Reply #7: Hauntingly similar to Vietnam. "Only" 600 US soldiers and 600 US mercenaries (!)

[Peace Patriot]

to begin with, in this deal with Colombia (they said "only" a few hundred US "advisers" in Vietam, early on). They will be immune from Colombian laws. And seven new US military bases will be established in Colombia--a government with one of the worst human rights records on earth--already receiving $6 BILLION in US military aid. Extremely corrupt US puppet government that will do whatever the Pentagon says, to keep that military booty coming. The Pentagon will be using all the civilian airports as well. There is this melding of civilian/military as in Vietnam. The government is militaristic. That is the only way it can stay in power, propped up by lavish US military spending.

Thousands of political leftists, labor leaders, human rights workers, journalists, small peasant farmers and others--people who advocate for the very poor majority of Colombians--have been slaughtered by the Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads. The chaos caused by the US "war on drugs" is like the chaos that the CIA was causing in Vietnam--brutal repression of the Buddhists, for instance--to get rid of the US installed president, Diem, before JFK could arrange neutral status for Vietnam in the "Cold War"--as had been arranged for Laos. (This is documented in James Douglass' book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died And Why It Matters"--a very important book.) The US "war on drugs" has caused displacement of several million people in Colombia--mainly extremely pour peasant farmers, some driven from their lands by toxic pesticide spraying, others mostly by the Colombian military and its death squads (whom a UN human rights reports just said are responsible for 75% of the extrajudicial murders in Colombia). Many of the displaced have fled over the borders into Venezuela and Ecuador, mostly from the Colombian military and its death squads. This kind of mayhem is designed to easily control a country's population--much like Rumsfeld used in Iraq, and certainly like the CIA used in Vietnam--to bend every event and every resource toward whatever the US purpose is.

The objects of all of this military spending and basically US invasion of Colombia--"invited" by the very corrupt government (also similar to Vietnam)--is neither drug interdiction nor the FARC leftist guerrillas of Colombia's 40+ year civil war. The object appears to me to be to create a launching pad into neighboring countries--rather like Honduras was for the Reagan killers in the 1980s (launching death squads into Nicaragua and El Salvador) but on a much bigger scale. The destinations for the launching pad would be Venezuela's main oil region adjacent to Colombia in the north (on the Caribbean--where the US 4th Fleet is now roaming, reconstituted by the Bushwacks) and into Ecuador's main oil region adjacent to Colombia to the south. The object of the CIA in Vietnam was to create a civil war. They established the corrupt South Vietnamese government and funded it and its army, in opposition to the far more legitimate government of Ho Chi Minh (the country's liberator from the French colonialists) in the North. The oil war plan that I think Rumsfeld left on the desk for South America may involve creating civil wars in Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil regions.

In fact, Ecuador's president has stated publicly that there is a coordinated rightwing plot to instigate secessionist movements against the governments of three countries--Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia. The Bushwhacks tried out the secessionist idea last September in Bolivia, with the white separatist movement, which wanted to split off Bolivia's gas/oil rich eastern provinces into a fascist mini-state in the control of Bolivia's main resource. That effort failed, but it may be tried again. Fascist politicians in Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil regions openly talk of secession. This is another similarity to Vietnam--rightwing malcontents and greedbags getting lots of US aid, and the US then being invited to invade the country in 'defense' of these 'patriots', and running their own war for their own purposes. Though the object in Vietnam was not oil--the notion of instigating a civil war, by providing material support to forces who otherwise would not have had the support or wherewithal to oppose a legitimate government, is hauntingly familiar.

Those of us who have been following events in these countries over the last several years know that the US/Colombia have already rehearsed a joint bombing/raid into Ecuador (the bombing/raid that killed 25 sleeping people in Raul Reyes' temporary hostage release camp just inside Ecuador's border). That raid was useful for stopping all hope for peace in Colombia's civil war, for psyops against Ecuador's leftist president, as well as against Chavez, and for a third purpose (possibly the main one) of a US/Colombia coordination of forces in staging a border incident. As to psyops, the Colombians claimed to have seized Reyes' laptop computer--at a site that was blasted by ten 500 lb US "smart bombs" (according to the Ecuadoran military, who also said that Colombia did not have the capability to deliver such bombs)--and then began issuing wild statements saying, for instance, that Chavez was helping the FARC get a "dirty bomb," and that Correa was also a "terrorist lover." The incident almost caused a war between the US/Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela (March 2008). Lula da Silva of Brazil credits Chavez with preventing it.

So, clearly the region is being set up for another "Gulf of Tonkin"-type incident, which would be triggered when the secessionist forces inside Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil regions are ready to "declare their independence" and ask for US/Colombian support. And I believe this is what Rumsfeld was talking about, in his op-ed of 12/1/07 in the Washington Post, in which he urges "swift action" by the US in support of "friends and allies" in Latin America. (The op-ed is entitled, "The Smart Way to Defeat Tyrants Like Chavez.")

Another parallel to Vietnam--and one of the spookiest ones--is the QUIETUDE in the US about the buildup of US military forces in South America. This is very similar to what was happening in the US circa early 1960s, while the CIA manufactured a war in Vietnam, and JFK eventually turned against it and tried to stop it. Three days after JFK's assassination, LBJ said, "Now they can have their war." He was talking about Vietnam. There is more to this, but I won't go into it here. My point is that these dire events that were occurring within the government--for instance, the struggle between JFK and the CIA and the Joint Chiefs over nuking Russia, and over Vietnam--the American people had no idea that our government was planning a war that would kill 2 million people in Southeast Asia, and over 55,000 US soldiers. By the 1964 election (after Kennedy's death the previous November), LBJ could run as "the peace candidate" (and win by a huge landslide) and the voters did not know that he was lying. (I remember it well. It was my first vote for president. I voted for peace!) By 1965, we were in a full-scale war in Vietnam, on the basis of the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident which has been manufactured--invented, made up, not real.

The deal for establishment of seven new US bases in Colombia was done in secret, excluding the Colombian congress and people. Neither was there any consultation with other South American leaders, all of whom have objected to this US buildup. But the Great Quiet in the US is even more remarkable and disturbing. The seven bases deal has to come to the US Congress for approval. The Bushwhack appointee to the Colombian embassy, Brownfield--a very bad dude, believe me--just "signed" this deal in Colombia on behalf of the US government. I have no idea what President Obama thinks of it, but he may be helpless to prevent it, even if he opposes it. Jim DeMint is blackmailing Obama, by holding up all of this Latin America appointments, ostensibly because Obama opposed the rightwing coup (DeMint's good buds) in Honduras, but this blackmail may be more connected to the Colombian seven bases deal, with very significant war profiteer booty involved--but even more than this, with a WAR PLAN involved, lurking somewhere in the Pentagon, out of sight, out of mind.