On February 29, 2004, Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown for the second time in 13 years. The opposition gangs that placed millions of Haitians under siege are armed with sophisticated weapons, including US-made M-16s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. This was no popular insurgency from Haiti's grassroots, but a military operation funded and orchestrated by the US. The nucleus of the armed opposition is the FRAPH paramilitary that overthrew Aristide in 1991. When the US restored Aristide to power in 1994, the Marines were ordered not to disarm the FRAPH. Instead, the death squads were treated as a legitimate opposition and left in the wings to serve as a contingency plan to Aristide. With the implementation of that plan, the Bush Administration offers yet another display of its contempt for democracy, sending a clear signal from Haiti about how it will treat any defenseless country that it cannot fully control.

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