Ambassadøren (2005) (TV)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Erling Borgen

Writer:

Erling Borgen (writer)

Release Date:

25 January 2005 (Norway)

Genre:

Documentary | War

Tagline:

A documentary about human rights and human dignity

Plot:

A documentary about the new US-ambassador to Iraq, John Dimitri Negroponte which tells how Mr. Negroponte was running brutal civil wars in Central America in the l980s. |

Plot Keywords:

Negroponte | Iraq | Civil War | Central America | Honduras

Cast

John Dimitri Negroponte	...	Himself (archive footage)
Rigoberta Menchú	...	Herself
General Gustavo Alvarez	...	Himself
Bishop Medardo Gomez	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Erling Borgen	...	(voice)

Runtime:

Norway:55 min

Country:

Norway

Language:

Norwegian

Color:

Color

How the U.S. rewards evil

I just saw this film in its English-language version, "The Ambassador," and I was profoundly moved. John D. Negroponte is one of the most dangerous men who has ever lived, especially since his open support of atrocities in Central America in the 1980's (the subject of most of the film's footage) has been rewarded by promotions and increasing responsibility by Republican presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. Unlike many Left-leaning political documentaries, "The Ambassador" is careful to make a meticulous case against its subject, proving not only that human rights abuses occurred under his watch but that he was personally responsible for many of them. In the early 1980's Negroponte essentially ran the government of Honduras and gave a green light to the head of the Honduran military, General Gustavo Alvarez, to organize a death squad called "Battalion 316" to murder political opponents of the Honduran regime and anyone who advocated civil and human rights. For this Negroponte has been rewarded with a series of highly prestigious and powerful positions, especially under the current President Bush: first as ambassador to the United Nations (an appointment considered so important that the Senate committee hearing on it happened just two days after 9/11), then as ambassador to Iraq (where he openly and proudly introduced the death-squad tactics he had pioneered in his Central American assignment 20 years earlier), and now as the head of the entire U.S. intelligence establishment — a position so powerful that Porter Goss recently resigned as head of the CIA because Negroponte had stripped him of so much power to run the agency that Goss felt emasculated and useless. Negroponte — who in the most recent footage of the documentary takes on an eerie and entirely appropriate resemblance to Max Schreck in the 1922 "Nosferatu" — is a man whose callous disregard of human rights and willingness to order the slaughter of his political opponents would make him a far more appropriate official for Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia than for a government that still claims to be a democracy. This film should be required viewing for any American who seriously wants to know why so much of the rest of the world hates us.