In the Old Testament, Absalom Amselem rebelled against his father mother, King David Queen Hillary.  In the end, Absolom Amselem got his head tangled up in the branches, and King David's Queen Hillary's soldiers finished him off.

Man, was I wrong.  I commented yesterday that the remarks made at the OAS meeting by Acting Ambassador to the OAS, Lewis Amselem, was upholding US State Department's commitment to the San José Accord. 

"Zelaya's return to Honduras is irresponsible and foolish and it doesn't serve to the interest of the people nor those who seek the restoration of democratic order in Honduras." "Everything will be better if all parties refrain from provoking and inciting violence."

"The president should stop acting as though he were starring in an old movie."

(note: I haven't found Amselem's exact quotes - seems like every news site is twisting them around a bit - so take the above as a paraphrase.)

Since State wants Zelaya to be reinstated, how could such comments be appropriate?  What was I thinking?  Was it simply a slip of the tongue on Amselem's part - expressing personal opinion rather that official State Department policy?

The devil is in the details.  While we are getting so excited about the statements quoted above - Zelaya supporters are miffed inside and outside of Hunduras (foolish translates into idiota in Spanish), and the Golpistas and the U.S. rightwing are running with the story - Amselem said something far more important that directly conflicts with Clinton's policy, and has caused the State Department to do some damage control.  From RAJ:

I can parse a statement from the US State Department as an American, and I can parse the same statement the way a Honduran does. I have to think that the State Department can do both parsings as well. Ian Kelly's (State Department Spokesperson) statement yesterday basically ignored Anselem's vulgarities yesterday. Anselem's actually suggested in the OAS session that the US would recognize the results of the November 29 elections, whether or not anything changes in Honduras, and was part of a faction that included Canada, Panama, and Columbia that took that position and blocked an OAS resolution to not recognized the results. We aligned ourselves with the right wing governments of Latin America. The State Department and the Obama White House have not repudiated Anselem's actions in the OAS.

Note: There is some discepency regarding the reporting of countries who obstructed the consensus at the OAS meeting.  The vote was taken in a closed session, and I don't know where RAJ obtained this particuar list of OAS members.

The OAS meeting was held to form a consensus on officially denouncing the November election in Honduras.  Secretary Clinton has already announced the the U.S. will not recognize the election unless Zelaya is returned to power (via the San José Accord).  So what is Amselem doing?  Who is Lewis Amselem?

Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative

W. Lewis Amselem, Deputy Chief of Mission

W. Lewis Amselem

Lewis Amselem assumed the duties of Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States in July 2008. He is currently serving as Acting U.S. Permanent Representative.

Prior to his designation as Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative, Mr. Amselem served as Foreign Policy Advisor at the United States Southern Command, Miami, Florida, since August 2006.  In that capacity, he provided assistance and expert advice to the Commander on issues involving SOUTHCOM's mission as it relates to the formulation and execution of foreign policy.

Mr. Amselem came to SOUTHCOM after serving as Deputy Chief of Mission in Jakarta, Indonesia (2003-2006).  A career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor (FE-MC), Mr. Amselem joined the Foreign Service in 1978.

He served as Vice-Consul and Labor officer in Georgetown, Guyana (1978-80), followed by a tour in Islamabad, Pakistan as Refugee Officer (1981-83).  He returned to the Department of State as Pakistan Country Affairs Officer (1983-85).

From 1985-88, he was the Executive Officer for the Third Committee at the US Mission to the UN in New York, and a member of several US delegations to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva and the Commission on the Status of Women in Vienna.  He went to Guatemala as the Embassy Political-Military Officer (1988-92), and to La Paz, Bolivia (1992-95) as Counselor for Political Affairs.

In Washington (1995-97) he served in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs as Deputy Director and then acting Director of the Office of International Security and Peacekeeping.  He became Counselor for Political and Economic Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Panama (1997-2000) and Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka (2000-2003).

Mr. Amselem holds three Department of State Superior Honor Awards, and two Meritorious Honor Awards.  He received the 1991 Director General's Award for Reporting for his coverage of the political-military and human rights situation in Guatemala.

Mr. Amselem graduated from the University of California with BA in Political Science in 1974 and earned an MA in International Relations from Brandeis University in 1976.  He speaks near native Spanish and has facility in Portuguese.  He is married to Mirentxu Salegui of San Sebastian Spain; they have four children.

A Bush appointment.  President Obama has appointed Carmen Lomellin as Ambassador to the OAS on September 14, and she has not yet been confirmed.  So Amselem is temporarily filling in the gap.  There is some clamor going on in the Left that he sports neocon bona fides, but I haven't seen those yet.  But Amselem's claim to infamy comes from his diplomatic post in Guatemala, which is cited above as Embassy Political-Military Officer (1988-92).  I'm not sure how this works out, but historical sources say Amselem was also the Human Rights Oficer.  At any rate, Amselem was named as the source of a very vicious claim against a victim of arrest and torture by the Guatemalan authorities, Ursaline nun Dianna Ortiz.

Dianna Ortiz is an Ursuline nun from New Mexico who journeyed to Guatemala in the early 1980s as a missionary, teaching Mayan children in the highlands. After months of receiving threats, Ortiz was abducted and brutally raped by armed men in November 1989. One of the men overseeing the torture appeared to be American. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded that: "Sister Ortiz was placed under surveillance and threatened, then kidnapped and tortured, and that agents of the government of Guatemala were responsible for these crimes. . . including violating Dianna Ortiz's rights to 'humane treatment, personal liberty, a fair trial, privacy, freedom of conscience and of religion, freedom of association and judicial protection.'" Ortiz's ordeal did not end with her escape. Her torment continued as she sought answers from the U.S. government about the identity of her torturers in her unrelenting quest for justice. Ortiz's raw honesty and capacity to articulate the agony she suffered compelled the United States to declassify long-secret files on Guatemala, and shed light on some of the darkest moments of Guatemalan history and American foreign policy.

You may not want to read what follows this biographical introduction, just as a warning.  Ortiz memoirs bring us face to face with extremes of human depravity - things we would rather think fantastic than real.  That said, there are a couple of paragraphs that are very relevant to this blog:

 

Two months later, after a U.S. doctor had counted 111 cigarette burns on my back alone, the story changed. In January 1990, the Guatemalan defense minister publicly announced that I was a lesbian and had staged my abduction to cover up a tryst. The minister of the interior echoed this statement and then said he had heard it first from the U.S. embassy. According to a congressional aide, the political affairs officer at the U.S. embassy, Lew Anselem, was indeed spreading the same rumor.

In the presence of Ambassador Thomas Stroock, this same human rights officer told a delegation of religious men and women concerned about my case that he was "tired of these lesbian nuns coming down to Guatemala." The story would undergo other permutations. According to the Guatemalan press, the ambassador came up with another version: he told the Guatemalan defense minister that I was not abducted and tortured but simply "had problems with [my] nerves."

Something worth noting about Ortiz' ordeal is that First Lady Clinton had met with her and offered to help with the release of documents that Sister Ortiz was seeking.  From Julia Lieblich Pieces of Bone essay on Dianna Ortiz:

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton caused a bigger stir when she invited Dianna into the White House for a meeting and told her that she would try to get an early release of some documents.
       And when Deputy National Security Advisor Nancy Soderberg said that the administration wanted to "underscore that people at high levels of the White House are following [her case] closely and that we are trying to get the information she is seeking as fast as we can," it looked like a stunning departure from the previous administration.
       "We're trying to get to the bottom of her case and find Alejandro if we can," she told me. "We have absolutely no reason not to believe her."

One wonders if Amselem is in bed with Fito (Alfredo Facusse - National Industry Chamber president).  Facussé came up with a plan for Honduras yesterday that everyone seems to be getting excited about.  There are reports that even Zelaya thinks it is a "good sign" even there are parts of it that Zelaya would never agree to.   But included in the plan is a call for an international military presence composed of troops from Canada, Columbia and Panama specifically - all countries with right-wing governments and (possibly) the three countries that joined with Amselen in stopping the OAS from declaring the elections unacceptable.  And troops for what?  All political principals would stand down with the agreement, so there's no problem there.  But would the people?  Hell no...and the international troops would be necessary to further repress the popular movements.  Fito's plan is a request for international welfare so someone else can pay for kicking Hondurans around.

But there was some damage control.  Hugo Llorens met with the presidential candidates at the US embassy in Tegucigalpa and reaffirmed the US committment to democracy, and at yesterdays daily press briefing:

QUESTION: I would like to come back to the statement by your ambassador to OAS yesterday about Honduras. He said that Zelaya's return to his country had been foolish and irresponsible. It seems that this statement has raised some questions, especially because Zelaya is still under siege in the embassy.
MR. CROWLEY: Who said that? I'm sorry.
QUESTION: Sorry?
MR. CROWLEY: Who made that statement yesterday?
QUESTION: Your - I mean the U.S. ambassador to the OAS.
MR. CROWLEY: Sure. Lew Amselem.
QUESTION: Lewis Amselem.
MR. CROWLEY: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: And so is there any comment? Is there any change in the U.S. policy on this matter?
MR. CROWLEY: Not at all. Not at all. We have said throughout this process that all sides need to act constructively, avoid the kind of provocative statements or actions that would precipitate violence and inhibit the resolution of this situation. And I think our acting representative simply said with regard to statements that President Zelaya and his supporters have made that they need to act in a more constructive and positive manner. So I think what he said yesterday is fully consistent with our concern that both sides need to take constructive action, affirmative action. Both sides ultimately need to sign on to the San Jose process and begin a transition to a new government that the people of Honduras can support.
QUESTION: The words were very strong. The words were very --
MR. CROWLEY: Absolutely, absolutely. And we have said this before.