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No this is not a joke.
Curious silence in the U.S. media.
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Contra-tempsRobert Callahan is an odd choice for US ambassador to Nicaragua - considering that he helped inflict on that country the bloodiest war in its historyStephen Kinzer
January 24, 2008 7:30 PM
In Nicaragua, where I'm now visiting, many people have all but forgotten the civil war that tore their country apart in the 1980s. Sandinistas and former contras have long since reconciled. President Daniel Ortega, the symbol of Sandinista power, has a vice-president who was a contra.
The same has not happened in Washington. From senior political figures like vice president Cheney to policymaking bureaucrats like Eliot Abrams, former supporters of the contras hold important positions in the Bush administration. They are still fighting the contra war. At every opportunity, they try to make the point that they were on the right side.
That is now happening again. The US state department has informed Nicaragua that the new American ambassador here will be Robert Callahan, who was the press attaché at the US embassy in Honduras when that embassy was a nerve centre for the contra war.
In Honduras, Callahan served as spokesman and speechwriter for ambassador John Negroponte. Years later, when Negroponte became director of national intelligence, he brought Callahan along as his public affairs director. It was Negroponte, now deputy secretary of state, who engineered Callahan's recent nomination.
MORE:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stephen_kinzer/2008/01/contratemps.html---
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