U.S. aid implicated in abuses of power in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Washington Post

U.S. aid implicated in abuses of power in Colombia
Monday, August 22, 2011
By Karen DeYoung and Claudia J. Duque, The Washington Post

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The Obama administration often cites Colombia's thriving democracy as proof that U.S. assistance, know-how and commitment can turn around a potentially failed state under terrorist siege.

The country's U.S.-funded counterinsurgency campaign against a Marxist rebel group -- and the civilian and military coordination behind it -- is viewed as so successful that it has become a model for strategy in Afghanistan.

But new revelations in long-running political scandals under former President Alvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally throughout his eight-year tenure, have implicated U.S. aid, and possibly U.S. officials, in egregious abuses of power and illegal actions by the Colombian government under the guise of fighting terrorism and drug smuggling.

American cash, equipment and training, supplied to elite units of the Colombian intelligence service over the past decade to help smash cocaine-trafficking rings, were used to carry out spying operations and smear campaigns against Supreme Court justices, Mr. Uribe's political opponents and civil society groups, according to law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with prosecutors and former Colombian intelligence officials.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11234/1168962-82.stm

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This story was posted by rabs in the Latin American forum earlier Sunday evening:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x55095

[midnight]

1. Oops... More spying...

[McCamy Taylor]

2. More breaking news! The sky is blue, the sea is wet and man walked on the moon.

Is there is a Pulitzer prize for reporting the obvious?

[Judi Lynn]

3. The tricky part is what comes next, now they are allowing this information to be published here.

People have known about it from the first, of course, but that information just never seemed to get acknowledged by US media.

Now Uribe apparently is getting outed in his own country, regardless of the power he wielded in the past, it's going to be harder and harder for our government to whitewash him, and completely bury the fact they've known this is going on from the first.

Don't forget the Department of Defense did a report on Colombian criminals and their political allies in the early 1990's, and Uribe as well as his father were both named, as well as the fact Alvaro Uribe was named as friendly with Pablo Escobar.

So maybe the scheme will involve dumping everything on Uribe, now he can no longer be protected as well as some political people want, and draw a total line separating him from the current President who used to be his Defense Minister for 8 years. He's still needed by the U.S. for future operations.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Oh ! Surprise surprise

NOT.

:hi:

[sabrina 1]

5. It's good they are finally reporting this here. The same thing is

going on in other countries in S. America right now. Evo Morales, eg, has charged that Aid orgs in his country are undermining their democracy also.

But it's frustrating that it did not get reported when it could have saved lives. Why are we always on the wrong side in these countries? And how many innocent people were brutally slaughtered with the help of the US? We just don't care, and a majority of AMercians cheer each time we back another brutal war.

Thank you for your work on South American news Judi Lynn. It is very much appreciated.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Colombia’s Operation Stairway and the secret agent who carried it out

Colombia’s Operation Stairway and the secret agent who carried it out
Juan Forero, Published: August 20

BOGOTA, Colombia — Alba Luz Florez, a secret agent with Colombia’s central spy agency, recalled preparing diligently for her mission. At first, she was told only that it was a matter of national security.

She left her family for a safe house and took on a new identity. She underwent three months of intense training on how to develop informants. Then she and planners in the intelligence agency mapped out every step of an operation that called on her to infiltrate the Colombian Supreme Court in the search of evidence linking its justices with the criminal underworld.

“Everything I could learn about the court was of utmost importance to the agency,” Florez, 33, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Florez said she never questioned the motivation behind the operation, which prosecutors now say was designed to cripple the court’s investigation of corrupt congressmen, most of them allies of then-President Alvaro Uribe. Indeed, the intelligence agency — the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS — was under the control of the president.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/colombias-operation-stairway-and-the-secret-agent-who-carried-it-out/2011/08/20/gIQAJ6LYSJ_story.html?wprss=rss_americas

[ScottLand]

7. We'll turn on him like we always do.

An ally and a tool to help us achieve our goals are the same thing (and nothing more) when it comes to world leaders.

[rabs]

8. Alvarito fires back at the Washington Post

Last week Uribe spoke for almost five hours before a Colombian House of Representatives commission. He denied ever breaking the law and defended his family and his government from all accusations of wrongdoing. But he got up abruptly and walked rapidly out the chamber when an attorney for the victims of his wiretapping scandal tried to interrogate him.

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It did not take long for uribito to lash out at the Post on his Twitter account.

(Translation from El Tiempo newspaper of Bogota mine.)

Hours after the article appeared, uribito expressed his "profound deception" to "Mr. Marcus W. Brauchli," editor of the Post.

In a communique uribito said the Post's story put in doubt "the methods and results of (his) government to construct a society free of terrorism, narco-traffic and to save the nation from (becoming) a failed state."

alvarito said the article "manipulates the facts and distorts reality, damages the image of (his) government, which dismantled the paramilitary structures in Colombia and extradited the main leaders to the United States."

In the communique the former president highlighted the successes obtained under his government and reiterated that during his mandate "(he) never ordered any measure against the members of the Supreme Court or any other actions that were against the law." He accused the authors of the article of "difamatory accusations" against him.

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El Tiempo article (Spanish)

http://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/con-ayuda-de-ee-uu-a-colombia-se-han-cometido-abusos_10197744-4

[Judi Lynn]

14. He looks as if he's loosing ground rapidly, doesn't he? Love that photo.

He's just not getting the respect he used to be able to command under threat of genuine catastrophe.

Sure wish there were some way President Obama could rescind the Medal of Freedom _{George W. Bush} handed out to his creepy little pal! Neither one of them apparently believed it would be possible their kind of power would ever fail them.

http://www.elespectador.com.nyud.net:8090/files/images/nov2008/8b741830c1737c852258ed812e7c2ec8.jpg http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov.nyud.net:8090/news/releases/2009/01/images/20090113-7_p011309cg-0452-515h.jpg

http://www.ironmaidencolombia.com.nyud.net:8090/Imagenes/interpreimages/uribe_y_bush.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_HyyDHyAwI6k/Syk3FqdOLRI/AAAAAAAAHbw/LokF7-RS29A/s400/uribe+and+bush.jpg

[xchrom]

9. Recommend

[Solly Mack]

10. K&R

[bitchkitty]

11. Golly gee, who woulda thunk it? n/t

[fascisthunter]

12. Viva Uribe!!!!!! Here's your Dictator....

oh, but he supports the same shit most third way deems and republicans support... more for the wealthy and nothing for the rest, especially those who want what's owed to the people/workers themselves.

[jwirr]

13. We cannot honestly say we did not know this shit was going on. In

the 60s we knew that our CIA and USAID were undermining most of the South American countries. Now we know that is was in conjunction with IMF, the World Bank, Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys. What I am truly angry about is that it is still going on.

When these countries turn to socialism it is our own fault - we have been working to turn them that way for decades. We should leave them alone. And if we crash in the coming years we are getting what we deserve. What goes around comes around.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Para-Business Gone Bananas: Chiquita Brands in Columbia

Para-Business Gone Bananas: Chiquita Brands in Columbia
Monday 22 August 2011
by: William Moore, Council on Hemispheric Affairs | News Analysis

In March 2007 in a U.S. District Court, Chiquita Brands International pled guilty to one count of “Engaging in Transactions with a Specially-Designated Global Terrorist.” The banana giant confessed to paying the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the nation’s notoriously violent network of right-wing paramilitary groups, USD 1.7 million in over one hundred payments between 1997 and 2004. Yet the case was resolved by a cash settlement, thus failing to publicly expose both sides of their quid pro quo relationship. A 2011 declassification of Chiquita documents, confessions by former paramilitaries, and ongoing lawsuits lay bare the U.S. corporation’s ruthless profiteering and invite cautious hope of justice for the victims.

The Rise of Paramilitaries

The AUC paramilitaries have their roots in Colombia’s internal armed conflict. The violence began in 1948 in Bogotá as a bloody civil war between Liberals and Conservatives. The partisan warfare ended with the National Front, a political pact that snubbed dissident factions of Liberals, Communists, self-defense communities, and independent peasant organizations. By the 1960s and 1970s, the conflict had morphed into a guerrilla insurgency against the state, which sought to rectify a history of inequality and social exclusion. This phase of integration on the part of internal leftist forces gave rise to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which continues to call for greater land access, rural development, political participation, and an end to the extrajudicial murder of its supporters.

Colombia’s thriving drug exports of the 1980s profoundly altered the class-based conflict, generating the multipolar civil war that continues today. Narco-traffickers laundered their newfound wealth through the purchase of plantations in the traditional cattle and agricultural regions, which further exacerbated the land struggle and displacement of peasants. The emerging class of drug lords established death squads to protect their financial interests, often targeting guerrilla forces in the field. In tandem, the Colombian military organized paramilitary groups to combat leftist insurgents and safeguard the landed elite. However, the right-wing paramilitaries largely deviated from state control as they solidified essential links to cocaine kingpins, large landowners, industrialists, and bankers.

By the mid-1990s, paramilitary chiefs had secured their autonomy through the production and trafficking of cocaine, and combined their private armies to form the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The umbrella group ruthlessly attacked any civilians suspected of harboring guerrilla sympathies. They quartered victims with chainsaws, cut off their tongues and testicles, and poured battery acid down their throats.Hardline AUC commander Carlos Castaño defended the sanguine strategy as “draining the water to catch the fish.”

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/para-business-gone-bananas-chiquita-brands-columbia/1314035320