Felon and Death Squad Gangster organiser Elliott Abrams appointed by US to oust Venezuelan government: Analyst James Petras

ELLIOT ABRAMS AND THE NEW OPERATION CONDOR TWO AND THE DIRTY WAR AGAINST VENEZUELA AND THE PEOPLE OF LATIN AMERICA


Elliott Abrams was appointed US special envoy for Venezuela on Friday, as Donald Trump’s administration and European leaders on Saturday further increase the pressure and create crisis.

Abrams accompanied the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to a meeting of the UN security council in New York on Saturday, during which Pompeo will urged members to join the US in declaring Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate head of state.

Abrams, a neoconservative, has returned to the centre of the political action over the region like the ghost of administrations past. 

Even if he was not chosen expressly to haunt Latin America and Congress, the Trump White House clearly does not care if they are spooked.

Abrams is widely remembered in Central America, but particularly from his time in the Reagan administration, when he tried to whitewash a massacre of a thousand men, women and children by US-funded death squads in El Salvador, when he was assistant secretary of state for human rights.

He shrugged off the reports as communist propaganda, and insisted: “The administration’s record in El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement.”

Abrams also helped organise the covert financing of Contra rebels in Nicaragua behind the back of Congress, which had cut off funding. He then lied to Congress about his role, twice. He pleaded guilty to both counts in 1991 but was pardoned by George HW Bush.

More than a decade later, working as special Middle East adviser to former president George W Bush, Abrams was an enthusiastic advocate of the Iraq invasion. 

He was in the White House at the time of the abortive coup in 2002 against Hugo Chávez. 

The Observer reported that Abrams gave the green light to the putsch, another an inspector general enquiry found no “wrongdoing” by US officials.

That was not enough to erase his reputation as the assistant secretary of dirty wars. 

The message sent by his return to the front rank of US diplomacy will not be missed in Caracas.

SOURCE: Guardian