Is getting everything to stick to Weller. Contrary to Kristen McQueary, I don’t see the problem with Weller as being he’s able to be so slick as to get out of everything, it’s that there is so much it’s hard to get it to stick.
Two perfect examples are in McQueary’s column:
His father-in-law, Efrain Rios Montt, is a former Guatemalan dictator for whom an arrest warrant was issued in July on charges of genocide, torture, illegal arrest and terrorism for a 1980s insurgency he orchestrated (with the support of the Reagan administration).
Several Weller colleagues, including U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Dan Lipinski, signed a recent letter urging the U.S. Department of Justice to assist and cooperate in Montt’s prosecution, if it moves forward.
———
The arrest warrant for Weller’s father-in-law was issued by a wacky judge in Spain.
“It was frivolity ? freelancing by one Spanish judge. I guess he can’t go to Spain, but it’s not as if there are people in Guatemala looking for him.”
Letting Weller’s spokesperson get away with that ignores that George Bush’s State Department actually took the pretty much unprecedented step of warning against a right wing candidate winning. It’s not some weird judge in Spain, it’s the US Government and a US Government that has often played footsie with right wing authoritarians in Latin America.
Official Washington’s distaste for the retired general, who took a distant third place in polling, was reiterated Monday when State Department spokesman Richard Boucher referred to him as ”former dictator Rios Montt” in reviewing the election results.
Last summer, after Rios Montt’s candidacy was approved by the Guatemalan Supreme Court, Boucher had warned that, ”in light of Mr. Rios Montt’s background, it would be difficult to have the kind of relationship that we would prefer”.
The statement marked the first time in more than a decade that Washington had publicly warned a Central American electorate against a right-wing presidential candidate.
In contrast, on Monday Boucher stressed that the two leading candidates were both acceptable. ”We look forward to working with either Mr. Berger or Mr. Colom to strengthen U.S.-Guatemala relations”.
There is no question about Rios Montt being a genocidal dictator. He’s evil. He’s not just a bad man. He’s evil.
Letting this go is just as bad:
And blaming Prosser, a Weller contributor, for a 900-number phone line “is like saying SBC and AT&T are phone sex operators.” Prosser’s was a legitimate company that Weller tried to help, Shearer said.
SBC and AT&T? Errr…no. The Columbia Journalism Review did a story on Prosser’s efforts to buy the major newspaper that had been critical of him in the Virgin Islands. Where did CJR get the information? Atlantic Tele Network’s SEC Filings. That story gives you all sorts of information about Prosser’s ties to corrupt politicians.
Now, McQueary’s point is that he’s smooth and while I disagree with her conclusion, she wrote a decent article so I’m exempting her from this, but when the press takes this he said she said bullshit and allows it to stand despite the actual evidence the voters are failed.
Weller has ties to the worst of the elements in the Caribean and Central America and he tries to dismiss them with jokes. The press bites for some reason I can’t figure out. His press people are lying and there should be consequences to that.
If you follow the money to Cornelius Prior, Prosser’s business partner in the phone sex business, you find that Prior made contributions to the ROYB fund as did Prosser as well as big money Republican donations–these guys are a part of the K Street Project and Jerry Weller is right in the middle of it.
If anyone wants to actually connect the dots.
Why would anyone in the press bother connecting any dots? Takes too much work…
The media isn’t typically biased left or right — they’re just lazy which comes off looking like bias.
Well, if Rios Montt is ever actually formally charged with anything anywhere, perhaps Pavich can be his defense attorney. I hear he did a bang up job at the Hauge plea bargaining down the sentences of genocidal dictators from the Balkans.
GOP,
Care to offer citations? Cause I’ll whip out the NY Times, the AP, the Herald News and the Reader on Rios Mont.
Not that you’re not a shinning beacon of credibility, but your party has a history of lying and I don’t want you to be used as a Jerry Weller pawn. He’s really not worth it.
Genocide man, genocide. All this hemming and hawing in Iraq is a stand against those sort of things. Don’t defend Weller, his stink will rub off on you.
I don’t know the specifics of who John defended, but let me offer the comparison.
Someone ensuring due process to even the worst of the worst versus the worst of the worst.
One is about preserving democracy and the rule of the law and the other is about destroying it.
I’ve covered this well over the years. Rios Montt’s daughter is not just some innocent person, she is a top political lieutenant to someone the Bush administration saw as a threat to Guatemalan society. We aren’t talking Amnesty International here, we are talking George W. Bush’s Department of State. She was the Party’s leader in the National Assembly when Rios Montt’s thugs threatened aid workers, members of the press and even Americans.
She is part of a political operation that tried to eliminate the native population of Guatemala. I know people who have lost loved ones to that bastard. I know people who found the tortured bodies of human rights advocates. I know people who were threatened.
I respect why you support Weller, but this isn’t some theoretical problem to me.