THE CANANA MUST BE A DUPE-LEX:

Kerry Criticizes Bush for Failing to Back Aristide (DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID M. HALBFINGER, 3/07/04, NY Times)

Had he been sitting in the Oval Office last weekend as rebel forces were threatening to enter Port-au-Prince, Senator John Kerry says he would have sent an international force to protect Haiti's widely disliked elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Here's how bad it's gotten for Mr. Kerry, even Jimmy Carter is less gullible, Now Even Carter Sees Through Aristide's Haiti (John Tierney, August 17, 1995, Heritage)

Opposition to President Clinton's boldest foreign policy initiative -- U.S. military intervention in Haiti last year with 21,000 troops at a cost of $3 billion -- has now come full circle. With the defection of former president Jimmy Carter as an uncritical supporter of the administration's effort to "restore" democracy to the Caribbean island, the White House's touting of Haiti as its greatest foreign policy "success" is sounding pretty silly.

The former president, who provided crucial political cover last year for Clinton's decision to dispatch U.S. forces to Haiti, recently issued a devastating critique of the political process imposed under the lethal protection of U.S. guns by Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The report, issued by the Atlanta-based Carter Center, exposes Aristide's one-party "Lavalas" rule, with its widespread corruption, mismanagement and ballot manipulating, particularly in the June 25 election. Aristide's allies swept local and parliamentary seats in that balloting.

President Carter's critique of Aristide is especially startling, considering the long political association between the two. When Aristide won Haiti's 1990 presidential election, the Carter Center was at the forefront of groups supporting the results.

But relations began to sour within months after Carter personally helped pave the way for Aristide's triumphant return in October 1994. By year's end, it was apparent to all but the most ideologically driven that Aristide was personally turning Haiti into yet another one-man dictatorship -- his own. This should surprise no one, considering Aristide's political personality and his Marxist beliefs.

A critical part of Aristide's plan for seizing total power in Haiti has been his illegal and authoritarian command of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) that conducted the fraudulent June election. Sensing trouble in March, Carter visited Haiti and was formally rebuffed by Aristide. Unofficially, he was greeted by hostile crowds and vicious graffiti, all engineered by Lavalas street gangs intent on embarrassing the former U.S. chief executive.

The Carter Center report on the ensuing election -- written by Carter confidant and former National Security Council advisor Robert Pastor -- documents the disgraceful conduct of the Aristide government and his Lavalas party. "Of the 13 elections I have observed, the June 25 Haitian elections were the most disastrous technically, with the most insecure count," Pastor said in the report.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 6, 2004 6:25 PM