The US Senate hearings on Negroponte for new ambassador to Iraq are on CSPAN. Read the following article, then you'll see how idiotic the Democratic senators are being in not challenging this guy. Sometimes you've really got to wonder ...
OPINION: Our Man in Baghdad
Hardly anybody seems to have noticed that John Negroponte is going to be a diplomatic disaster. Last week we learned that John Negroponte would become America's new ambassador to Iraq and will be running U.S. policy in the quasi-sovereign state that will exist from July 1 until elections can be held and a permanent constitution ratified. He speaks no Arabic and he has no experience in the Middle East or the Islamic world. He does have experience, however, dating back to his service as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to1985, when he was responsible for implementing Ronald Reagan's illegal intervention in the Nicaraguan civil war. This experience also extends to turning a blind eye to serious human-rights abuses by the U.S.-funded Honduran military and lying to Congress about it. As a democracy-promotion strategy, the choice of Negroponte is a bit, shall we say, odd.
Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect - April 27, 2004
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7652