The Clintons and Colombia
Weekend Edition April 11-13, 2014
A Parting Human Rights Crime
The Clintons and Colombia
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and ALEXANDER COCKBURN
If ever there was a couple
who left a sour taste in the mouth by the manner of their parting it was surely
Bill and Hillary Clinton. From time to time, against our better judgment, we’ve tried to summon some sympathy for them, and time after time they’ve brusquely brought us back to Earth
with some bleak reminder of their all-round rottenness.
Try
Colombia. Less than 48 hours before Bill Clinton quit the White House, with a legal
deal covering his own ass, his administration announced that it would employ
a highly questionable legal interpretation of “Plan Colombia”–the
$1.3 billion in aid going mostly to the Colombian military. The interpretation
allowed the administration to dodge entirely any certification or waiver of
human rights conditions attached to the aid, thus circumventing the whole certification
process in providing money to the Colombian government.
Now, these human rights certifications were the object of fierce lobbying by human
rights groups all through the year 2000. After the certification was added, proponents of the
plan tried to undermine human rights stipulations by adding the “waiver”
option to the aid. You can argue that the experience of similar lobbying in
the 1980s over aid to Central America should have instructed the groups in the
folly of expecting any administration to honor such commitments, but this doesn’t
diminish the squalor and cynicism of what the Clinton team did in its dying
hours.
In August of 2000, Clinton waived four of the five human rights criteria laid out by Congress
to release the first chunk of $781.5 million. A certification or waiver was
also required for the second installment of $56.4 million. Two Democratic senators, Paul Wellstone and Tom Harkin, called on Clinton as late as last week to reject
a waiver for the second slice because the Colombian government had “failed
to make significant progress” on human rights.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/11/the-clintons-and-colombia/
