By: StJacques

StJacques — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:24:54 +0000

Thank you for this additional information on Shannon with respect to Cuba Val. I already had a very poor opinion of him, especially for the role he played in the early hours following the removal of Zelaya, when Shannon practically set the tone for the entire State Department and U.S. foreign policy in calling it a coup. I'm still not sure who said what first, but within hours of Zelaya's ouster both Shannon and U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens said it was a "coup" and within hours after that it became a "military coup," neither of which were true. But there is something about Honduras which continues to bother me quite a bit, by which I refer to the refusal of the State Department to release the legal analysis prepared by their own international law experts on the circumstances leading up to Zelaya's ouster. The Congressional Research Service released their own analysis in August, prepared by Senior Foreign Law Expert Norma C. Gutierrez, and she judged that Honduran institutions had functioned correctly and acted within Honduran constitutional law, right up to the point when they expelled Zelaya from the country, which was illegal. Our State Department's policy is quite different. Contrary to what the CRS analysis offers, our State Department has referred to it as a military coup. And we know that the State Department has prepared their own legal analysis, but they will not release it to the public. We do not even know whether the State Department may be pursuing a policy contrary to what their own legal experts found. I put up a post on this topic last Thursday in which I called the State Department policy "absurd," and I was especially critical of the failure to release their legal analysis. How can they not tell us what their legal experts say when so much is at stake? I cannot imagine that such a course would be taken on Honduras without the guidance of Thomas Shannon, the Asst. Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. And after what I just read above about Shannon and Cuba--some of this was new to me--I believe even more firmly that his career should be followed more closely. Thomas Shannon is no servant of the American people. I don't care what his resume says. StJacques StJacques Online: A Freedom Blog

Comments on: Credit where credit is due.

By: StJacques