Burma Out! Columbia : The Ugly Amer

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Subject: Re: Burma Out! Columbia : The Ugly Americans...

This is chemical warefare? Boy, these guys are going to do some real
jungle damage: ``This is a war, a conflict that we must win
collectively. (Drugs) is a
chemical and a weapon of mass destruction that kills our children one at
a time,´´ he added.  

This guy is nuts who said that. He's talking "mass destruction", can't
you just see real estate values in Harlem taking off? What about Burma 
junta, isnt that MASS DESTRUCTION? Why dont they send the boys there?
You know, on a practice mission there, in drug eradication, and oh,
sorry, you said we could come..... Oh, too late, all the generals are in
jail. But the US is too chicken to do that, or what, they want the drugs
to keep coming. Cleaning up Columbia isnot going to stop the drug
problem. This is so stupid. Its just a publicity thing to get Columbia
checked out by the world institutions as, a good guy state, after all
the rotten corruption. Forget it. Nice try. They ought to help the
rebels get some education, jobs, clothes, a future. 

Once again, the drug problem is too widespread, too profitable, to
terminate it with a politico-military solution. It never worked, and
won't work. And the Columbian generals and political leaders and elites
are laughing all the way at the dumb americans...



Dont you love the way these military hats talk: "mission
creep":`Colombia is not the first place where the
potential for mission creep is great.´´ Aren't they a little wierd?

"Mission Creep". Right sergent. Get on it, now! Mission Creep. I think
she must be referring to "Creep" the Republican funding arm in the Nixon
White House during Watergate days, the reelection campaign funding arm. 
You know how many millions of dollars can be laundered into the US
presidential contest? Millions! Maybe they are after the money now, and
not so much the drugs. Hell, grunt soldiers are the first to lose, and
the first to die when generals get the gold.

The US is really goint ape (as in bananas) on this one: sounds like, ah,
send the marines to haiti (remember, Wilson 1916) in some nice "Send the
Marines" fanfare. Didnt clean up Haiti. And the Bahama's? Is the USG
going to invade the Bahama's? Still on drug bad list. This is nothing
short than an excuse to test out latest weaponry, keep the boys fit, hav
some real fighting fun killing people, and dehumanizing the civil war
there against the power drug barons. Interesting they kill the people,
while the drug laundering banks stay open, from the Bahamas to Rangoon.
So they think they can do another clean up operation like they did in El
Salvador, killing all the democrats... great guys, they get wrong again,
while the drugs come flying out by tons...What are they going to do,
invade all of South America? What a joke. Well, its no joke, its more
budget approvals, more lobbying, more headlines, more nightmare, more
killing, and the drug problem remains the same. 

``This represents a quantitative and a qualitative shift. This creates
from scratch U.S.-trained units and they (the United States) will be
maintaining contacts through the joint intelligence command,´´ said
George Vickers, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin
America (WOLA), who also attended the conference.

Brillant boys, dont you like the mental shifts!


> Saturday November 13 7:41 AM ET
> U.S. Steps Up Drug War in Colombia
> By Karl Penhaul
> 
> CARLISLE, Pa. (Reuters) - The United States is due to begin training two
> new Colombian army anti-drug battalions next spring in a move political
> analysts said on Saturday could give Washington a more direct role in
> the long-running war against drugs and Marxist rebels. Gen. Keith Huber,
> operations director of the U.S. Army's Miami-based Southern Command,
> said on Friday that each of the elite units would comprise some 950 men
> -- similar to the Colombian army's first anti-drug battalion set up
> earlier this year with U.S. know-how at an estimated cost of some $70
> million.
> Plans to create the units were outlined months ago but Huber gave the
> first firm timetable. He said all three units, together with a joint
> U.S.-Colombian military intelligence center would be based in southern
> Colombia, a region rife with illegal drug plantations and a stronghold
> of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Latin America's
> largest surviving 1960s rebel army.
> Despite some $289 million in U.S. aid last fiscal year, cocaine and
> heroin production has spiraled in Colombia. Human rights groups and some
> political analysts argue Washington is looking to reverse that setback
> by setting up the battalions that will be subject to heavy U.S.
> influence and thereby give the Pentagon a much greater say in how
> Colombia's three-decade-old war is fought. ``We have been told to get
> prepared to train (two new anti-drug battalions) and that will begin
> next spring. There is no funding as yet,´´ Huber, who served as a
> Special Forces adviser during the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s,
> told reporters on the sidelines of a two-day conference about Colombia
> at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
> ``This is a war, a conflict that we must win collectively. (Drugs) is a
> chemical and a weapon of mass destruction that kills our children one at
> a time,´´ he added.
> Officials in Washington and Bogota accuse Colombia's 20,000 guerrillas
> of fueling a two-fold increase in cocaine production and a 20 percent
> rise in heroin output over the last four years. They say the rebels earn
> some $600 million a year in drug profits to bankroll an uprising that
> has claimed more than 35,000 lives in just 10 years -- a charge the
> guerrillas deny.
> ``The enemy in Colombia is a business enterprise and if you want to look
> at how to defeat that you must look at how they grow (the drugs) process
> it and transport it,´´ Huber said.
> Despite on-going wrangles in the U.S. Congress that have blocked a
> planned $1.5 billion, three-year aid package to Colombia, the creation
> of the new units seems unlikely to be delayed. The necessary funding
> could be drawn from U.S. Department of Defense coffers with little or no
> accountability to Congress.
> Rights groups see the creation of the battalions as the start of a much
> more significant U.S. role in Colombia. Washington already has some 220
> U.S. personnel, including soldiers and advisers, in Colombia at any one
> time.
> ``This represents a quantitative and a qualitative shift. This creates
> from scratch U.S.-trained units and they (the United States) will be
> maintaining contacts through the joint intelligence command,´´ said
> George Vickers, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin
> America (WOLA), who also attended the conference. ``It´s a mechanism
> that could give Southern Command not necessarily a determining role but
> certainly a strong influence over what will be done,´´ he said.
> Gen. Ernesto Gilibert, sub-director of Colombia's National Police,
> however, believed the issue was simply one of the army giving greater
> operational support to the police, which until now has taken a lead role
> in drug interdiction efforts.
> But many political analysts continue to warn that under the pretext of
> fighting drugs Washington will be sucked into the quagmire of Colombia's
> guerrilla war.
> ``Some people are making the same mistakes they made with Vietnam in
> 1963,´´ said Cynthia Watson, associate dean of the National War
> College in Washington, D.C. ``Colombia is not the first place where the
> potential for mission creep is great.´´
> ______________________________________
> 
> Follow the plea by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the appreciations
> of HH the Dalai Lama, the Shan Democratic Union,  film maker John
> Pilger, the Free Burma Coalition,  author Alan Clements, Dennis
> Skinner MP, Tony Benn MP, Ann Clwyd MP, Congress-woman
> Maxine Waters,  Socialist Workers' Party,  Dr and Welsh rugby
> star JPR Williams, Hendrix  bassist Noel Redding,  S African jazz
> pianist Abdullah Ibrahim,  All Burma Students Democratic
> Organisation,  All Burma Students Democratic Front, Tasmanian
> Trades & Labour Council,  SACP (South African Communist Party),
> COSATU,  Tim Gopsill, editor.  The.Journalist@xxxxxxxxxx, and
> numerous others.
> 
> Supporting a Genuine war upon drugs and human rights abuse.
> Sydney 2000 : Burma Out!
> http://www.mihra.org/2k/burma.htm
> 
> Music Industry Human Rights Association
> http://www.mihra.org / policy.office@xxxxxxxxx
> 
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> 
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>                           ========================