From CNN - On Monday, African-American activist Randall Robinson said Aristide had called him on a smuggled cell phone and told him that he did not leave office voluntarily. Robinson said Aristide told him he was “abducted” by U.S. soldiers in “full battle gear” early Sunday and was being held “incommunicado” in the Central African Republic.

Robinson, speaking from the Caribbean island of St Kitts, said Aristide had telephoned him on a cell phone on Monday morning from a room in the Central African Republic, where he said he was being guarded by African and French soldiers.

“The president said to me that he had been abducted from his home by about 20 American soldiers in full battle gear with automatic weapons and put on a plane” on Sunday morning, Robertson said.

“Across the aisle from him and Mrs. Aristide sat the American soldier who apparently was the commander of the contingent. They were not told where they were going, nor were they allowed to make any phone calls before they left the house or on the plane,” he said.

He said Aristide had told him the plane made two stops before landing in the Central African Republic and that the Americans had instructed them not to raise the blinds to look out when the plane was on the ground.

“Not until they arrived did the president learn where he was,” Robertson said. “He said to me twice before he had to get off the phone, ‘Tell the world that it’s a coup. That American soldiers abducted (me).”‘

The kidnapping accusation also was reported Monday by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, and Aristide’s attorney, Ira Kurzman. Waters said she had spoken with Aristide by phone…

White House spokesman Scott McClellan described the claims as “complete nonsense.” “Conspiracy theories do nothing to help the Haitian people move forward to a better, more free and more prosperous future.”

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Being a respectable commentator with impeccably high standards, I generally don’t trade in rumors unless I have the opportunity to start them (and thus secure myself a place in journalistic history if they turn out to be true). But the possible kidnapping of Aristide by US marines is just too rich and weird to pass up. There’s a lesson here: If you want us big media types to pick up your implausible rumor, you’ve gotta swing for the fences.

So, the big question is this: What the @#&$! went on there?

[By the way, my thanks to William Safire, who in last Sunday’s “On Language” column explained that @#&$! is derived from the latin root “$#*” and seems to be a colloquial merging of that and the old Flemish “@^%~.” I’d always thought it was a bastardization of the Portuguese “%@$!”]

Anyway, there seem to be a limited number of possibilities here, and they all have the virtue of being utterly ridiculous:

1) Aristide is lying. He’s so embarrassed by what’s happened and so determined to to muster popular support for his eventual return that he actually asked our marines to escort him to safety and then, while still in their custody, turned around and accused them of kidnapping. It’s not the kind of thing that you or I would feel comfortable doing while still surrounded by a battalion of heavily-armed leathernecks, but Aristide might be made of sterner stuff. And I use “stern” in its Old English sense, meaning “the quality of being out of one’s &$*#$ gourd.” [Thanks again to Mr. Safire!]

2) Aristide is telling the truth. It’s uncomfortable to say so, but this one’s pretty plausible. The Bush administration has demonstrated again and again that it’s willing to break a few eggs in the interests of making a more palatable international omelette. The eggs in question are multilateralism, protocol, international law, transparency, and honesty, but it’d be hard to argue that they’re not capable of justifying some extremely loony means in pursuit of some desirable ends. Besides, there’s always the tried and true Bush excuse that it was done by a Well Meaning But Ultimately Misguided Underling Who Helped Us Achieve Our Ends But Whose Actions We Don’t Condone At All No Sir Not In The Least. The administration seems to be riddled with these handy rascals, who have been responsible for everything from riots at Florida voting centers to the Plame leak to file stealing to the insertion of nonexistent African yellowcake in the State of the Union address. Every morning, it seems, the White House wakes up to see that they’ve been supplied with dozens of pairs of shoes by benevolent elves, saving their modest cobbler’s existence. And if a lot of other folks wake up to find their shoes mysteriously missing, well, we can’t blame that on the administration…

3) It was all a big misunderstanding. It’s possible. Think of it: The last time a phalanx of armed marines came marching into your house and politely offered their services in the event that you should want to hop onto a plane and live out your life in African exile, did you jump to the conclusion that this was more of an order than a request? You probably did.

Ultimately, Aristide’s exit is a good thing, preventing a lot of bloodshed and suffering, at least in the short term. And if memory serves, it wouldn’t be the first time in the past year that the US has effected a desirable regime change with Charles Bronson-esque disregard for international law and protocol. And the Haiti thing bears one more telling resemblance to the Bush administration’s other foreign escapades:

We don’t have any coherent idea of what to do next.