Troops who helped oust Aristide to get back pay

[Mika]

Troops who helped oust Aristide to get back pay
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/10517966.htm

PORT-AU-PRINCE - The U.S.-backed interim government started giving financial compensation Tuesday to former soldiers who helped oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in an effort to mollify rebels whose refusal to disarm is thwarting efforts to restore stability in Haiti.

The government has agreed to give members of Haiti's demobilized army 10 years of back pay, said David Bazile, the secretary of public security.

Many of the former soldiers took part in the three-week rebellion that ousted Aristide on Feb. 29. They claim they are owed back pay because Aristide illegally disbanded the army after a U.S.-backed intervention restored him to power in 1994, three years after a coup that first ousted him. The first 33 soldiers were compensated during a ceremony Tuesday.

Where's this money coming from? You and me. :puke:

[ooglymoogly]

1. there!!! you see proof of murkin government intervention success eom

[Mika]

2. The George W. Bush regime has learned to do "coups right"

Haiti's Disappeared
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/tr5_5_4.html

The George W. Bush regime has learned to do "coups right," or as some have "parodied, "coup lite. CIA support for the FRAPH and training for the Haitian military junta have been well-documented under the first George Bush (see Alan Nairn, The Nation, April 24, 1994). But the U.S. under Clinton was divided about a coup clearly approved by his predecessor. When Clinton inherited this policy, his liberal allies became squeamish about swaggering tyrants who terrorized the poor and profited from the drug trade and elite payoffs. The U.S. did not manage that coup very well. The results went out of control.

This time around, the U.S. has learned many lessons. U.S. handlers micro-manage every facet of the "new reality" in Haiti - including massive sweeps of Lavalas neighborhoods on the one hand, and the Hollywood style "surrender" of the fascist, Jodel Chamblain, on the other. Chamblain was cheered by his supporters, as he tearfully surrendered - shedding his camouflage flak jacket for a neat gray suit - in the presence of U.S. military and the interim justice minister. Prime Minister Latortue called him and other FRAPH members "freedom fighters" while visiting Gonaives (site of the first atrocities by the self-styled rebels). Now Chamblain is promised a new trial - despite two internationally acclaimed convictions for murder and massacre. The interim government also raised the likelihood that Chamblain and others will be pardoned, because of their "contributions" to democracy recently! Bush and his minions are talented in Orwell's "double-speak: war is peace; justice is impunity for the guys on our side."

Haiti should be a learning zone for all Americans who would understand and counter an imperial U.S. policy of intervention world-wide. If the U.S. can get away with covert and overt support for a "rebellion" in Haiti led by former military and para-military, many of whom have been convicted of murders and other human rights violations dating to the last coup, it will be psyched for similar operations in Venezuela and perhaps even in Cuba.

The evidence is clear: U.S. weapons (intended for the Dominican army) were smuggled into Haiti by former Haitian military and para-military, many of whom were trained and long funded by the CIA and other U.S. agents. U.S. money, both government and private, flowed into the coffers of NGOs attached to the "opposition" - the right-wing Convergence and the neo-liberal "Group of 184" led by the Haitian business elite (including the sweat-shop owners) and widely publicized by the ultra-conservative "Haiti Democracy Project") in Washington, D.C. Among the funders and organizers of the opposition were the IRI and NDI, the international NGOs closely tied to the U.S. Republican and Democrat Parties respectively. In Jacmel, we met students, women and union organizers who had formed specifically anti-Aristide groups to demand the ouster of Aristide earlier this year. They proudly asserted their connection to USAID, the State Department Democracy Enhancement program and the NDI. "They trained us and taught us how to organize, and we organized the groups you see here to demand the corrupt government of Aristide be brought down."

Much more at http://www.haitiaction.net/News/tr5_5_4.html