Our man in Tegucigulpa

Last week, President Bush nominated John Negroponte as director of national intelligence. The newly created office will take some powers away from the CIA.

Negroponte, the current ambassador in Iraq, was also Bush's envoy to the UN and was a diplomat in Honduras in the early 80s during the first Reagan term.

Even Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller gushed over Negroponte's appointment on the BBC. It seems highly improbable that Negroponte's appointment will face any trouble. But in the absence of any questioning from the perhaps overly loyal "opposition," you'll probably have to look outside the mainstream media to find any serious analysis of Negroponte's long career in the diplomatic service and how it pertains to his new job. The corporate media generally takes its cues from the opposition party (regardless of who's in the White House) to determine what to make into a controversy.

Certainly, fake journalists planted in the White House press corps by the administration (something hardly out of character for them) won't be asking the questions.

This fascinating article from The New York Review of Books has a significantly less sympathetic portrayal of Negroponte than Sen. Rockefeller's hagiography.

For example, the article notes: In Honduras Negroponte exercised US power in ways that still reverberate throughout that small country. His most striking legacy, though, is the Honduras of his imagination. Most people who lived or worked in Honduras during the 1980s saw a nation spiraling into violence and infested by paramilitary gangs that kidnapped and killed with impunity. Negroponte would not acknowledge this. He realized that the Reagan policy in Central America would lose support if truths about Honduras were known, so he refused to accept them.

The piece was published three and a half years ago but is even more pertinent given Negroponte's likely new post. A man who sees things and knows things but refuses to acknowledge unpleasant realities, is that really an appropriate quality for a chief of intelligence?

Perhaps not, but time and time again, it's been shown to be the perfect quality to serve in the Bush administration.