#usapolicy — Public Fediverse posts

.> Why in the world would anyone want to resurrect Elliott Abrams?...

.> It is particularly risible that Abrams would be appointed to a position charged with maintaining integrity in U.S. public diplomacy....

.> He was convicted in 1991 of two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress, but received a pardon from President George H.W. Bush. Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel who investigated Iran-Contra, prepared multiple felony counts against Abrams, who eventually admitted that he knew more than he acknowledged in congressional testimony. Several years later, he was publicly sanctioned by the District of Columbia Bar for giving false testimony to Congress about Iran-Contra.

.> in the 1980s, Abrams regularly covered up atrocities committed by U.S.-backed military forces in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. He did the same for the Contras in Nicaragua, and, as a result, was heavily criticized by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The Lawyers Committee, Americas Watch, and Helsinki Watch collaborated on a report in the mid-1980s that charged Abrams with “undermining the purpose of the human rights bureau in the State Department.”

.> After the coup President Allende was found dead inside the presidential palace. Whether he was killed or whether he killed himself, we’ll never know. In the regime of terror that ensured, thousands of people were killed. Many more simply “disappeared”. Firing squads conducted public executions. Concentration camps and torture chambers were opened across the country. The dead were buried in mine shafts and unmarked graves. For seventeen years the people of Chile lived in dread of the midnight knock, of routine “disappearances”, of sudden arrest and torture. Chileans tell the story of how the musician Victor Jara had his hands cut off in front of a crowd in the Santiago stadium. Before they shot him, Pinochet’s soldiers threw his guitar at him and mockingly asked him to play.
.> In 1999, following the arrest of General Pinochet in Britain, thousands of secret documents were declassified by the U.S. government. They contain unequivocal evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the coup as well as the fact that the U.S. government had detailed information about the situation in Chile during General Pinochet’s reign. Yet, Kissinger assured the general of his support: “In the United States as you know, we are sympathetic to what you’re trying to do,” he said. “We wish your government well.”