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  More U.S. Aid To Colombia Urged as Peace Fails
Posted by FoM on February 21, 2002 at 19:32:35 PT
By Anthony Boadle 
Source: Reuters 

justice Renewed warfare in Colombia between Marxist rebels and an army bolstered by U.S. military aid prompted calls by some Latin American experts on Thursday for more U.S. assistance in the fight against the guerrillas.

Since 1998, Colombia has received more military aid from the United States than any country outside the Middle East. But the assistance has been restricted by Congress to the war against drugs in the world's largest cocaine-producing nation.

The United States must provide military aid to Colombia's army to help fight armed groups, including the right-wing paramilitaries, who are allegedly responsible for the worst human rights violations, Peter Romero, an assistant secretary of state for Latin America during the Clinton administration, told Reuters. About 40,000 Colombians died in fighting in the past decade.

"Just helping Colombia on counternarcotics and not doing more is not in keeping with our stated policy of fighting terrorism wherever it is," Romero said.

Political analysts said the upsurge in fighting would likely intensify the debate on whether the United States should get more involved in Colombia's four-decade-old conflict, a direction already signaled by President George W. Bush when he asked Congress on Feb. 5 for funds to protect an oil pipeline used by Occidental Petroleum Corp. from repeated attacks.

Political analysts said that what little support existed for peace talks in Colombia evaporated in Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks, which prompted Bush's global war on terrorism.

The State Department said on Thursday this week's hijacking of an airliner and kidnapping of a senator by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC, were definitive proof of the group's terrorist aims.

"We have ceaselessly drawn attention to their heinous acts and had called on them to negotiate in good faith," a State Department official said.

The Colombian air force bombed FARC camps and airstrips early on Thursday in an offensive aimed at taking back a guerrilla safe haven conceded to the rebels by President Andres Pastrana to get the peace talks going three years ago.

Republicans in Washington had criticized Pastrana for being overly generous, saying the guerrillas were using the zone the size of Switzerland to grow drug crops and hide hostages.

"Most people in Washington, as well as most Colombians, thought the peace process was already dead," said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank on hemispheric relations.

URBAN GUERRILLA WARFARE SEEN

Shifter said he expected to see the FARC respond by taking its guerrilla campaign into Colombian cities.

He said that would add urgency to a debate over how far the United States was prepared to go in Colombia, caught in a three-way conflict among leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary militias, financed by the drug trade, and government forces.

If the FARC took to urban guerrilla warfare and threatened Colombia's cities and democratic institutions, the United States would have to get more involved, said John Biehl, director of the International Crisis Group in Bogota.

Biehl, a key adviser in the Central American peace accords of the 1980s, said only U.S. military equipment and training could prop up the Colombian state if its democracy was threatened with collapse and widespread bloodshed.

Direct U.S. intervention with troops was not foreseen, but that could change.

"It depends on how bad the conflict becomes. Today, everything in Washington is seen in terms of national security and terrorism," said Ricardo Israel, a professor at the University of Chile's Political Science Institute.

"The United States will react to the extent that it sees a military or terrorist threat in Colombia", Israel said.

DRUGS AND TERROR ADS

A military outcome is now expected in Colombia, where the leading candidate in the presidential election in May, Alvaro Uribe, is a hard-line opponent of negotiating with the rebels.

In the United States, the White House stepped up pressure on Colombia's rebels by targeting them in anti-drug ads that directly associated drugs and terror, further blurring the line between counternarcotics and countersubversion.

The first ads in the monthlong, $10 million media campaign aired on Super Bowl night earlier this month before a television audience of 87 million, warning Americans the $66 billion they spent each year on illegal drugs helped fund terrorist groups such as the FARC.

"It links efforts to prevent drug use to acts of terror, especially in South America, and specifically in Colombia," said Jennifer de Vallance, a spokeswoman for the White House's Office for National Drug Control Policy.

"We have known about the acts of terrorism going on there for years. However, the message resonates with the American public more than it ever has before after September 11," she said.

Source: Reuters
Author: Anthony Boadle
Published: Thursday, February 21, 2002
Copyright: 2001 Reuters Limited

Related Articles & Web Site:

Colombia Drug War News
http://freedomtoexhale.com/colombia.htm

Bush Backs Colombian Crackdown on Rebels
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12068.shtml

US Seeks To Help Colombia Defend Pipeline
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11926.shtml

When War is Over, Oil Dealers Will Be Winners
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11081.shtml


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Comment #7 posted by Lehder on February 22, 2002 at 10:15:09 PT
it's in the envelope...
and headed for the mail box. Newspapers are a start. TV is next. Then the trials for treason and genocide can begin.

In the October 2000 elections for state governors and legislators - at the time, Narco News was the only English-language news agency to report the results - the voters massively repudiated and rejected Pastrana's conservative party, which lost every single state election and saw the election of many governors and officials from small independent parties, breaking the lock of a corrupted two-party system.

http://www.narconews.com/boom.html

Your days are numbered in the U.S., too, Drug Warriors. You're all going to prison.



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #6 posted by Shishaldin on February 22, 2002 at 08:36:13 PT
Walters Ad
I donated $100 yesterday. I want to see this ad in print SO bad! Let's give the Drug Warriors a bit of action!

If Al Martin's info on Walters is correct (See Jose's #3 post), then I see another ad campaign a-comin'...

Peace and Strength,

Shishaldin

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #5 posted by TroutMask on February 22, 2002 at 07:21:49 PT
HELP US PLACE SOME ADS OF OUR OWN!
Hello! The Libertarian party is trying to run some anti-Drug War ads in USA Today and Washington Post. You've probably seen the BS "drug users aid terrorists" ads from the ONDCP on TV and in your local newspaper. Well, the Libertarians are trying to run spoof ads, very similar to the ONDCP's ad, but with a picture of Heir John Walters saying:

"This week, I had lunch with the president, testified before Congress, and helped funnel $40 million in illegal drug money to groups like the Taliban."

There is a PDF file of the ad at the web site:

http://www.lp.org/issues/drugczarad.html

I am personally not a Libertarian, but I don't care what group runs this ad! YOU don't have to be a Libertarian to help us run this ad! If you can give a few dollars, a few dozen dollars or anything to help us run this ad, we will bring the War Against the War on Drugs right to their faces!

So please help if you can!

http://www.lp.org/issues/drugczarad.html

Thanks,

-TM



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #4 posted by Jose Melendez on February 22, 2002 at 06:44:13 PT:

posted on mapinc.org and cannabisculture.com
To the Editor;

It was interesting to see the full page article on the dangers of marijuana in your paper Monday morning. Reading it I noticed that nearly all the information was provided by NIDA, the government agency that has been providing the medical arguments in support of prohibition for years. There was no mention of the studies done by countless organizations around the world, many government sponsored, that have caused the international community to move in the direction of decriminalizing marijuana. Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, the U.K, France, even Ukraine either have legalized personal possession of marijuana or are on the verge of doing so. The US press however, still allows such propaganda about the dangers of marijuana to go unchallenged far too often.

After the Canadian government recently approved a system to provide marijuana for those who need it for medical reasons the editor of the Canadian Medical Journal, Dr. John Hoey, stated that "Our view is that the government should probably take a little bit more bold step and decriminalize it. It turns out that it is really quite an innocuous drug..."

Nicolas Eyle, executive director

ReconsiDer: forum on drug policy

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #3 posted by Jose Melendez on February 22, 2002 at 05:12:00 PT:

If this is true, hemp should be used for hangings
from:
http://www.conspiracydigest.com/dirtysecrets.html

Dirty Secret:

Drug Czar Walters and the Iran-Contra Connection

by Uri Dowbenko

John P. Walters, appointed "Drug Czar" by President George Bush Jr., is uniquely qualified for his new job. He was actually involved in the Iran-Contra Drug Trafficking Cover-up.

In a recent interview, whistle-blower Al Martin, who testified before the congressional Kerry Committee and the Alexander Committee about Iran-Contra, stated that "when Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams went to Panama to have a meeting with [former Panamanian ruler] Noriega, he took along Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Michael Kozak, and John Walters, who at that time had been appointed special advisor to the State Department's Office of Inter-American Affairs."

Martin says, "They went down to smooth things over with Noriega, who was complaining that he wasn't getting a big enough piece of the pie for allowing Panama to be used as a trans-shipping point for drugs and weapons. We were complaining that he wasn't keeping up his end of the bargain, making facilities secure for the storage of drugs and weapons. His G-2 was pilfering a lot of materiel. Meanwhile Noriega was complaining that he wasn't getting a big enough slice of the pie."

"This came soon after Oliver North had ripped Noriega off for $5 million dollars in that boat deal with Donald Aronow [See Chapter 18 of "The Conspirators" by Al Martin]. He was still upset about Ollie taking his money. So the three of them went down to have a discussion. They met at the Intercontinental Hotel in Panama on December 10 to smooth things out."

"Noriega was promised a bigger cut of the pie, when he said he wasn't making enough money," Martin continues. "He claimed there were a lot of people on his end within G-2 that had to be paid. Abrams tried to tell him that everybody was not getting the cut they had. The price of cocaine was falling so rapidly because we were importing so much of the stuff. Consequently the whole pie had become smaller than before. And that's what John Walters was all about. Now he's appointed 'drug czar,' which is not only ironic, it's absolutely laughable."

"When he went down to meet with Noriega, John Walters was the 'special advisor.' His father Vernon Walters got him the position. His father is very, very loyal to the Bush Cabal and had been for years. You don't see Vern much anymore. Vernon Walters was one of the original post-war Military-Industrial Complexers."

A little family history -- the father of John Walters is US Army Lieutenant General Vernon A. Walters, the deputy director of the CIA from 1972 to 1976 during the Nixon administration.

When the Watergate scandal erupted, Walters was very adept at covering the CIA's liabilities. After all, Agency fingerprints were all over the Watergate burglary, and the prime players -- the Cubans, Hunt and McCord -- were all CIA agents or assets. Later, according to "Silent Coup" author Len Colodny, his old friend General Alexander Haig was instrumental in getting Walters the job of translator for the secret Paris talks between Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese. Walters was also the acting Director of Central Intelligence in 1973 (between James Schlesinger's and William Colby's directorship). Later Vernon Walters was appointed Ambassador-at-Large by President Reagan.

In his book "The Conspirators," Al Martin describes the real reason why the price of cocaine kept falling in the mid 1980s. In a chapter called "Classified Illegal Operations Cordoba and Screw Worm," he describes how Oliver North planned to distribute "more cocaine into the United States than ever imagined before. 'Operation Screw Worm' was the last and the largest. It envisioned a tremendous expansion of 'authorized' narcotics trafficking."

Martin writes, "North had set up the time in May 1986 of the first biweekly policy and planning session of the FDN and this absolutely astounded me. Fred Ikley was there. Donald Gregg himself was there. The usual cast of characters, Manuel Diaz, Nestor Sanchez."

"North envisioned an increase of 50,000 kilograms a month which absolutely astounded me," Martin continues.

"Jeb Bush [the current governor of Florida], I think, correctly voiced concerns that had already come into play that the Agency [CIA] was dealing in so much cocaine that its street value was becoming depressed. This had already happened. In 1985, cocaine was commanding $30,000 per kilogram. By 1986, it had dropped to $15,000 per kilogram and was continuing to drop."

"But North felt it was important to raise the revenues, so there was going to be a tremendous increase in importation," writes Martin. (P.65, "The Conspirators" by Al Martin; 2001; $14.95; National Liberty Press LLC; Order Line: 877-776-9004; Website: Al Martin Raw www.almartinraw.com)

The appointment of John P. Walters as Head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy makes him the perfect "Drug Czar." His previous job was Deputy Director for Supply Reduction, the No.2 position under William Bennett in George Bush Sr.'s administration.

According to the Washington Post, "Walters stresses the importance of criminal penalties for drug users and openly opposes the use of marijuana for medical purposes."

What makes Walters uniquely qualified, however, is his intimate knowledge of how to cover up US Government drug trafficking. And, of course, he has vowed to continue the pretense of the Phony War on Drugs.

And here's the context. According to the Department of Justice, there is $500 billion to $1 trillion of money laundering a year in the United States. Financing the federal deficit and keeping the stock market buoyed actually depends on the daily reinvestment of laundered monies. A large percentage of that depends on the cash flow from the high-margin profits of narcotics trafficking, government contract fraud, the burgeoning for-profit prison industry and its concomitant slave labor market - all key components of the Phony War on Drugs."

With his "hands-on experience" in Iran-Contra drug trafficking, the appointment of John Walters as George Bush's new "drug czar" is a fitting crown for a man who knows what it takes to keep the flow of drugs moving into the country - and the necessary cash flow moving through Wall Street.

By the way, the AP story is ironically headlined - "Bush's choice for drug czar vows to help addicts." (May 11, 2001)

Who knows? Maybe John Walters will make the price of cocaine drop again…

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #2 posted by goneposthole on February 22, 2002 at 04:51:30 PT
crud czar
Ollie North, Noriega, Willaim Bennet, all those guys...Who are those guys?

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #1 posted by goneposthole on February 21, 2002 at 20:06:46 PT
When did the people of Colombia become the enemy?
I really do not see any support for a war in Colombia.

Farc geurillas have toppled energy towers, and will now begin urban guerilla warfare.

A northward migration will ensue. I would expect FARC terrorism in the US this summer.

The US government should be seeking peace on all fronts. We have no room for war here at home.

If our leaders continue to pursue military intervention instead of peace, the cost will probably be too great to bear.

Just a silly ol' guess, but then I predicted the Marines to be attacked in Lebanon back in the early eighties.

"You called her," they said. Well, I'm calling it again. MMW.

This war stuff is getting old, how long has it been going on now? Too long!

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