Regular visitors to this site are familiar with Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative former Bush administration official, apologist for Greater Israel, and scourge of Jewish intermarriage. But younger readers may not know that he established his public reputation as a liar much earlier, in a different part of the world.
During the Reagan administration, Abrams had key responsibility for U.S. policy in Central America, first as assistant secretary of state for Human Rights, and then as assistant secretary for Inter-American Affairs. In both posts, he covered up for the murderous right-wing forces in the region that the U.S. was funding with hundreds of millions of dollars. My own recent research into a period during which I spent time in Central America has reminded me just how dishonest Abrams was:
* In December 1981, two outstanding American journalists, Ray Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto, reported that the U.S.-backed military in El Salvador had slaughtered 1000 civilians in and around the hamlet of El Mozote. Abrams said back then "the numbers. . .were not credible" and suggested the anti-regime FMLN guerrillas had "significantly misused" the story for propaganda. (In 1993, a United Nations Truth Commission belatedly but completely confirmed the Bonner/Guillermoprieto account.)
* Bonner, in his excellent 1984 book about El Salvador,Weakness and Deceit, pointed out other Abrams lies: ". . . [Abrams] assured Congress that ‘several hundred [Salvadoran military] officers’ had been dismissed or jailed for human rights abuses. Again the truth was that few, if any, had. To a House Committee in 1983, he asserted that ‘we don’t know who the death squads are.’ By that date the CIA and [U.S.] embassy in El Salvador had sent numerous cables identifying the leaders."
* Even after these and other revelations, Abrams continued to insist the Reagan policy in El Salvador had been a "fabulous achievement." The death toll during the 12-year civil war there was at least 75,000, the equivalent of 4 million Americans. Despite the astonishing figure of $5 billion in American military and economic aid, the U.S.-supported regime could not defeat the highly motivated FMLN guerrillas. Nor did the U.S.-sponsored economic policies help; in fact, the poverty level rose from 47 percent in 1989 to 51 percent by 2004. This March, the FMLN’s candidate, a simpatico journalist named Mauricio Funes, won the Salvadoran presidency – without any measurable threat to American "interests," or any apparent squawking from Abrams.
* Abrams was also mixed up in the Iran-Nicaragua contra scandal in the late 1980s. He was criminally convicted on two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress, until George Bush I pardoned him.
* But the Abrams saga is not without a touch of humor. As part of Iran-contra, he had solicited a $10-million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei, a Southeast Asian oil mini-state, to circumvent Congress and keep funding the contras. (Brunei is a hereditary sultanate, presumably no model for the democracy the Reagan administration insisted it wanted for Central America.) But Oliver North’s secretary transposed two numbers – and the sultan’s money was transferred into the wrong Swiss bank account! Apparently, the lucky recipient never gave it back.
Elliott is just always fishing for Jewish “continuity” at the Goy’s expense, like Richard Witty:
link to thefreelibrary.com
I think the number of people who’s continuity Eliot Abrams is concerned with is a whole lot more circumscribed than “the Jews”.
But if that’s the wat your mind works, you are welcome to it.
My mind? How about James North’s?
“Regular visitors to this site are familiar with Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative former Bush administration official, apologist for Greater Israel, and scourge of Jewish intermarriage.”
How so, “a lot more circumscribed?”
I was acutely aware of Abrams role in supporting Central American death squads and lying for them before congress. I wasn’t even aware that he was Jewish until public emergence of the neocons during Bush II. I think that fact was quite irrelevant in the 1980s: the man just happens to be a fascist.
RE: ” I wasn’t even aware that he was Jewish until public emergence of the neocons during Bush II. I think that fact was quite irrelevant” – syvanen
MY COMMENT: Is it relevant that Elliott Abrams is married to Midge Decter’s daughter and that Midge Decter is married to Norman Podhoretz and that Norman Podhoretz was for many years the editor of “Commentary” magazine (Abrams being married to Norman Podhoretz’s stepdaughter)? If so, why?
RE: “the man just happens to be a fascist” – syvanen
MY COMMENT: Is it relevant that Abrams is a member of the neocon’s ‘inner circle’?
I have never understood why Salvadoran or Nicaraguan or Vietnamese victims of American aggression have not retaliated against the US, in the US. Perhaps they did not have the benefit of CIA training that the Mujahideen did.
Abrams is a traitor, pure and simple. He has openly stated his allegiance is not first to America. How does this parasite, and others like Perle, constantly remain at the center of power?
Agree completely. Abrams is a traitor. This is the guy who is now undermining Obama by saying he personally negotiated the verbal agreements with Israel on “natural growth” of illegal settlements during the GW Bush years. What a Semitic-supremacist, anti-American maroon.
A traitor in the service of traitors, a traitorous government that pardons its operatives and places them back into positions of power.
Abrams, Reagan and their ilk are the world’s true supervillains.
Re Abrams, it’s worth looking at the transcript of when Allan Nairn said
to him what needed to be said when they were both on Charlie Rose in 1995.
link to mail-archive.com
There’s also a video of this on the Charlie Rose site, but the audio is almost
nonexistent.
btw, in my view Abrams is a repulsive supporter of mass murder and state-sponsored terrorism, but I am uncomfortable with people calling him a “traitor”, as in some of the comments above. Traitor to who? He’s been long-time spokesman for various branches of the empire. He’s not a traitor at all.
The transcript is devastating – all should follow the link and read it – how many countless murders has Abrams been involved in?
As one who has worked on the climate change issue for 20 years it is with a hollow knowing chuckle that I contemplate how sooner than we think the Middle East conflict and the zionists’ grand ambitions will be rendered utterly moot
You have a point in that the support for him has been bipartisan, coming from consecutive USA regimes.
The early years? Hell, Abrams was already well known for his obnoxiousness at least by the late 1960s, when he (along with Steve Kelman, now a Harvard professor) led the Young People’s Socialist League chapter at Harvard. As I recall, he mainly devoted himself to supporting the war in Vietnam (though I think maybe he eventually supported Eugene McCarthy) and red-baiting those of us in SDS.
It is unfortunate that the author deliberately tied Abrams’ racial fantasies to his greater political philosophy. He is indistinguishable from Oliver North (whom I presume is a so-called Christian) and similar psychopathic personalities. Abrams and Colonel North would toss any of us loyal Americans out of the proverbial life raft in favor of Luis Posada Carriles, Efrain Rios Montt, Augusto Pinochet, or ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier. And their favoritism wouldn’t have anything to do with religion or race.
Israel institutionalized targeted assassinations of terrorists known to have engaged in violence against Israelis, while Abrams was a leader for US sponsored terrorism against Central Americans of various nationalities.
“The former head of the ILD, Colonel Daniel Reisner, spoke frankly to the Israeli media in the aftermath about the role the body plays in pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in war.
“What we are seeing now is a revision of international law,” Reisner said. “If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.
“International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it.”
link to guardian.co.uk
In memoriam: 9/11
Leftist radicals who think it’s just fine that Kennedy was assassinated are devotees of the gold standard of imperialism: just war.