Ecuador’s Leader Purges Military and Moves to Expel American Base

[ensho]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/world/americas/21ecuador.html


Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuadorean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 members of the American military from an air base here in this coastal city.

Mr. Correa — who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs — said that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the C.I.A.” He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration’s top ally in Latin America.

-snip-

The gambit also poses a clear challenge to the United States. For nearly a decade, the base here in Manta has been the most prominent American military outpost in South America and an important facet of the United States’ drug-fighting efforts. Some 100 antinarcotics flights leave here each month to survey the Pacific in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with drug traffickers bound for the United States.

-snip-

“We must get past our legacy of relying too much on military relations with the United States, with President Bush showing little regard for national borders or sovereignty,” Mr. Ponce said. “The risk of remaining too close to such a partner is one of ideological contagion.”
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love that 'ideological contagion'

[L. Coyote]

1. President Bush poses danger "of ideological contagion" = "No somos Fascistas!"

“... showing little regard for national borders or sovereignty,” Mr. Ponce said. Like Hitler!

[Peace Patriot]

2. I don't click on NYT articles, cuz they have yet to redeem themselves for Judith Miller,

but I will venture to guess that they don't explain WHY Ecuador is so mad at Bush-U.S. military presence in their country. The majority have been against it for a long time, because it is an affront to their sovereignty. (When the president of the country, Rafael Correa, was asked about this by reporters in Miami, he replied that he would agree to U.S. boots on the ground in Ecuador when the U.S. agreed to Ecuador placing a military base in Miami!)

But, recently--last month--Colombia used U.S. surveillance and ten 500 lb. U.S. "smart bomb" (and possibly also U.S. aircraft and personnel), very likely from the Manta base, to bomb the shit out of a FARC (Colombian leftist guerilla) camp just inside Ecuador's border, and then sent troops over the border to shoot any survivors. They killed 25 people, including the chief FARC hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, and an Ecuadoran citizen as well as several visiting Mexican students (apparently there to participate in a humanitarian hostage release mission). The Ecuador military found a blown away camp site, and bodies in their pajamas shot the back. The FARC had not been fighting or harming anyone, in that instance. This was no 'hot pursuit" (as Bush's boy Uribe, president of Colombia, had lied to Correa). So the U.S., very likely using the same military base that the previous Ecuadoran government had graciously permitted them to place on Ecuadoran soil, for their phony, corrupt "war on drugs," colluded with Colombia to violate Ecuador's sovereignty--an act that nearly brought the two countries to war.

The reason that Raul Reyes had set up camp on the Ecuador side of the border was to provide safe haven for the release of Ingrid Betancourt (a French/Colombia duel citizen, and former candidate for president of Colombia), and other hostages. Reyes was in advanced negotiations with the presidents of France, Ecuador, and probably Venezuela and Argentina, to release these hostages. Several months before, when Uribe had asked Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to negotiate hostage releases with the FARC, Uribe had bombed the location of the first two hostages that Chavez got released, and had, in every way, tried to sabotage Chavez's efforts--no doubt with the Bushites pulling his strings. Chavez nevertheless succeeded in getting a total of six FARC hostages released, without conditions, and managed to avoid the diplomatic disaster that Uribe had tried to draw him into (a failed effort with dead hostages).

FARC releasing its long-held hostages is a critical first step in ending Colombia's 40+ year civil, which has mostly been a fascist war against the poor. The Bush Junta has stoked this civil war with $5.5 BILLION in military aid (our tax money) to the Colombian fascists, who have one of the worst human rights records of any country in the world--with thousands of murders of union leaders, small peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers and journalists. The Colombian government is not only led by a man with very close ties to Colombian paramilitary death squads and major drug traffickers, 60 of his cohorts in the government, including relatives, are under investigation by independent prosecutors for colluding with the paramilitaries, and Uribe himself faces possible indictment on these charges. The Colombian civil war needs to be ended--something the Bush Cartel will never accomplish and doesn't want. And Colombia desperately needs a new, clean, democratically elected government. Currently, if you raise your head in Colombia, as a political activist, it's liable to get shot off. Colombia does not have free and fair elections. The last time the FARC tried to go legit and participate in the political process, during a brokered amnesty period, FOUR THOUSAND of their candidates, activists and voters were killed! A few months ago, several people who had held a public protest against the paramilitaries, were subsequently murdered. The current government is illegitimate and rife with heinous crime (much like our own).

But back to Ecuador. Ecuador borders Colombia to the south (Venezuela to the north). Colombia's Bush-stoked mayhem--Colombian military/FARC fighting, paramilitary murders, drug/weapons trafficking, "war on drugs" pesticide spraying, and migration into Ecuador (and Venezuela) of tens of thousands of displaced persons (mostly small peasant farmers)--has been spilling over Ecuador's border for years (also Venezuela's). Raul Reyes' overtures for peace--the Chavez hostage releases--were the first hope, in a very long time, that this constant disorder can be stopped, and a political settlement reached, for everyone's good. Chavez turned what the Bushites had planned as a catastrophe for him into hope for peace, which is why other countries joined him in the effort.

The U.S./Colombia blew that hope away by their unnecessary, targeted act of war on Ecuadoran soil. President Correa found out how that happened--how this bombing/incursion occurred without his knowledge or permission. His own intelligence service and military have been planted with Bush-CIA spies reporting to Colombia! He had pledged in his campaign not to renew the lease for the U.S. base at Manta when it comes up for renewal in 2009. The U.S. has VIOLATED the terms of that lease by its joint U.S./Colombia aggression in Ecuador, and by U.S. infiltration of Ecuador's intelligence/military agencies. He now has cause to pull the lease early.

The Bush/U.S. "war on drugs" is being used, not only for spying and aggression against democratic governments, but to drive small peasant farmers from the land (the small coca leaf growers who also grow food), and to monitor and control--and I have little doubt--to profit from major cocaine traffic. The small peasant farmers grow a harmless leaf that is chewed and used for tea throughout the Andes, and has been for thousands of years. It is only the processed product--cocaine--that is a problem, for its users, and as to fostering major crime. And the flow of the harmful product never stops--no matter how many billions in military aid we pour into Colombia, because it is the recipients (and givers) of that aid who are the major drug traffickers. The new leftist Bolivarian governments--Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia--see it for what it is--bullshit. They are very active in illicit drug interdiction, and very successful at it. They don't need no stinkin' U.S. badges to do so. And that is more than likely one of the main reasons--besides their oil, and their genuine democracy--that they are hated in Washington DC. They are curtailing Uribe/Bush Cartel drug trafficking and other crimes.

---------

The following underlined or bold-faced phrases and words in this NYT article are lies, psyops and propaganda, in my opinion:

"The gambit also poses a clear challenge to the United States. For nearly a decade, the base here in Manta has been the most prominent American military outpost in South America and an important facet of the United States’ drug-fighting efforts. Some 100 antinarcotics flights leave here each month to survey the Pacific in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with drug traffickers bound for the United States". --NYT

But perhaps, by "cat-and-mouse game," they are hinting at the truth. It's a "Tom & Jerry" cartoon in which the "mice" always somehow manage to get their contraband onto U.S. streets--if they belong to the sanctioned cartels.

[scarletwoman]

3. That's incredibly brave of him. I hope he's watching his back very very carefully.

I'm not so sure those guys will take being "purged" quietly.

k&r
sw

[Rex]

4. How funny, Colombia is our top ally in Latin America.

George needs to get his coke fix DIRECTLY from the source. No wonder he build a citadel in LA, close to his connections. CIA and illegal drug trafficking will have a new air port and base to operate from on the Bush Compound in Paraguay.

I guess he will give up public dictatorship for private dictatorship. Or not. Or both.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Paraguay just elected a leftist--Fernando Lugo--who opposes the U.S. base in Paraguay.

He was elected on a platform of social justice, and, among other things, land reform--so he is not likely to approve the Bush Cartel (yet more rich bastards) buying up land, especially on South America's major aquifer, located in Paraguay--also the major source of government income, through selling hydroelectric power to Brazil and Argentina.

The Bush Cartel land purchase is still a rumor, at this point. I haven't seen any verification of it. The Bushites are meanwhile trying to create a fascist haven next door, in the four eastern provinces of Bolivia, where white separatists are trying split their gas/oil-rich provinces off from the central government of Evo Morales--the first indigenous president of Bolivia (also into social justice)--to deny benefit of those resources to the poor majority. The Bush Junta supports the white separatists, and are no doubt funding, arming and organizing them. They have a similar plan to try to split off the Zulia state (lots of oil) from Venezuela (social justice government). It's what they do--sow chaos and civil war, promote greed and hatred, try to "divide and conquer," destabilize and overthrow any good, democratic governments that arise, torture and kill peasants and union leaders, grab the resources, enslave the people.

But there is quite a line-up of leftist governments, now, in South America, opposing their outrages: Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and now Paraguay (of all places!), a social justice movement--also committed to Latin American self-determination--that is moving north, with the election of the first progressive government in Guatemala, ever, and the near election of a leftist in Mexico. Colombia (fascist) and Peru (corrupt "free traders") are the only outposts of Bushitism left on the South American continent.

The times they are a-changin'!

[Rex]

7. Good! I hope George and Cheney can find no hole to crawl into and hide.

They deserve to face trial charges for their crimes.

[killbotfactory]

5. Good for him