It should also be noted that Columbia is one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid...mostly military aid to the right wing government of Pres. Alvaro Uribe who has long-standing ties to right wing paramilitary.
Quote:
Uribe is clamping down on the opposition, while sidling yet closer to the Republican White House in Washington. Uribe was the only South American leader to back President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. At the time, he even went so far as to invite the United States to invade Colombia. Uribe hopes to double the size of the Colombian Armed Forces, and has asked the United States for more helicopters and greater involvement in areas such as intelligence gathering. Many in the Bush administration are keen to see the United States expand its multi-billion dollar military investment in “Plan Colombia.” U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James T. Hill, for example, recently told a Senate committee, “It would be a terrible loss if democracy failed in Colombia. You need to let me get on the ground.”
But before that happens, the United States is pushing for Uribe to reign in his illegal paramilitary allies. The peasant militias and million-strong informers’ network that Uribe has launched are evidence of the way in which the paramilitary strategy is being institutionalized. Under the “state of unrest” that Uribe decreed upon assuming the presidency, the police and army were granted the right to detain citizens on the slightest suspicion of supporting the guerrillas, without evidence or legal counsel, and to enter people’s homes without a warrant.
...
As Bush and Uribe have both said time and again, in the “war on terror” there can be no neutrals. President Uribe has branded those NGOs that do claim to occupy a non-partisan position on the armed conflict “political agitators in the service of terrorism, cowards who wrap themselves in the banner of human rights.” Only pro-government, anti-guerrilla NGOs are being left untouched.
Uribe’s strategy is to bring the war out into the open, to declare social organizations illegal, and to use the army and police against them directly, while holding “negotiations” with the paramilitaries. Given the murderous tactics that Uribe is prepared to resort to, it is easy to understand why trade unionists and human rights defenders are inclined to feel despondent. It also makes the unquestioning support being offered Uribe by the U.S. and British governments all the more immoral.
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia185.htm
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Recent testimony from the head of U.S. Southern Command, Admiral James Stavridis:
Quote:
In Colombia, we have spent over $4 billion since 1999 to stem the flow of illegal drugs into our country and aid the Colombians in their fight against home-grown terrorists. But, according to the latest figures from the Justice Department, the supply and purity of illicit narcotics on our streets has not changed much in the last several years.
The Administration of President Uribe is also currently embroiled in a criminal investigation into a seemingly widespread conspiracy between high-ranking government officials and leaders of the terrorist paramilitaries.
I fear that this scandal and the underlying unholy alliance, if proven to be true, will severely undermine the ability of the Colombians to assume greater responsibility for combating narcotics trafficking and taking the fight to the terrorists, both of which may place a larger strain on our American forces during this time of war.
http://www.cipcol.org/archives/000423.htm#more
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Another example of the US foreign policy approach of getting in bed with a right wing thug (Uribe) to counter an imaginary "terrorist" threat to the US and/or a "threat" from the left wing neighbor (Hugo Chavez, who is no angel either).
How many examples do we need from recent history that this kind of "diplomacy" and this kind of "ally" is not in our long-term interest?