Maxine Waters: “I thank you very much. Congresswoman, I am very pleased that you have taken time to come to this floor to talk about…”

“I thank you very much. Congresswoman, I am very pleased that you have taken time to come to this floor to talk about what has just happened in Haiti. As you know, Haiti for too long has been dropped off of the corporate media's agenda. And whenever they have written stories, for the most part it has been distorted information which helped to lead to the unrest and the destabilization of Haiti. But you are absolutely correct. There was a coup d'etat that removed President Aristide from office. They did drop him off in the Central Republic of Africa. I got together with Randal Robinson and a few other people, and we chartered a plane, and we traveled to the Central Republic of Africa, and we negotiated with President Bokassa I think it is, who was holding him there and was afraid to release him because they had some kind of agreement with the French and also because the United States had brought him there. But we were able to convince them after many hours up in that country that they should let him go. As a matter of fact, they did not want us to leave. They had said we could not leave the night we came in. We basically said to them we had to leave and we had to leave with him and that if I was not back in Washington by the next day or so, then they would consider that he had kidnapped me also and that he was holding Aristide prisoner. And they did not want that reputation.…”