NYT, June 7, 1998
[a4a: That's a "democratic" way of saying "we know who you are, and where find you, and if you persist, we will shoot you." Keep in mind that the US has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, police, and paramilitaries at its School of the Americas in these very tactics.]
The troops said the organization, the Intercongregational Committee for Justice and Peace, a Jesuit group, was a front for Communist guerrillas, harbored explosives and weapons and was involved in the killing of a former Defense Minister. Two suspected rebels had been seen frequenting the committee's house, the soldiers said.
But the real reason for the raid, the victims contend, was disclosed when the soldiers stormed the upstairs offices where researchers have been collecting details on 40,000 cases of torture, forced disappearances, and killings in the 30-year-long civil war here.
[a4a: Note that despite the evidence, the "journalist" here says the victims merely "contend" that, while in the paragraph above, the soldiers didn't "contend" -- rather, they "said". Notice the subtle spin at work, here.]
For 15 minutes the soldiers videotaped screen after screen of testimony on the computers, eventually locking out the researchers while they worked.
"We came for this, and we're not going to leave without it," workers at the committee quoted the soldiers as having told them.
The testimony is part of a project that the group was preparing, called Nunca Mas, or Never Again. It was conceived much like the Guatemalan report of the same name chronicling state-sponsored brutality; the day after a 75-year-old Roman Catholic cleric, Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, issued the four-volume report, he was killed.
[a4a: This is very, very common in US-supported, trained, and funded "democratic" regimes, you'll find, if you do the research.]
The raid on the committee offices appears to be part of a wave of assaults on the chroniclers of human rights abuses in Latin America. Another came in April at the office of the Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo in Buenos Aires, a repository for the records of 30,000 cases of torture and forced disappearances in the seven years of the military dictatorship in Argentina.
[a4a: Can you see why the US opposed the formation of the UN World Court for trying crimes against humanity? Funny how these tyrannies we train and support tend to have these horrid human rights records, isn't it? This isn't an exception -- it's policy.]
In Bogota, a human rights lawyer who spent 12 years investigating the military's actions in the guerrilla siege of the Justice Palace in 1985 was killed in April in his apartment. The lawyer, Eduardo Umana, had said that he had proof that the military had executed 50 rebels after having interrrogated and tortured them, and that the people trapped in the siege, like judges and cafeteria workers, were killed by military gunfire, not by the guerrillas.
Although the cases in Argentina and Guatemala appear to have involved escaping responsibility for atrocities in wars that have ended, the war here in Colombia rages on. Last year the United States agreed to renew aid to the Colombian Army, provided that any units that received aid divulged accusations of human rights abuses against its members and demonstrated that steps were being taken to hold them accountable.
[a4a: This is called "lip service" in policy circles. The US is, of course, very concerned about human rights. That's why it is giving taxpayer money to known murderous regimes.]
"What's very clear is they want to destroy this work," said the president of the Committee for Justice and Peace, the Rev. Javier Giraldo, 59.
Father Giraldo said that the soldiers had videotaped all the rooms, stairs, and windows and that they had told him they intended to build a model of the house.
[a4a: This is definitive tactic employed by US forces. It serves to intimidate the dissidents, and also to provide a nice battle plan when you plan to move in and bust them up for real. I've read books that show the FBI doing this exact tactic. Obviously these fellows remembered the US training they got. Check out "FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose" by M. Wesley Swearingen, South End Press.]
"Maybe they're going to strike us again or bomb us," Father Giraldo said.
Father Giraldo, like a number of other human rights workers and Government officials involved in trying to end the violence in Colombia, said he believed he was a marked man.
[a4a: A dead man. That's what happens to people who speak out in US-sponsored death squad democracies.]
The soldiers who searched the office were from the 5th Brigade, whose commander, Gen. Rito Alejo del Rio Rojas, called Father Giraldo a subversive because he had investigated military complicity with paramilitary death squads in Uraba when Gen. Alejo was in command there.
Gen. Alejo was reportedly among 13 Colombian military officers and agents who recently lost their United States visas, although both he and the United States have declined to comment on the reports.
Rumors have circulated about a list of people singled out for death, some of whom have already been killed. Others, like the head of the Presidential Peace Commission, Daniel Garcia-Pena, have found reasons to leave the country. Others sleep in different places each night.
[a4a: The death squads are always closely allied with the militaries the US supports. The purpose of them is to make it appear that the atrocities committed are flukes, or exceptions, rather than systematic and state-sponsored and supported. In fed language, they call it "deniability" -- where you do all but pull the trigger, but you can still claim no knowledge of the events that happened, because your goon squads did the dirty work. Watch The Godfather if you want to see how that works.]
Questioned by Government agencies, human rights groups and reporters during the two-hour raid, the chief prosecutor ordered it suspended, but the military commanders ignored that.
The prosecutor, Alfonso Gomez Mendez, and the military leader, Gen.Manuel Jose Bonett, declined repeated requests for interviews.
No weapons or rebels were found in the raid.
[a4a: These are American "allies" -- what are considered "the good guys". What do you think? I like that last throw-away line. While the soldiers "said" there were weapons cached there, none were found. I guess they lied, eh?]
[a4a: We already are involved. "Dragged into" means we won't have to use American soldiers to keep the tyranny in power. Right now, we're relying on Colombian military and death squad paramilitaries, but they seem to be losing, hence the shot in the arm with the new "aid package". If that doesn't work, I guarantee some pretext will be found for American soldiers to invade Colombia.]
President Clinton is asking Congress to pass a two-year, $1.6 billion aid package to help Colombia crack down on cocaine and heroine production.
[a4a: Half the story. Read on for the real story.]
The bulk of the aid will be used to buy helicopters for three battalions trained by the United States to take on leftist guerrillas who control the main drug producing areas in southern Colombia.
[a4a: I like the insinuation here -- the "journalist" doesn't say outright that the guerrillas produce the drugs; rather, only that they control the main drug-producing areas. Keep in mind that the Colombian government itself is deeply involved in the drug trade. But you're not supposed to know that, because it would undermine the whole reason behind our lavish military aid.]
"We won't allow the U.S. presence to get out of control," U.S. Southern Command chief, Gen. Charles Wilhelm, told a House drug policy subcommittee hearing on the aid boost to Colombia.
Wilhelm said U.S. credibility was at stake.
Between 150 and 180 U.S. servicemen are now in Colombia on an average day, but that number will increase with the training of two new anti-drug army battalions, he said.
Wilhelm said he wanted to put a general in Bogota to raise the seniority of the officer in charge of the U.S. military group in Colombia. It is now headed by a colonel.
[a4a: I find it interesting that they don't mention who this mysterious colonel is, or who the general will be. Seems like that's newsworthy, eh? Now, if we knew that, then we could look into those people's track records and see where they were used before. But the "reporter" keeps it a secret.]
[a4a: The majority of whom were killed by the very government we're supporting. Don't forget the article at the top of this page. Also, I like how the hack says "have died" instead of "were killed" -- because it removes the actor from the action. They just died. Nobody killed them. Because if somebody killed them, then you'd wonder who, and if you looked it up, you'd find the majority were, in fact, killed by the government. Sneaky, eh?]
But Republican congressmen lambasted the administration for taking so long to help Colombia wage war on well-financed and heavily armed "narco-guerrillas" who control 40 percent of the countryside.
"Several years ago Colombia grew only enough poppies to fill a flower arrangement," said Florida Republican John Mica.
Colombia supplies 80 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States. In the last five years, it has become a major heroine producer too.
New estimates by the CIA released on Monday show that U.S. authorities had drastically underestimated Colombian cocaine output.
According to the new CIA figures, which will strengthen the case for aid, Colombia's potential to produce cocaine rose to 520 metric tons last year from 435 tons in 1998. The CIA had previously estimated 1998 output at 165 tons.
[a4a: A thinking reader would realize that such high-volume production could only occur with government complicity and outright involvement. But again, such considerations are not permissible, because it would derail the American counterinsurgency policy and all that money and weaponry they're sending.]
[a4a: Not yet. If this doesn't work, and I doubt it will, the US will probably try to get a UN peacekeeping force down there. And if that fails, then the US will invade. It's done it before; it will again. It is not permissible for a leftist regime to successfully revolt so near to the US. Especially one with oil assets. Check out information on Occidental Petroleum, if you like. They're involved in Colombia.]
"The Department of Defense will not step over the line that divides counter-narcotics from counter-insurgency," Ana Maria Salazar, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Drug Enforcement Policy, told the subcommittee.
[a4a: Probably because that line is a myth. There is no line. The US is propping up the brutal tyranny of Colombia with military aid, under the pretense of fighting the Drug War (which has come to replace the Cold War as the justification for our continued murderous foreign policy). End of story.]
Wilhelm said the first of the three U.S.-trained army battalions, based at Tres Esquinas in Caqueta province, had already gone out on two operations with police forces.
"They have taken down labs and identified transit points; they have seized (coca) base and precursor chemicals; they have plotted coca fields that are now targeted for eradication," the general said.
[a4a: One key precursor chemical in cocaine production is acetone. But you find that the US lets that flow freely into Colombia. If the US was serious about fighting the Drug War (it isn't) -- it would stop sending acetone to Colombia.]
Increasing anti-drug aid to Colombia has become all the more crucial since the United States closed its bases in Panama last year, Wilhelm said.
Drug patrol and interception missions are being flown from airports in Curacao, Aruba and Ecuador, but they are at one third of their previous capacity, he said.
White House aides expect the Republican-run Congress to pass the Colombian aid package by April. In 1999, Colombia received $289 million in U.S. assistance, making it the largest recipient after Israel and Egypt.
[a4a: There's yet another bit to the story. Read between the lines. The worst nightmare for the US is for the rebels to overthrow the Colombian death squad regime. Follow the money to see how important that is to the US.]
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