The Senate Foreign Relations Committee started hearings today on John Negroponte’s appointment to the Baghdad embassy, a post that he would assume on June 30, when sovereignty will supposedly be transferred to Iraqi authorities.

Negroponte’s reputation as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 earned him a reputation for supporting widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. As ambassador he played a key role in coordinating US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring up CIA-backed death squads in Honduras. (Click here for an audio segment of Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! for more on Negroponte’s background.)

As the Council on Hemispheric Affairs noted in a comprehensive release on Negroponte’s career, the career diplomat’s nomination must be seen as profoundly troubling since the same nagging questions which were present during the summer of 2001, when Negroponte was nominated to be US ambassador to the UN, continue to persist. (Click here to read the full release.)

But though, as David Corn writes in the current issue of The Nation, Negroponte’s confirmation hearing will provide senators a chance to probe Bush’s plans in Iraq, if Negroponte’s record, is not questioned, as seems likely, he will once again be able to escape his haunted past. Don’t let your elected reps give Negroponte a free pass. Click here to tell them to vote against Negroponte’s appointment. You can also usefully send them the Center for American Progress’s ten questions Negroponte should be forced to answer before he’s given the job of running Iraq.