the explanations to justify acts of invasions, coup d’etat and killings were more intellectually elaborated or were covered up by a more skillful corporate media or both.

Today the Bush Junior administration has set up in strategic places persons who were, and still, are directly involved in acts of genocide, terrorism and crimes against humanity, committed all over the world.

On April 19, 2004, President Bush nominated Ambassador Negroponte to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.  And on May 6, 2004, the Senate confirmed his nomination.

John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. As such he supported and carried out a US-sponsored policy of violations to human rights and international law. Among other things he supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980's. The base was used as a secret detention and torture center. In August 2001 excavations at the base discovered the first of the corpses of the 185 people, including two Americans, who were killed and buried at this base.

During his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic. The infamous Battalion 316, trained by the CIA and Argentine military personnel, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people.

Another international terrorist and fanatic anti-Cuba policymaker is Otto Reich. He was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal as a result of his work in Ronald Reagan’s Office of Public Diplomacy.

In 2002, not long after he was reappointed as special envoy to the western hemisphere, Reich was also nominated to serve on the board of the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, better known as the School of the Americas, the U.S. Army’s training ground for Latin American dictators and world-class human rights violators.

Reich’s successor is another well-known international terrorist with particular close tight links to the anti-Cuban Miami mafia.  Since the early 1980s, Roger Noriega has played instrumental roles both in Congress and the White House. In July of 2003, he replaced the controversial  Otto Reich in his current post, as an Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Noriega has long been an operative for U.S. policies of direct and indirect intervention abroad. In the late 1980s, he worked in the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he managed "non-lethal" aid in Central America. Both the Pentagon and USAID established "humanitarian aid offices" in 1985 after Congress prohibited U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, based in Honduras, Costa Rica, and in parts of Nicaragua itself. Much of this aid was delivered to the Contras by right-wing evangelical and political groups, working closely with the executive branch.  It was later shown that Noriega was directly in charge of channeling this aid to the Contras-sometimes laundering the aid through an operative of Colombia's Medellin drug cartel residing in Miami.

Noriega also played a key role in abetting the fall of Haiti's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in March of 2004. The Center for Cooperative Research provides evidence that Noriega, who was a vocal critic of the Aristide government, circulated demands for the removal of Aristide in the Organization of American States in February 2004. After the U.S. helped to overthrow President Aristide, Noriega quickly applauded the ascension of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who came to office despite the fact that he was living in Florida at the time and was therefore ineligible for the presidency under Haitian constitutional law. Amid rampant violence and chaos, Noriega celebrated the overthrow of Haiti's government, stating to Congress: "Now we can make a new beginning in helping Haiti to build a democracy that respects the rule of law and protects the human rights of its citizens."

Following his steps in Haiti, Noriega's latest raison d'étre is the ouster of Fidel Castro. As the major spokesperson for new measures to tighten the embargo against the island-outlined in the 2004 Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba report-Noriega announced plans "to bring an end to the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and to prepare to assist a post-Castro Cuba".

Noriega has spent years developing rightwing policies to punish Cuba. He served as Jesse Helms' senior staff member on the Committee on Foreign Relations that eventually drafted and passed the notorious 1996 Helms-Burton Act. Human rights advocates, international jurists, and foreign governments have condemned the act for its aim to strangle the island economically and force other countries to impose the U.S. blockade.

Nowadays Roger Noriega has a hot potato on his hands. Luis Posada Carriles, one of his closets friends and the mastermind of 1976 Cuban airplane blowup over Barbados killing 73 passengers, has entered illegally in to United States.

Noriega denied any knowledge of Posada’s location but said “we are going to deal with this in a private, serious and transparent way”.

That is the kind of cynicism that is spread throughout George W. Bush’s administration.

State terrorism hasn’t changed a bit from the beginning of the imperialism era; nowadays it is just more explicit and therefore more intolerable.

Two voices in our hemisphere have been raised against these hegemonic intentions throughout state terrorism. Cuba and Venezuela have spoken clearly and loudly and they have left a message and example of sovereignty, self-determination, democracy, freedom and courage worth following.

Erasmo Magoulas

is an alternative radio show producer.

CFRU, Guelph, Ontario

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