Reply #10: The CIA in Columbia: Bush Revisits Iran-Contra?

[L. Coyote]

The CIA in Columbia: Bush Revisits Iran-Contra?
January 23, 2002 - by Faun Otter - http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/01/23_columbia.html

For some reason, our always-probing US media have hardly mentioned the rising toll of murdered civilians in Colombia, the heart of Latin America's cocaine exporting region. The BBC report that the right wing hit teams, the AUC, are led by medellin drug lords such as Jose Rodriguez Gacha and Fidel Castano. The AUC sign up anyone who wants to grab a gun and slaughter people that they brand "guerrillas." Their recruits are a mixture of local warlords, drugs traffickers and disaffected members of the security forces, ominously similar to the Contras under Reagan.

The paramilitaries have experienced tremendous growth under Bush's chum, president Andres Pastrana. This is due in part to their links to the Colombian army. As their numbers have swollen, so have the number of massacres and murders of left-wing intellectuals, union workers, human rights activists and journalists.

For anyone who has read about the CIA supervised methods of suppressing peasant populations, the AUC's procedures are chillingly familiar -

"The death squads arrive in communities in areas of guerrilla influence with a list in hand. The list contains names of suspected guerrilla sympathisers. All those on the list are killed, usually in front of their families and in a most gruesome manner." (http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/01/23_columbia.html)

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