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  U.S. Looks To Loosen Colombian Aid Limits
Posted by FoM on March 12, 2002 at 18:59:28 PT
By Eli J. Lake, UPI State Department Correspondent 
Source: United Press International 

justice The Bush administration is expected in the next week to formally ask Congress to loosen a variety of restrictions on U.S. aid to Colombia aimed at helping President Andres Pastrana's campaign against the Marxist rebels in his country.

Speaking before the Senate Budget Committee Tuesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "We do believe we should help this democracy that is being threatened by narco-traffickers and terrorists.

And therefore we will be sending up in the not-too-distant future language which would give us greater flexibility with respect to the kind of support we can provide."

United Press International has learned that there is a consensus in the Bush administration that this will focus largely on intelligence sharing between Washington and Bogota.

One senior administration official told UPI Tuesday, "We are looking to broaden the basis of intelligence we share to include information on where the terrorists are." This official however stressed that no final decisions have been made on this score.

The current aid program to Colombia is limited largely to counter narcotics assistance. There is for example, a strict prohibition on the Colombian military using U.S. equipment such as helicopter gun ships for counter-insurgency against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the largest rebel group in the country.

This restriction also applies to the type of intelligence the United States may share with Colombia as well to be limited to information aimed at disrupting drug trafficking or crop eradication, for example.

Last month, Pastrana ended the safe haven zone created for the FARC after a wave of kidnappings of high Colombian officials and terrorist incidents. Since then, the State Department in particular has favored loosening restrictions on U.S. military aid to the country. In February, the State Department announced for example a plan to speed the delivery of spare parts to Pastrana's military and to expand some intelligence sharing.

But the administration soon learned that there were limits to what kinds of intelligence the United States could provide under current law.

"The question is, if they see a FARC platoon can the United States help coordinate a strike," one Senate staffer told UPI Tuesday. "Even under the change they've have discussed they did not want to go that far. But the concept is if they saw a FARC platoon going to blow up an economic target would that constitute terrorism and not battle information. And can they share this kind of information."

A Colombian official Tuesday told UPI that his government was looking specifically for more technical intelligence in fighting the civil war, such as satellite photographs and signals interception.

It is still an open question whether the Bush administration will ask Congress to lift the prohibition on using U.S. military equipment to fight the civil war. Since November, Pastrana has asked the administration for such authority.

Source: United Press International
Author: Eli J. Lake, UPI State Department Correspondent
Published: March 12, 2002
Copyright 2002 United Press International
Website: http://www.upi.com/

Related Articles & Web Site:

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

White House to Increase Aid to Colombia
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12209.shtml

Get Out of Colombia
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12206.shtml

Administration Won't Send US Troops To Colombia
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12181.shtml


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Comment #5 posted by Lehder on March 13, 2002 at 12:24:54 PT
Colombia is not Vietnam
Does anyone in the administration realize that they are backing the losing side? Did they see this week's election results? Do they care?

Sure they saw them. And no, they don't care. They interpret the election results as a reason to expand military activity in Colombia all the more urgently, while the puppet Pastrana at least remains in office and while an "invitation" for US escalation can still be secured. Colombia is the doorway to the uppity Hugo Chavez' Venezuela and the oil fields there that are far richer than Colombia's. Soon, illegal drugs and terrorists will be detected in Venezuela.

The US government has learned the lessons of Vietnam, and of the Gulf War, Kosovo and Afghanistan very well. Those lessons are:

--Maintaining a protracted foreign coflict requires strict control of the media and only government approved or government provided stories should be permitted in the mainstream press and TV. Mass demonstrations against war must be shunned by TV. And a massive propaganda campaign must be maintained throughout.

--US troop levels must be kept to low levels except for short conflicts that are easily won. Conscription must never be invoked, but volunteer recruits can be raised as necessary by maintaining a massive underprivileged and impoverished class and by using technology to conduct remotely controlled warfare with extremely few casualities.

--The goals of a foreign conflict, however advertised, should not be to obtain a surrender or a peaceful settlemenmt. Rather, more or less continuous warfare can establish military and economic bases for exploitation of natural resources or local populations. Connect the dots of US bases that are being established presently in central Asia and you'll have a good idea of the petroleum and gas pipelines to come. Let other areas decay to banditry and anarchy. "Nation building" is for idealists, not corporations.

--Air power has advanced to the point that warfare can be successfully conducted from the skies without significant casualties (as long as you're no one's mother). Precision bombing, a novelty in the Gulf war, has improved a lot in ten years - so what if a few Red Cross facilities are hit so long as control over those limited ground areas needed for economic exploitation can be maintained. In Afghanistan, it's been demonstrated to be even more effective when directed by small ground teams that select the targets. In the near future, we will see how such ground-directed air operations are all the more effective when low yield nuclear weapons tailored for specialized functions are also used. If public opinion prohibits the use of these devices, then a first use, which is otherwise utterly incidential to US intentions, by some other group can easily be orchestrated to justify a US nuclear effort.

(See this month's issue of The Atlantic for a short but interesting discussion on the evolution of air power from WWI thru WWII and discussed from a viewpoint likely espoused by our current "leaders"; see next month's issue for part 2, Vietnam thru Afghanistan.)

For some time to come, these strategies will be honed through practice and massive military spending and will become only more effective. With all respect for those who offer the tragedy of Vietnam as a warning to the government and as an example of how a military campaign can become moribund and go wrong and lose popularity, the US is not worried about defeat in Colombia or elsewhere because it is not concerned with victory either, and it is especially unworried about anti-war sentiments at home.

I expect that the US' self-appointed Zarathustras will for some time to come pursue a policy of colonization, exploitation and genocide much like the 19th century British policy - but more competently, more cynically, on a wider and more brutal scale. In the words of John Gotti, "Whaddya gonna do?"



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Comment #4 posted by Tigress58 on March 13, 2002 at 06:15:04 PT
E-Mail Your Representatives NOW!!!
This is sick, insane, and psychotic. The American government is sick, insane, ego-centric, and psychotic. President Bush is not my leader, he needs a mental examination, and needs to be committed to a hospital. Bush is ego-centric and psychotic. This War on Drugs, which has now been renamed and labeled as a War on Terrorism has gone far enough. We have NO business being involved in the civil war of a thrid world country. This will end up being another Vietnam, another war we will have no business in, and will never be able to explain away.

E-mail your representatives NOW!!! I refuse to take part in this civil war. How would Americans like it if a thrid world country came onto our ground, and told us how to run our government, what crops we could grow, and sprayed poison on our houses, children, land, water, and livestock. I would be more than just real pissed off!

Just because America has money, equipment, and power, does not give us the right to be abusive or abrasive. This is at the same level of child abuse - because I am an adult, bigger and stronger than a child, that does not give me the right to manhandle or beat that child, nor to silence the speech of the child, which may be a far more intelligent truth of a situation than any adult can comprehend.

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Comment #3 posted by Lehder on March 13, 2002 at 06:12:55 PT
no end
If, even only as an exercise in black humor, one regards the actions of the US government as purposeful - as I believe they are - rather than foolish or incomeptent, then it's plain to see that they have been brilliantly successful. So why quit now?

TO what sort of society will we be led? To the reduction of the US to a third-world country populated by internal refugees and homeless who have failed because of character deficiencies, a 20% incarceration rate and forced-labor factories, a few all-powerful elites, and scattered walled neighborhoods housing technocrats and sheople who mindlessly build the weapons guns and police technology and who enjoy the good life of happy and insipid comfort under continuous observation for their own protection from the larger hordes of impoverished, violent and ignorant whose fates at the hands of a moral and vigilant state are displayed each day on TV as the news. As in a banana republic you'll be shot along the roadside or more likely trundled to a slave factory without trial for the possession of any number of dangerous items including printed material.

For a time I thought the progression to a feudal-slave-totalitarian state would be halted, eventually, when foreign governments and corporations declare economic war on the US and refuse to buy then heavily sell US stocks, bonds and currency leading to a depression that drives people from their homes and forces a political revolution. But no, somehow, I think the US bosses have all these contingencies well anticipated and kept on file along with the nuclear contingency plans for Holland and Canada and that an economic collapse would be restricted to preordained sectors that will affect you and me but allow the controllers to grow not just more flab but curly tails too.

Just look at what's happened in the last year and extrapolate.

We can hope that, perhaps, the November elections will bring change, and various articles on this board have optimistically described localized minirevolutions. But 88%, according to yesterday's IBD, still find gratification in the war on terror. If the "election" in Florida is a harbinger of the future elections - well, forget about your vote. The medical marijuana votes may have been victories of principle, but have brought more repression in practice. The elections in Colombia have been unreported and only propel US military intervention. But I'll wait until November, particularly for the Alaskan ballots and the government's response, before abandoning hope for democratic reform.

Another terrorist attack, either here or in London, would activate all the emergency measures that two George Bushes and their corporations could desire and make the invasion of Iraq politically very popular, certainly in the US. Buena suerte, le deseo bien.

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Comment #2 posted by Ethan Russo MD on March 13, 2002 at 04:14:01 PT:

Vietnam Redux
Does anyone in the administration realize that they are backing the losing side? Did they see this week's election results? Do they care?

The guitarist/songwriter/genius Richard Thompson has some tongue-in-cheek lyrics in his song "Nearly in Love" (Album: "Daring Adventures") that are a propos of administration attitudes:

I don't want to cause you doubt But I'm really checking you out You're the closest to my heart bar none Except for my wallet and my gun.

It is this over-the-top cowboy attitude that puts us at odds with almost every government in the world at this time. It is the moment to wake up and smell defeat in foreign policy in Colombia and certainly in the War on Drugs.

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Comment #1 posted by Rambler on March 12, 2002 at 23:51:25 PT
it never ends.
And it wont end.Can anyone imagine an "end",to the cult of aggression driven by Wall Streets Ma and Pa retirement funds?
What we have here is a sort of collosal Enron game.If the defense machine slows down,the stock market drops.


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