Leaked cable reopens Honduras debate

[cal04]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/132055-leaked-cable-reopens-honduras-debate

A State Department cable released by the website WikiLeaks has reopened the Washington debate over last year’s ouster of then-Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

The leaked July 2009 cable, signed by the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, said the removal of Zelaya by the Honduran military “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” In stark language, the cable takes apart arguments made by defenders of Zelaya’s ouster, calling them fabrications or suppositions.

The cable has attracted the attention of the Obama administration’s critics on both the right and the left. For example, the cable has set off a new round of aspersions from the likely next chairman of the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who said Llorens was “part of the problem, not the solution.”

(snip)
“The cable confirms what we believed from the beginning — this was a coup, it was unconstitutional, and it has helped undermine the rule of law, political and human rights in Honduras, with problems persisting to this day,” Stephens said.
(Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas)

[TheWraith]

1. "Reopens"? Obama said at the time that this was a coup.

Unfortunately, it's not one we can get rid of absent invading Honduras.

[struggle4progress]

2. U.S. Condemns Honduran Coup (WaPo 2009)

Still, Administration Steps Lightly
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

President Obama said yesterday that the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and could set a "terrible precedent," but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States government was holding off on formally branding it a coup, which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country ... U.S. officials had tried ahead of time to avert the coup, warning the Honduran military and politicians against suspending democratic order. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sheltered one of Zelaya's children to prevent him from being harmed, according to Carlos Sosa, Honduras's ambassador to the Organization of American States ... Obama repeated yesterday that the United States viewed Zelaya as Honduras's president and that "the coup was not legal." ... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062904239.html


This can't be solved by mere words from the Left. We really need an activist movement that works to educate the street about Honduras and that pressures Congress and the President to take an effective stand on human right issues there

[WinkyDink]

3. "Honduras Condemns U.S. Coup" (Me, 2000)