cannabisnews.com: U.S. Sees Giant Increase in Colombian Cocaine 





U.S. Sees Giant Increase in Colombian Cocaine 
Posted by FoM on November 20, 2000 at 13:18:20 PT
Reuters
Source: Arizona Central
 The lead soldier in the U.S. war on drugs, departing White House drug policy coordinator Gen. Barry McCaffrey, says Marxist rebels are behind ``a giant increase'' in Colombia's cocaine production and are now a dominant force in the narcotics trade. ``I am absolutely unabashed in telling you that the principal organizing entity of cocaine production in the world is the FARC,'' said McCaffrey, referring to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. 
McCaffrey, who has served as President Clinton's director of national drug control policy since March 1996, spoke to foreign journalists on his arrival in Colombia late Sunday for a two-day fact-finding visit. The trip was expected to be the retired general's last to the world's leading cocaine-producing nation, before his planned resignation in early January. McCaffrey was a leading architect of the congressionally approved $1.3 billion package of mostly military aid for Colombia to help thwart the country's booming drug trade and the guerrilla groups that protect and profit from it. In his remarks he staunchly defended the aid package, which aims to halve drug production over five years in Colombia. But McCaffrey -- who critics accuse of opening the door to direct U.S. military involvement in Colombia's increasingly brutal internal conflict -- conceded there was ``some unknown terrain'' in front of the United States as it seeks to shore up Colombia's fragile democracy and ``establish sovereign law'' in rebel-dominated areas of the country's south. ``With the front-end of the process there are great risks and great uncertainties,'' McCaffrey said of the Colombian Army's U.S.-backed push into regions of the south that are prime growing areas for coca, the raw material for cocaine. The anti-drug offensive, in the jungle-covered provinces of Caqueta and Putumayo, is tentatively scheduled to get under way next month. ``They've got thousands of people with automatic weapons down there and it's going to be tough going,'' McCaffrey said. President Andres Pastrana has made slow-moving peace talks with the 17,000-strong FARC, Latin America's largest and oldest guerrilla group, the centerpiece of his administration since he took office in August 1998. But McCaffrey, in what were thought to be his most critical comments on the subject yet, said there was little incentive for the FARC to lay down its arms as long as it was reaping what he estimated at between $500 million and $1 billion a year in profits from production and trafficking in cocaine. ``A GIANT REWARD'' ``The peace process won't move ahead if there's a giant reward -- drugs and the money it brings,'' said McCaffrey. Pastrana has declared a Switzerland-sized area of Colombia's southern jungle and savanna off-limits to state security forces since November 1998, to create a safe haven where FARC rebel commanders would feel at ease as they engaged in talks to end a conflict that has claimed 35,000 lives since 1990. But McCaffrey called the creation of the 16,000-square-mile demilitarized zone, known as the ``despeje,'' a naive mistake on the part of the government. ``I think what's happened has been predictable. It turned into an armed bastion of the FARC,'' said McCaffrey, alleging that the rebel army has used the area as a staging ground for drugs and arms smuggling deals and hit-and-run attacks across the country. ``It absolutely blows my mind,'' said McCaffrey, adding that U.S. spy satellites showed the FARC was also using the demilitarized zone to bolster Colombia's output of cocaine. That output has mushroomed 140 percent in the last four years and totaled a record 520 metric tons in 1999. But McCaffrey said Colombia's cocaine production figures for 2000, due to be released by the CIA in February, would be even more explosive thanks to what he described as the FARC's role as ''the dominant integrating factor'' in the underground trade. ``I think you're going to see a giant increase in production,'' he said. ``We have vital national security interests at stake in Colombia,'' McCaffrey added, when asked about future U.S. support for the country. ``We've got no option, we've got to operate against drug production in Colombia.''    Source: Arizona Central  Published: November 20, 2000Copyright 2000, azcentral.comRelated Articles:U.S. Grows Killer Fungus To Fight Heroinhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7710.shtmlColombian Police Go After Jungle Drug Labshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7024.shtmlCannabisNews Articles - Colombiahttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=colombia
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Comment #6 posted by freedom fighter on November 22, 2000 at 16:05:15 PT
Why Barry cannot shut up?
Few more weeks folks!BYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYEBYBYEBYEBYEBYEBARRYNO ONE WILL MISS YOU!If I was a grower and I knew you the pig were acoming, whadda do you think I am going to do? Stop growing? Why not just increase so you gotta work harder? YOU the PIG, see, you are the reason for the increase. 
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on November 21, 2000 at 17:16:46 PT:
Gen'ruls, pols...and crystal balls
I love it when the antis put their feet in their mouths.Back in 1987, the Congress had approved several bills with the intent of making the US "Drug Free" by 1995.Last time I looked, my calendar said we were five years beyond the target year. In the five years since this boast, the amount of high quality coke and heroin has increased exponentially, the price has practically dropped through the floor, and quality has soared to literally dizzying heights.And still the antis, as if they suffer from severe short term memory loss, conveniently forget their failures and petition Congress for yet more money. (Whether this is caused by senility, or just sampling a bit too much of the perps wares in the evidence room, I leave to the judgement of the reader.)When I worked for Uncle, I'd always hear the smarmy little contractors getting on their high horses and loudly bray that if the government was run like a business, it'd be bankrupt in a month. (Of course, when the *contractors* failed to deliver, they usually were given a 'bye' and allowed to bring the 'product' in late and well above cost, and no doubt wetting their beaks aplenty on the side.)Well, here's a chance for the government to show private industry just how good a business manager it is. By firing each of the top DrugWarriors for incompetence and failing to meet the stated 1995 deadline! They said they could do it...and failed. They've had an extra five years...and still they failed. Hand these Gestapo wannabes the pink slips that their idiotic DrugWar has handed to good workers caught in piss tests. Show them the same door to a very cold world that they have shown to those who were caught doing what our Prez, and soon to be Prez (whichever of the two twerps it might be, either Alfred E. Neumann's clone or a middle aged Walter Mitty, who invented everything) did and got away with. (Better yet, throw their larcenous arses in jail...for embezellment! What have we got to show for the DrugWar except hundreds of billions spent on a perpetually failing program?)But, with the usual perversity of the Universe, the antis would probably survive being pitched off the gravy train; with their pathetic record regarding prognostications (Drug Free America by 1995! Halleleujah!), they could probably get jobs as 1-900 psychics.
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Comment #4 posted by Sudaca on November 21, 2000 at 09:42:44 PT
Giant
ehh,, there's a giant output of .. hm.. DRUGS ( I mean 12 year old kids smoking a joint) .. from all the enemies of the war on drugs. More money is needed to line the pockets of the war bureaucrats, this will ensure job security for thousands of Americans. What better goal than this?
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Comment #3 posted by dddd on November 21, 2000 at 02:19:40 PT
More to come
 Yup...the czar is gonna be layin' on this kind of crap real thick in the next few months. Now that a few of his co-conspirators are starting to jump ship,we will see a bunch of new press releases like this one...Just watch.......dddd
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Comment #2 posted by dankhank on November 20, 2000 at 15:10:17 PT:
Liar
Lies, Lies, Lies is all this man will tell.He is the consummate liar of all the idiots pushing the war on Americans right to choose.
Lots O Links
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Comment #1 posted by TroutMask on November 20, 2000 at 14:37:18 PT
Support is waning; time for some propaganda
Gee, right after support for Plan Colombia begins to wane there is suddenly a "Giant increase in Colombian Cocaine.""Lies for Money" brought to you by the propaganda mongers in Washington D.C. and General of BS Barry McCaffrey.
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