International Republican Institute? Huh?

[Grins]

I saw this story on BuzzFlash, then remembered another story.

Anybody know anything about this group? I'd ask Herr AshKroft, but...well,...you know...

“…U.S. federal funds have been flowing into Haiti for the past six years. A federally-funded group called the International Republican Institute, or IRI, has funneled some $3 million into Haiti to destabilize the democratically-elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide.

“The IRI, a nonprofit political group backed by powerful Republicans close to the Bush administration, initiated the destabilization of Aristide's government by imposing harsh sanctions, training Aristide's political opponents and encouraging them to reject internationally-sanctioned power-sharing agreements. Haiti's political crisis eventually escalated into violence until Aristide was overthrown in February of this year in what he calls a modern-day kidnapping in the service of a coup backed by the United States.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/20/1327215

Hey! Waitaminute! This sounds familiar..

“In February 2003, a jury sided with two narcotics agents who claimed that they were punished by their boss, (Republican) Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher, for filing a lawsuit after they uncovered a drug-trafficking ring that diverted profits to a CIA-backed Dominican presidential candidate.”

WTF?

It gets worse…

“…(agents) discovered that a State Department-backed Dominican Republic political party was raising campaign funds for its presidential candidate by selling heroin and cocaine in Philadelphia, New York and Massachusetts.
<http://citypaper.net/articles/2003-02-13/cb.shtml >

And it gets worse than that!!!!!!!

An eight-member federal jury in Wilkes-Barre decided that Attorney General Mike Fisher and members of his senior staff must pay the two former investigators a total of $1.5 million as punishment for retaliating against them. The verdict is a huge victory, wiping away the stain of seven years of rumor and innuendo.

So what did Bush do? Less then three months later, he nominated Fisher to serve on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. You'd think this might be a problem, since, as NOW says “Fisher holds the remarkable distinction among President Bush's nominees of having been found by a jury to have violated the federal civil rights of state employees, while his nomination was being vetted by the White House.

A Fisher spokesman said he would appeal - an appeal that of course would be heard by the Third Circuit, the very court to which Fisher has been nominated.

"Never before, to my knowledge, has a president nominated to a lifetime position on a federal circuit court, or this committee held a hearing on, a judicial nominee with an outstanding jury verdict naming him personally liable for civil-rights violations," said Senator Leahy.

Yeah. Thanks Senator. The son of a bitch made it. He’s on the Appeals Court.

[EdGy]

1. yes

this is one of two political party related democracy promotion groups (the other is NDI, National Democratic Institute). IRI is very much tied to the republican party and business groups.

It is a major recipient of US government funding for democracy assistance around the world, including from the National Endowment for Democracy.

It seems pretty certain that it does have ties with US intelligence, and its main goal is not to help people in other countries, but to advance what it defines as the US interest around the world.

www.iri.org/