By Jon Schwarz
Elliott Abrams, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Venezuela, appeared before the House Committee on Foreign Relations on Wednesday.
About two hours into the hearing, committee member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., noted that Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information about the Iran-Contra affair from Congress. “I fail to understand,” Omar said, “why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.”
Omar’s skepticism was well-founded: Just moments later, Abrams told her several egregious lies.
Abrams’s most notable lies occurred during this exchange about his actions as assistant secretary of state in the 1980s during the Reagan administration:
Click here for the full article.
Source: The Intercept_
About two hours into the hearing, committee member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., noted that Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information about the Iran-Contra affair from Congress. “I fail to understand,” Omar said, “why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.”
Omar’s skepticism was well-founded: Just moments later, Abrams told her several egregious lies.
Abrams’s most notable lies occurred during this exchange about his actions as assistant secretary of state in the 1980s during the Reagan administration:
OMAR: On February 8, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as communist propaganda reports about the massacre at El Mozote in which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as 2 years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping a 12-year-old girl, girls, before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a “fabulous achievement.” Yes or no, do you still think so?
ABRAMS: From the day that President Duarte was elected in a free election, to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy. That’s a fabulous achievement.Abrams’s words were “not only factually, demonstrably untrue, but grossly so,” according to Alejandro Velasco, a professor of modern Latin American history at New York University. His testimony, said Velasco, “continues a pattern he has shown since the 1980s of hubristically rejecting out of hand any suggestion that defeating social justice struggles in the 1980s, through the most brutal means, should in any way be seen as anything other than a resounding victory for the U.S.”
Click here for the full article.
Source: The Intercept_
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