Who is Elliott Abrams?

Who is he?  Just look at him.  He's the arch villain in every kids' cartoon and story.  All that's missing is a Snidely Whiplash handlebar mustache.

No.  We won't judge a book by its cover.  But he is a villain.



What evil plot is he hatching?

Abrams is a former US diplomat who served as assistant secretary of state during the administration of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. A neoconservative, Abrams has long advocated an activist US role in the world. He also served in the government of George W Bush, first as a Middle East expert on the National Security Council and later as a global democracy strategy adviser.

In his previous government roles, Abrams was known as a hawk on Latin America, with his critics pointing to his involvement in controversial US decisions in Central America, as well as his reported links to the 2002 failed coup attempt against the late Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez.

  alJazeera

So let's give him another chance. Maybe he'll get the job done this time. He's certainly not going to want to go down in history as having failed at it twice.

[In December 1981,] he sought to discredit witness accounts of a massacre in the indigenous El Salvador community of El Mozote and surrounding villages, in which Salvadoran troops rounded up men, women and children, gunned them down and set their homes on fire. Some 1,000 people were killed by soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion, who had recently been trained by the US. During the country's 12-year civil war, the US also sent billions of dollars to the Salvadoran government.

[...]

Abrams also defended Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who oversaw a campaign in which thousands of people, mainly from the country's indigenous communities, were either massacred or disappeared. He at one time suggested that Rios Montt "brought considerable progress" for human rights in the country.

"We think that kind of progress needs to be rewarded and encouraged," Abrams told US public television in 1983 as he defended the sale of millions of dollars in technology and helicopter and aeroplane parts to the Guatemalan government.

[...]

In 1991, he pleaded guilty to two counts of misleading Congress about the Reagan administration's efforts to help the Nicaraguan guerrillas (known as the Contras) during a period when Congress had banned such aid. He was later pardoned by George HW Bush.

Of course.

Abrams recently brushed aside past convictions and criticisms, saying that he doesn't believe the Iran-Contra scandal will be an issue in his current post.

"We are not focused on the events of the 1980s," he recently told reporters. "We are focused on the events of 2019."

So, maybe failing doesn't bother him, because if he really doesn't believe Iran-Contra will be an issue for him now, he doesn't have a clue.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.