Reply #9: MERCENARY UPDATE

[seemslikeadream]

Colum Lynch, Washington Post: In the five years since international police officers were sent to Bosnia to help restore law and order, the U.N. police mission there has faced numerous charges of misconduct, corruption and sexual impropriety. But in virtually every case, the allegations have been hushed up by sending officers home, often without a full investigation, according to internal U.N. reports and interviews with U.S. and European officials . . . But some U.N. and European officials question the wisdom of shifting responsibility onto the international police force without first addressing its flaws, including low recruitment standards, a hazy command structure and the ability of individual officers to act with near impunity . . . Among the 1,832 U.N. police in Bosnia are 161 officers from the United States. Although the record of the U.S. contingent is no worse than others, senior American officials acknowledge serious problems in selecting and training U.S. police officers to serve in Bosnia. That job has been given to a private, Texas-based corporation, Dyn Corp Technical Services, under an exclusive, $15 million annual contract with the State Department. In the past year alone, at least three American policemen were removed from the Bosnian mission for sexual misconduct and exceeding their authority, according to U.N. officials. In prior cases, several other U.S. officers had been forced to resign under suspicion of committing statutory rape, abetting prostitution and accepting valuable gifts from Bosnian officials. Yet none was prosecuted. The most serious punishment imposed on an American officer was dismissal and the loss of a $4,600 bonus. Asked about the allegations, Dyn Corp issued a statement voicing disappointment "that the misconduct of a few individuals has cast a shadow on the more than 2,000 police monitors who have helped to achieve the U.N. mission to rebuild these nations."



MORE http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A88992-2001May28.html

Oil, Colombia’s Black Gold

As the oil supply in the world is dwindling, the US has adopted a fundamental shift in the reliance on imported oil from the Middle East. It focuses on such countries as Colombia to provide the quantities the US needs to secure its consumption which experts say will rise from 18 to 25 million barrels per day. Washington has been increasingly turning to private US firms to carry out military missions in Colombia. At least six US firms now work with Colombian security forces, either hired directly or under contracts with the US departments of State and Defense. Israeli Defense Industry also has several contracts in Colombia, mostly in the communications and electronics firm.
Northrop Grumman of Los Angeles provides and unknown number of US citizens that operate and maintain five radar stations in eastern and southern Colombia that track suspected drug smuggling flights. But by far the largest firm operating in Colombia is DynCorp, with reported annual revenues of $12 million and 2,000 retired generals, admirals and other officers on call. It was hired by the US State Department six years ago under a reported $600 million contract to support coca eradication programs in Colombia. DynCorp provides pilots for herbicide fumigation planes and helicopter gunships that protect the spray missions. Dyn Corp is actively working with the Colombia military to suppress, killed and displaced the population.
While the slaughter of workers, peasants, afro and indigenous population goes on, the Colombian government has extended open arms to foreign investment, Canadian corporations responded beamingly by investing billions of dollars in Colombia in the economic sector where official repression is the greatest, oil-gas and telecommunications. This repression is in response to the opposition by the labour movement to the neo-liberal privatization policies.

The defoliant used in the spraying is contaminating the rivers and lakes, with humidity and rain it runs into the amazon contaminating the water supply in neighboring countries such as Ecuador, Peru, and others. It affects the enzyme system in the body producing tumors in the thyroid, pancreas, liver and in the testicular area affecting the production of healthy sperm. It took 40 years in Vietnam to see the nightmarish results of agent orange in babies and adults…in the case of Colombia we cannot wait 40 years we must denounce and expose this NOW !!! Peasants, indigenous and afro-Colombians are specially targeted in these sprayings, they happen to live in the most rich and diverse areas of Colombia. The afro-Colombian communities are military targets of paramilitary units terrorizing the population, committing horrendous massacres, massacres are a common event in El Choco, and the Pacific region

http://free.freespeech.org/marquelinques/Colombia.html