”US suspends military activities with Honduras: Pentagon”

”The United States has suspended all military activities with Honduras until further notice, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday, days after President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a coup.

’”We’ve postponed any activities in Honduras right now while we are assessing the situation,” Bryan Whitman told reporters, adding that he was referring to relations between the armed forces of both countries.”

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/U…..12009.html

just a quick drive by, but recommend also this post from jeremy scahill: A Few Thoughts on the Coup in Honduras

While publicly opposing the military coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday, the Obama administration on Monday indicated that it will not cut off aid to the Central American country or demand Zelaya’s reinstatement.

Following a White House meeting with Washington’s closest Latin American ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, President Obama reiterated the position that the ouster of Zelaya was illegal. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters at a State Department briefing that the US government was refraining from formally declaring the removal of Zelaya a “coup.”

Under the Foreign Assistance Act, no US aid can be given to a country whose elected head of government is removed by a military coup. The US is providing Honduras with $43 million in aid this year and maintains a major military presence in the country, including a base staffed by 600 US troops located 50 miles from the capital, Tegucigalpa. The US has also refrained from recalling its ambassador to Honduras.

Earlier on Monday, Clinton was asked whether the stated US goal of “restoring democratic order in Honduras” included returning Zelaya to the presidency. “We haven’t laid out any demands that we’re insisting on,” Clinton replied.

The official US line is that it attempted unsuccessfully to convince the Honduran military not to proceed with the coup. However, this amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that Washington was well aware of the coup plans.

And what real constitution makes a violent military coup the standard way of resolving differences between branches of government?

The idea that a coup was needed to avert an unconstitutional referendum wouldn’t make much sense even if the president had indeed claimed it was binding. In that case, the president would have claimed the right to run again, the supreme court would have denied it to him, and his term would run out.

So clearly the army just did not want what amounted to a massive exercise of free speech and a petition for redress.

Even if the nonbinding referendum that Zelaya was attempting to hold were illegal, it is difficult to see how a coup and exile would be anything near the best way to preserve the rule of law and the constituional order (I guess, if it were not the the various ideological camps trying to game public perceptions, we could insert the phrase “Well, Duh” right here).

I am wondering exactly how “illegal” this nonbinding referendum was.

FDL would be a very appropriate site to really do the best and most accurate legal analysis (or at least find it for us and post the links)!