Barbara Boxer: “I voted against Mr. Negroponte for the very issues Senator Harkin talked about in his history when he was in Latin…”

“I voted against Mr. Negroponte for the very issues Senator Harkin talked about in his history when he was in Latin America, during what I believed to be a massive coverup of human rights abuses, which was very troubling. When Mr. Negroponte went there, there was a meeting with him and I said: You are now in a new job, and although I am not voting for you, I want to work with you. We did work together on a treaty banning child soldiers. He worked very well with us on that. There were times when I called him to talk about issues of concern and he was very accommodating. I am going to vote for him today to give him another chance at a job that is so dangerous and so worrisome, because we have a policy in Iraq that is not working. He is willing to go there. I give him tremendous credit for that and I give credit to his family. I also think his ties with people in the United Nations, as we try to get more nations involved, could be helpful. I want to express my reservation, now that we see on the agenda of the United States of America one of the worst scandals I think we have seen in a very long time--this prison scandal, which has such enormous ramifications.”