Panetta tours Colombian military training center; US can share lessons from Afghanistan
Source: Associated Press
Panetta tours Colombian military training center; US can share lessons from Afghanistan
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, April 24, 1:39 AM
BOGOTA, Colombia — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta got a glimpse into how America’s military’s experience in Afghanistan is contributing to the U.S. counterinsurgency training in Colombia.
While the two conflicts are no perfect match, U.S. military and defense officials said they can learn from the Colombian’s long and bloody campaign against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. Likewise, Colombia can learn from U.S. experiences battling the Taliban’s roadside bomb threat, which has been the No. 1 killer in Afghanistan.
Under a blistering sun, Panetta and his staff flew Monday to the Talemaida Army Base in the mountains outside Bogota, where U.S. trainers help instruct members of the Colombian special forces.
Panetta also announced during his visit to the base that the U.S. would facilitate the sale of 10 helicopters to Bogota — five Army Black Hawks and five commercial aircraft — to help Colombian forces in their fight against the FARC.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/panetta-tours-colombian-military-training-center-us-can-share-lessons-from-afghanistan/2012/04/24/gIQA3mZfdT_story.html
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given the evidence that the U.S. was using Colombia to train death squads for Iraq and Afghanistan and to test out various horrible ideas, for instance a Pentagon/USAID "pacification" program for killing peasants and clearing them off their land in La Macarena, Colombia, scene of a dreadful Colombian military (and possibly U.S. military) massacre (mass grave found with 500 to 2,000 bodies).
Last year, the U.S. State Department "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan"--a little blip in the Corporate Press that I suspected was an Obama administration coverup of a Bush Junta war crime. ("Unauthorized," my ass!) This was likely the "tip of the iceberg" as to Bush Junta war crimes in Colombia.
In these recent statements of "U.S. military and defense officials"--with Leon Panetta in tow--they seem to be reversing what actually occurred. It's not that Afghanistan can now help Colombia with the nastier aspects of civil war; it's that Colombia's 70 year civil war was used to train soldiers in the fine points of "turkey shoots" of civilians, for the Iraq/Afghanistan "theater" and to test out systems, such as the La Macarena "pacification" project. Colombia was also, I believe, used to test out drone aircraft and God knows what else. It's quite strange that they would use the U.S. war on Afghanistan as an exemplar of what the Colombia military should do to the Colombia's people. They were already doing it and were thus the exemplar for the Bush Junta of how to rid the countryside of peasants and community activists.
In the second period of the Bush Junta, around the time that they decided to fuck over Mexico with the "war on drugs" (which was also about oil*), they added the "war on terror" to the "war on drugs" as the justification for the U.S. military presence in Colombia and the expenditure of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to exterminate peasants in Colombia.
FIVE MILLION peasant farmers were brutally driven from their lands in Colombia, by state terror--THE worst human displacement crisis on earth--and thousands of peasants and others were murdered, mostly during the Bush Junta, with $7 billion in military aid from U.S. taxpayers. Brutalizing and displacing millions of peasants, and decapitating the labor movement, were also an important preliminary for U.S. "free trade for the rich," which the Obama administration is now following up on.
There is also evidence of a direct connection between the U.S. (Bushwhack) Embassy in Bogota and the vast illegal domestic spying operation of Bush pal, Alvaro Uribe (president and 'mafia' boss of Colombia during the Bush Junta). Uribe was likely using his spy agency (DAS, recently disbanded) to draw up 'hit lists" of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists and others, for Uribe's network of rightwing death squads to assassinate, and to spy on judges and prosecutors, for purposes of blackmail and intimidation (and also to anticipate prosecutors' moves in their various investigations of Uribe). DAS had an American agent reporting to the U.S. embassy, according to recent testimony in Colombia. Further, a wikileaks-revealed cable indicates that the president of Panama (a Uribe crony) demanded similar help from the Bush Junta to spy on his "enemies."
There are several "tips of the iceberg" evidences of Obama administration involvement in covering up these Bush Junta crimes in Colombia. These include the midnight extradition of death squad witnesses to the U.S., where they were "buried" in the U.S. federal prison system (by complete sealing of their cases--an unusual move), out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their vociferous objections. This sneaky extradition was arranged by Alvaro Uribe and the Bushwhack ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, whom the Obama administration left in place (likely under far rightwing pressure brought by first term U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (SC-Diebold), who controlled Obama policy in Latin America during Obama's first year). Brownfield and Uribe also secretly negotiated and secretly signed a U.S./Colombia military agreement that included "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. personnel (including private military 'contractors') in Colombia, circa 2009-2010 (Obama administration). This agreement was later declared unconstitutional by the Colombian supreme court, but still, it points to U.S. (Bush Junta) intent to immunize its agents against the Colombian legal system and Obama administration collusion in that intent.
Thirdly, it is likely that the Obama administration (likely Panetta) who arranged the flight of DAS Director Maria Hurtado to Panama and her receipt of instant asylum there--an outrageous violation of one Latin American country's legal system by another. Colombian prosecutors applied to Interpol for her return. (They want her testimony about Uribe, whom I believe is under Panetta's protection.) Interpol declined. Both Panama and Interpol are very likely being pressured by the U.S. (Obama administration, likely Panetta again) in an effort to protect Uribe, who knows too much about Bush Junta crimes in Colombia.
As for the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs," I think that the Bush Junta was, in truth, using it to consolidate the cocaine trade into fewer hands and to better direct its trillion-plus dollar revenue stream to certain beneficiaries (the Bush Cartel, the CIA, U.S. banksters). It is quite interesting that, for all the U.S. taxpayer billions wasted on the "war on drugs," the cocaine just keeps on flowing, and that recently, it has been RIGHTWING leaders in Latin America, including the current president of Colombia, Manuel Santos, who have been most visibly and publicly calling for the legalization of drugs. I suspect that Big Pharma is behind this. Their R&D is complete, the "consolidation" is complete, sufficient land has been cleared of peasant farmers and now they are ready to capitalize on the legalization of herbal, recreational and addictive drugs.
To sum up, in my opinion, the Bush Junta had the following purposes in Colombia (I'm not sure of their order of priority):
1) To test out military and private systems for "pacifying" Iraq and Afghanistan, using Colombians as guinea pigs;
2) To prepare the way for U.S. "free trade for the rich," by slaughtering peasants and trade unionists and other advocates of the poor and driving five million peasants from their farm lands and into urban squalor (where they are unable to feed their families and now comprise a slave labor force for local fascists and transglobal corporations).
3) To profit from the cocaine trade while it is illicit (by, among other things, driving the peasants, who grow a few coca plants, out, and favoring the big, protected drug lords) and then, when Big Pharma and associated corporations like Monsanto, and big corrupt 'new' landowners (many of them, Uribe's cronies) have control of the land, to "launder" the trade by legalization.
I DON'T think that the Obama administration is dirty on the illicit drug trade (or, rather, I don't think its principles are; many U.S. personnel down the line--in the DEA, the Pentagon, the CIA, etc.--may well be) but I DO think--and it's rather obvious--that the Obama administration is under some of kind of enforceable obligation to cover up Bush Junta crimes. Obama stated openly that, "We need to look forward not backward" on the crimes of the rich and powerful (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al). This not only means no prosecution (for their many and heinous crimes) but not even any investigation whatsoever--of crimes that boggle the mind (hundreds of thousands of innocents slaughtered in Iraq for no good reason; torture on a big scale; theft, on a monumental scale; malfeasance in virtually every agency of the U.S. government; the bankruptcy of the United States, and on and on.)
Panetta is a key player in this massive coverup. He was a member of Bush Sr.'s "Iraq Study Group" and was instrumental, in my opinion, in the ouster of Rumsfeld (for Rumsfeld and Cheney's assault on the CIA, and for their rash plan to nuke Iran--which Bush Sr. opposed probably because of his interests in China and maybe also because nuclear armageddon in the Middle East would have been "bad for business"
. I see Panetta as the enforcer of Obama's obligation to protect Bush Jr. and his Junta from investigation and prosecution. I believe that Panetta is "old CIA"--despite the falsehood that was touted around in the Corporate Press for a short time that he was a "novice" to the Agency. (CIA personnel greeted this "novice" with delirious celebration and champagne corks popping on his first day there? Not likely.) He (just announced in a small article in the Corporate Press this week) has revamped the intelligence relationship between the CIA and the Pentagon (--the final "peace treaty" in the war between these two that Rumsfeld and Cheney started?). I believe that, among his Bush Sr.-designated duties were, a) to end the war between the Pentagon and the CIA, and b) to protect Bush Jr. perhaps from the CIA itself and certainly from a war crimes investigation (including war crimes in Colombia).
One of Panetta's first visible actions as CIA Director was to go to Bogota (of all places!). There he yanked the very dangerously dirty Uribe from the stage (he was threatening a coup to stay in power) and vetted and approved Santos to run this major U.S. client state. It is not likely that these "U.S. military and defense officials" who are trying to reverse reality on the relationship between Colombia and Afghanistan (and Iraq) would do so without Panetta's okay. It is a colossal lie--which, of course, the propagandists of the Washington Puss and the Associate Pukes do nothing to question. But we need to ask what this portends. It could just be more coverup. It could also be Panetta offering more war to the war profiteers, given the downsizing in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this could bode ill for yet more bloodshed and horror for the people of Colombia.
I find it fantastically grotesque that the U.S. military would compare the roadside bomb carnage in Afghanistan to Colombia's civil war, and to propose more U.S. military 'training' and money as the solution in Colombia. Amnesty International has documented that the Colombian military itself is responsible for over 90% of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia--about half committed by the Colombian military itself, and the other half by their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads. The FARC? 2%. WHO is responsible for most of the carnage in Colombia? The very military that Panetta and generals were meeting with and applauding!
Lies and more lies--in an endless cycle of U.S. violence on behalf of transglobal corporations!
When the military and a figure like Panetta lie like this, you gotta be worried that something worse is coming down the line. At the least, it means that something worse has already occurred, that is being shoved under the rug (and I've outlined what the past history likely is). I've thought of Panetta as a clever and intelligent man, if a bloody-handed imperialist. Rumsfeld and Cheney were stupid (especially crossing Bush Sr.). Panetta is not stupid. But what is he up to?
Santos' first act in office was to make peace with Venezuela. (Uribe was a horrible warmonger.) Since Panetta visited Bogota just before that happened, I thought this might be a good sign that we were passing from outright violence (mass slaughter of the peasants and others), in Colombia, to the less bloody economic warfare of U.S. "free trade for the rich." But, being U.S. vetted and approved, Santos could be a "sheep in wolf's clothing" and party to, say, a plan to crush the remnants of the FARC and all the innocent peasants and others who are still in that path, and proceed into Venezuela, say, if Chavez dies (he is seriously ill with cancer) to insure a U.S. puppet over Venezuela and its oil. I really cannot say with any certainty that Santos is NOT such a wolf. His history as Uribe's Defense Minister (for two years) makes one wonder about him. He seems to be in a struggle against Uribe's far rightwing criminal network but is he just smarter than Uribe (avoided getting his hands dirty, sucked up to the new administration in Washington, talks a plausible, sort of "liberal" line, but has hidden intentions of more war and violent oppression)? If Diebold puts Romney and Jeb Bush in the White House, we may find out.
The recent history of the Democratic and Republican administrations of the U.S. war machine is that the Democrats prepare the ground for war--as Bill Clinton prepared the ground for the Bush Junta war on Iraq--and the Democrats then "mop up," help people forget, and prepare the ground for the next war. We've seen the "mopping up" that the Obama administration did with Iraq after the oil contracts were signed. Is Obama now preparing the ground, or permitting the ground to be prepared, for the next oil war, in South America? Is this another task that Panetta was given by Bush Sr.? There is evidence both ways--toward more peaceful relations with Latin America and toward more war. I can't "read" the situation yet or make a guess, but I find this article very worrisome.
They want to apply "lessons" from Afghanistan to Colombia and from Colombia to Afghanistan?
Jeez.
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*(Their boy Calderon was unable to privatize Mexico's constitutionally protected oil resource--his main "brief" from the Bush Junta--there was too much opposition to it in Mexico; so they decided to wreck Mexico instead--to soften it up with a mountain of dead bodies and to pour billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into militarizing Mexico thus making civil life--for instance, the movement against privatization of the oil--difficult if not impossible. In short, they turned Mexico into another Colombia.)
