Porter Goss: “is all quiet on the southern front? No, not really. Despite the resounding silence from the press and the White House on…”

“is all quiet on the southern front? No, not really. Despite the resounding silence from the press and the White House on the current situation in our neighboring country Haiti, things are far from quiet. In fact, things are so bad that the prime minister quit yesterday. Over the past few weeks, we know Haitians have rioted in the streets of Port-Au-Prince and other towns. Incidents of assaults, rock throwing, and general lawlessness have resulted in death, injury and damage. Yesterday, as I said, things took a turn even for the worse when Prime Minister Rosny Smarth submitted his citing, in fact, the recent fraudulent elections. Obviously, this is bad for democracy because at this time it appears that only one major party is participating in the elections, and that is not exactly democratic, but it is also bad for reform in Haiti, because with Prime Minister Rosny Smarth leaving, so goes one of the few champions of the tough but necessary economic program that we had envisioned for Haiti. Economic reform is all but a thing of the past in Haiti anyway, and without economic reform there is absolutely no hope for a Democratic future in Haiti. So through all of this upheaval, one interesting and frankly disturbing fact seems to have surfaced, and that is the fact that the Haitian National Police have had to be supplemented with our military personnel to deal with basic law and order issues in that country.”