Porter Goss: “today is day 122 of the American occupation of Haiti, a friendly country just south of our borders. The United States…”

“today is day 122 of the American occupation of Haiti, a friendly country just south of our borders. The United States command in Haiti has determined that a secure environment has been established. The United Nations is expected to rule on this question in the coming weeks and the process of transition to a United Nations mission will be online, hopefully for an end of March completion. What will this transition mean? Today, our forces in Haiti have the authority to arrest and detain troublemakers and to respond with force. And in fact they have been doing that. The U.N. mission in Haiti, which will include approximately 2,500 United States troops, will be a chapter 6 mission--strictly one of providing presence and monitoring. Under current mission parameters, American soldiers provide the security in Haiti, to the degree that that security is real. They are the folks who are enforcing the security there, to the degree that there is any real security. Today, our soldiers are involved at the local level in the day-to-day running of villages throughout the Haitian countryside. Our soldiers are serving as mayors and judges; they are serving as the electric company and waste disposal management company.…”