A self-described conservative who I regularly correspond with e-mailed me last week to discuss, among other things, the situation in Haiti. He said U.S. policymakers should not have sent any troops to the beleaguered island nation.

Furthermore, he argued, America should take a hands-off approach in dealing with Haiti. Unfortunately, such noble sentiments of self-determination for the Haitian people are a day late and a dollar short.

According to Brian Concannon Jr., a human rights lawyer with the International Lawyers' Office, "Guy Philippe, the U.S.-trained, self-proclaimed new army chief, (has been) implicated in running drugs, executing suspected gang members, attacking the National Palace and trying to blow up a hydro dam, even before he started killing his former police colleagues."

Then there's Louis Jodel Chamblain, co-founder of Haiti's brutal FRAPH death squad who was convicted for atrocities committed during Haiti's last dictatorship (1991-1994). Both are now living up to their reputations as world-class thugs, hunting down and executing government supporters, emptying the jails, "and spraying whole neighborhoods with gunfire."

These are the democracy-loving folks we are now doing business with, while trying to persuade the rest of the world that American intervention is really all about extending democracy and human rights.

Now, if you look at the coverage given the recent coup in Haiti by our "liberal" media, it's incredibly soft on the Bush administration.

Nothing less than a complete congressional and media investigation into the ouster of Aristide will do for a people who claim to cherish liberty. Investigate what exactly?

First of all, Aristide himself, after insisting he would not step down as president of Haiti for the past month, claims he was forced to resign and leave Haiti by U.S. and French authorities - a claim at first ignored by our "free" press until several conscientious congressional reps held a press conference reporting Aristide's complaint.

Secondly, it should be a cause of concern that U.S. policymakers not only encouraged the coup but also withheld crucial aid that would likely have prevented Haiti from losing its first democratically-elected president.

Economist and political commentator Julianne Malveaux points out that the U.S. government held up a $500 million World Bank loan to Haiti for two years. "Such actions helped destabilize the government of the populist president who identified with the large number of Haitian people subsisting on a few dollars a day," Malveaux says.

Free-lance investigative reporter Wayne Madsen also points to something studiously ignored in the "liberal" media; namely the policymakers behind the scenes.

"They include the State Department's assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs Roger Noriega (a one-time staffer for Sen. Jesse Helms and promoter of El Salvador death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson), U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte (a promoter of Honduran death squads while he was ambassador to Honduras), Iran-contra felon Elliott Abrams (who is now at the National Security Council), and Otto Reich, Noriega's predecessor, who was not confirmed by the Senate and who organized a similar coup in April 2002 against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias."

And finally, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, reminds us: "Aristide is still lawfully the president of Haiti. International law does not recognize governments imposed by coup."

I have a couple of questions: Why are American, French and U.N. officials not siding with international law?

And how do such political developments help us in the "war on terror," given the example it shows the world in which we are willing to preemptively strike a nation that has no WMD and then claim it was done in the name of democracy, while we support a coup in our own backyard that opposes a liberation theologian-turned-president and sides with Haitian gangsters?

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and a syndicated columnist.

Copyright © Cape Cod Times.

###