U.S.-Colombia Deal Prompts Questions

[Judi Lynn]

U.S.-Colombia Deal Prompts Questions
Lack of Debate, Dubious Motives Cited

By Juan Forero and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 27, 2009



PUERTO SALGAR, Colombia -- On a recent sweltering day, Colombian fighter jets took to the sky from this country's most important air base, while mechanics remounted the engine of a medical evacuation plane.

Soon, American pilots and crews will also be living and working here, assigned to fly sophisticated surveillance aircraft in a battle alongside Colombian forces against Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers, Colombian officials say.

U.S. and Colombian officials say a new agreement to deploy U.S. aircraft and service members to this base is little more than the formalization of a string of loose military accords that go as far back as 1952. But the deal, which would allow American forces access to as many as seven bases, has prompted concern among South American presidents and an outcry from neighboring Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez warns of an impending U.S. invasion.

~snip~

In Washington, Sens. Christopher J. Dodd and Patrick J. Leahy, senior Democrats who help shape policy on Latin America, asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a letter why they had not been consulted about the plan and wondered why the Obama administration was deepening its ties with a military they accuse of human rights abuses.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/26/AR2009082603484.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Secret from US Senators, secret from the American people, secret from all of the leaders

of Latin America, who expressed anger that they had not even been warned of this, let alone consulted! Clinton and the Pentagon SECRETLY sneaked in SEVEN new US military bases into Colombia! You gotta wonder why--why the bases, why the secrecy (secrecy that the Colombia's Uribe blew last week, in boasting to everyone about the bases).

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"In Washington, Sens. Christopher J. Dodd and Patrick J. Leahy, senior Democrats who help shape policy on Latin America, asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a letter why they had not been consulted about the plan and wondered why the Obama administration was deepening its ties with a military they accuse of human rights abuses." --Washington Paste