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Peace Patriot's Journal
This massacre in La Macarena, Colombia, is breaking news—with some details not yet confirmed—and it is so disturbing, that I hesitated to post it in GD. But the questions that it raises about U.S. government and military policy in Colombia, and the possibility that U.S. forces participated in this massacre, are very important and need wider currency than the Latin American Forum, for discussion by Democrats, progressives and other DUers. I have formulated two questions (at the bottom of this post) for DU discussion. I have my own opinions about U.S. policy in Colombia and Latin America—which are quite evident, below. This does not mean that I am not open to other perspectives. I will try to keep my lip zipped in the comment section--except for questions of fact that I might be able to answer—in the interest of encouraging open discussion and perhaps even the beginning of some solutions. Here is the story as it appeared at the CIPCOL site, and as I posted it in the Latin America Forum. (CIP is the Center for International Policy*): ------------------------- Peace Patriot Original message Sat Jan-30-10 05:51 PM U.S. 'integrates' with ally Colombia on mass murder: 'an infinity of bodies' found (d. 2005-2010) Found this at BoRev in the comments: http://www.borev.net/2010/01/more_terrible... ---- January 28, 2010
Miami’s El Nuevo Herald and Spain’s Público have run stories in the past two days about a shocking find in La Macarena, about 200 miles south of Bogotá.
Residents say that after it entered the strongly guerrilla-controlled zone in the mid-2000s, Colombia’s Army began dumping unidentified bodies in a mass grave near a local cemetery. The grave may contain as many as 2,000 bodies.--- Público reports:
"Since 2005 the Army, whose elite units are deployed in the surrounding area, has been depositing behind the local cemetery hundreds of cadavers with the order that they be buried without names. …
"Jurist Jairo Ramírez, the secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia, accompanied a delegation of British legislators to the site several weeks ago, when the magnitude of the La Macarena grave began to be discovered. 'What we saw was chilling,' he told Público. 'An infinity of bodies, and on the surface hundreds of white wooden plaques with the inscription NN and dates from 2005 until today.'
"Ramírez adds: 'The Army commander told us that they were guerrillas killed in combat, but the people in the region told us of a multitude of social leaders, campesinos and community human rights defenders who disappeared without a trace.'"http://www.publico.es/internacional/288773... --- El Nuevo Herald reports:
"A spokesman of the Prosecutor-General’s Office (Fiscalía) in Bogotá revealed to El Nuevo Herald that a mission from that institution’s Technical Investigations Corps (CTI) has already gone to the cemetery and confirmed the existence of 'a large number' of cadavers in the grave, though it only made a few excavations.
“'We became the site for the depositing of the war dead,' declared Eliécer Vargas Moreno, mayor of the municipality. …
"Residents of La Macarena interviewed over the phone by El Nuevo Herald, under the promise that their identities would not be revealed, expressed their suspicion that among the bodies are relatives who disappeared during the last four years. They denied that the bodies are those of guerrillas and asked for the chance to prove it.”http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/amer... --- Colombia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office will make its first excavations at the site in mid-March. While we are not jumping to conclusions, we will be watching this case closely.
La Macarena, the site of the grave, has been a very important site of U.S.-aided military operations. In this area, the U.S. government supported and advised the Colombian Army’s 2004-2006 “Plan Patriota” military offensive, and since 2007 (the U.S.) has supported the “Plan for the Integral Consolidation of La Macarena” or PCIM, part of the new “Integrated Action” framework (LINK) that is now guiding much U.S. assistance.(my emphases) http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303 *About CIP: http://www.cipcol.org/?page_id=2 Discussion: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu... ------------------------------- For those unfamiliar with the recent U.S./Colombia military agreement, here is a good description of the agreement and its context: ---- ”…the US Air Force document, dated May 2009, confirms that the concerns of South American nations have been right on target. The document exposes that the true intentions behind the agreement are to enable the US to engage in ‘full spectrum military operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies…and anti-US governments…’
“The military agreement between Washington and Colombia authorizes the access and use of seven military installations in Palanquero, Malambo, Tolemaida, Larandia, Apíay, Cartagena and Málaga. Additionally, the agreement allows for ‘the access and use of all other installations and locations as necessary’ throughout Colombia, with no restrictions. Together with the complete immunity the agreement provides to US military and civilian personnel, including private defense and security contractors, the clause authorizing the US to utilize any installation throughout the entire country - even commercial aiports, for military ends, signifies a complete renouncing of Colombian sovereignty and officially converts Colombia into a client-state of the US.”(my emphases) http://www.chavezcode.com/2009/11/breaking... ----------------------- If you can stand to read dry, Rand corporation-type descriptions of “robust” USAID/Pentagon programs that relegate the rotting corpses of thousands of innocents into a ‘black hole’ of non-existence, here is just such a report, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on the U.S./Colombia plan for the La Macarena area. It is worth reading because it will help you see the situation through, say, the eyes of someone like Donald Rumsfeld, filtered through and purified by Washingtonspeak. It’s important to understand how Washington planners view phenomena such as the FARC guerrillas, peasant farmers, coca production, poverty, state power and so forth, in order to understand how it is possible for U.S. taxpayer money to end up drenched in the blood of innocents. http://csis.org/files/publication/090602_D... Here is a much better and very informative read, from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) about the new U.S./Colombia military agreement, the negative reaction to it in Latin America and the general situation including the U.S./Colombia ‘war on drugs’ and war on the FARC guerrillas and on civilians. I don’t endorse everything it says, but it is more “real” than the above: http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_15/issue... The discovery of some 2,000 bodies “of social leaders, campesinos and community human rights defenders,” in a mass grave of recent venue in Colombia, is disturbing enough, in itself. But the CIPCOL article suggests the further horror, for the people of the U.S., that the U.S. military may have had a part in the massacre of civilians. And it raises serious questions about the USAID-Pentagon-Colombian “Plan for the Integral Consolidation of La Macarena.” CIPCOL describes La Macarena as “a very important site” of past and current U.S./Colombia “integration” of forces—a phenomenon that is going to be greatly escalated with the increased presence of the U.S. military at seven or more military bases in Colombia, potential U.S. military use of any and all civilian infrastructure, and the doubling (at least) of U.S. soldiers and U.S. ‘contractors’ (to about 1,500 personnel) with full diplomatic immunity for whatever U.S. soldiers and ‘contractors’ do in Colombia. This agreement also means that U.S. planes and pilots, U.S. ships, U.S. high tech surveillance and weaponry, will be at the disposal of the Colombia military. According to Amnesty International, 92% of the murders of union leaders in Colombia have been committed by the Colombian military (about half) and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half). Many thousands of union leaders, community organizers, human rights workers, political leftists, journalists, peasant farmers (campesinos) and others have been murdered in Colombia over the last decade in what can only be described as the political “cleansing” of Colombia by rightwing forces. In addition, 3 MILLION campesinos have been internally displaced, mostly by military and paramilitary terror, and hundreds of thousands of those have fled across the border into Venezuela and Ecuador, creating huge refugee and border security problems for those countries. Colombia—a country with one of the worst human rights records on earth--has received $6-7 BILLION in U.S. military aid over the last half decade or so. I have seen a figure for the new military agreement of $4 BILLION more for Colombia, and I do not believe that this includes the costs of new U.S. military operations at seven or more military bases and other facilities all over Colombia—a total of over $10 BILLION U.S. taxpayer dollars. Also I’m not sure if this $10 billion price tag includes covert operations and items such as $10 million/year from the USAID which provide the civil cosmetics for military occupation of the targeted regions (described in the CSIS document, above). Obama’s 2011 budget apparently reduces aid to Colombia by 20%, but it will still be $500 million (half military, half not) just for the next year. See: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/n... The original justification for the expenditure of this huge amount of money was the U.S. “war on drugs.” The Bushwhacks expanded the justification to formally include the FARC guerrillas--an armed leftist insurgency comprised of Colombian citizens that has been fighting the Colombian government for over 40 years. The Bushwhacks thus added Colombia’s civil war to the burdens of U.S. taxpayers, enabled the Colombian military to wipe out the political opposition in targeted areas and greatly expanded the probability that the U.S. military is engaged in killing Colombians. “Insanity,” as Albert Einstein once said,”Is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This perfectly describes the U.S. “war on drugs.” It is a failed program which has barely put a dent in the illicit drug trade, while hugely exacerbating the violence and crime on both sides of this “war.” It has failed because it is, literally, a war, complete with guns, tanks and mass murder--and war cannot solve social problems. The drug trade continues unabated, and is more militarized and lethal than ever, on all sides. Similarly, more killing cannot, and will not, stop the FARC guerrillas, who have been in rebellion against the Colombian government for more than four decades. The armed resistance to the Colombian government—internal resistance, resistance by Colombia’s own citizens—is a symptom of great social ills, which cannot be solved by more killing. The killing—if massive—can temporarily bury the problem in some places. It will arise again. Expanding the U.S. military involvement in this civil war is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea. It pits the U.S. not just against the FARC guerrillas but also against ALL local opposition to the Colombian government—the PEACEFUL opposition: those who are trying to organize unions, those who are seeking social justice, small farmers (generally the best organic food producers) and other social and political groups. These are the people whom the Colombian government apparently wants to exterminate along with the FARC guerrillas. Their actions clearly indicate that what they want are “pacified” areas, occupied by the military (theirs and ours), where the rich and the corporate can do whatever they damn please. Several times the FARC guerrillas have tried to negotiate a peace settlement. The most recent effort was sabotaged by the Colombian and U.S. militaries when they dropped a load of U.S. “smart bombs” on the temporary camp of the FARC’s peace negotiator, Raul Reyes, in March 2008, just inside Ecuador's border, killing Reyes and 24 other sleeping people. Reyes was arranging the release of FARC hostages, in a bid for peace. The U.S./Colombia bombing/raid ended all hope for peace, and almost started a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela—both of whom have long borders with Colombia that are continually destabilized by Colombia’s conflict. As described in the COHA report, this new U.S./Colombia military agreement was negotiated in secret from the Colombian people, from the Colombian legislature and from all of the other leaders of Latin America. Several Colombian legislators objected. And most of Latin America’s other leaders were angry at the lack of consultation and notice, and are greatly concerned about the U.S. military occupation of Colombia. In other reading, I have also learned that Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, when he met Barack Obama last spring, particularly asked for U.S. help to end Colombia’s civil war. President Obama’s answer seems to be this U.S./Colombia military agreement, which will escalate Colombia’s war on its own people, and expand U.S. military involvement in that war. My opinion of this general situation is that the U.S. “war on drugs” is insane (Einstein definition) and extremely corrupt as well, and that the U.S. involvement in Colombia’s civil war is a potential huge, Vietnam-scale disaster in the making, should the corporate/war profiteer forces in this country decide to use Colombia as a “lily pad” for a war against the leftist democracy movement that has swept the region, with the oil rich countries of Venezuela and Ecuador (adjacent to Colombia) as particular targets. The U.S. did this before, in the 1980s, using Honduras as the “lily pad” for U.S. aggression against Nicaragua and other countries. This could be much bigger and much worse, and even more costly in lives, money and good will in this hemisphere. The current Washington line that the U.S./Colombia military agreement is merely a matter of “a few hundred U.S. military advisers” has a very haunting ring, indeed. This atrocity in La Macarena raises two important questions about U.S. policy in Latin America—besides the questions about U.S. military involvement and other forms of complicity in the massacre itself. I would like to know DUer’s thoughts on these questions:
1. What is the U.S. doing in Colombia? Why are we increasingly involved in another country’s civil war? Why have we sided with the fascists in that civil war—who have committed far more atrocities than their adversaries (by every objective account, including Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Commission)?
2. With many Latin American leaders seriously questioning the U.S. “war on drugs” and some countries altogether banning it, as ineffective and a militaristic menace, why is the U.S. still pushing it, and pushing it hard? Please feel free to discuss these matters from any perspective that you like. My views are well known. What am I missing? What am I not seeing? What is the U.S. doing in Colombia? Who or what is served by this massive U.S. intervention? Should a domestic insurgency in Latin America be folded into the U.S. “war on terror”? Do you agree/disagree that the U.S. should not be aiding an oppressive government in killing its own citizens? Is there anything good to be said about this policy that is not outweighed by the bad (and the very bad)? And what can we--who are paying for it--do about it—if anything? |
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last 24 hours. What are the Traitorgate cover-ups covering up?
The reason Fitzgerald hasn't indicted anyone on the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outingS--though he has a number of the outers by the short hairs--Cheney, Libby, Rove, Armitage, Novak--COULD be that he is either suspicious of the story (political revenge) or already knows that it is a cover story. And that points to Rumsfeld, in my book. Office of Special Plans. Look at this way: This conspiracy--if it was, indeed, a conspiracy to plant the nukes in Iraq after the invasion--would have two tracks, political and operational. Cheney in the charge of the political end. Rumsfeld in charge of the operational end. Cheney segues the forged docs into a full-scale allegation against Iraq on nukes, and insures that it gets into Bush's SOTU speech (against advice from several agencies). He continues to adamantly defend that charge no matter how often it is totally and completely debunked. Why doesn't he temper it--show a bit of caution (considering the evidence)? Nope. It has got to be THAT charge--over and over. In addition, the whole Junta goes into summer '03 still maintaining that WMDs will be found (--although many will soon switch to "Iraqi freedom" as motive for the war). It's all set up for the phony "find"--and a triumphant Bush-Blair announcement that will smother all criticism, and all talk of "sexed up" prewar intel, and will cement their political positions with their FIRST and foremost justification for the war: WMDs. Rumsfeld (if this theory is true) has meanwhile got several black ops teams (possibly connected to the notorious Iran/Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, who was present at the Rome meeting of Pentagon Neo-Cons and SISMI in late 2001, where many suspect the Niger forgeries were cooked up) moving nukes illicitly into (or on their way to) Iraq. He's got NYT WMD propagandist Judith Miller "embedded" with the U.S. troops who were "hunting" for WMDs (and, according to reports, actually directing, or trying to direct, their efforts), ready to get the "big scoop" of a WMD "find." (She said she had an "embed" contract signed by Donald Rumsfeld. Whether it's true or not, why would she claim it? It's like saying: "...but they TOLD me there WOULD BE a story"! She had Rumsfeld's word--or the word of someone speaking for him.) And Rumsfeld furthermore permitted the creation of chaos in Iraq--in his failure to stop the looting and the breakdown of all order (in fact laughing at). Civil chaos was a prime condition for planting WMDs in Iraq and then "finding" them. It was also a prime condition for setting up a puppet government to sign the oil contracts, giving away Iraqis' interest in their only resource (--and for massive looting by corps like Halliburton). Anyway, that's how it would be: Cheney covering the political front--and scrambling to cover up the "incompetence of others" (as he put it in his memo on not wanting Libby to be the fall guy) when the shit started hitting the fan. No WMDs. Nuke allegation based on forgeries. Wilson calling them out on the false allegation. And David Kelly, in England, whistleblowing to the BBC about the "sexed up" prewar intel. It would have been RUMSFELD's responsibility to get those WMDs planted and "discovered." What we are seeing may be the political fallout of his failure to do so. (We are also seeing him gone--with no change in Iraq War policy. Was it the midterm elections? Or was it that he was operational head of this attempted massive deceit--a phony "find" of weapons--which Cheney in now having to cover for--politically and legally?) Back in early July 2003, Kelly, under interrogation at a "safe house" --after he had been outed to his bosses (late June 2003)--revealed that he knew something MORE (--Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things," is how it was reported to Tony Blair on July 7, 2003 (Hutton report))-- but he promised not to speak of it publicly ("I wasn't about to give away any government secrets" is how Kelly put it). I suspect that THIS was the trigger for the Plame/B-J outingS. Not Wilson's article of July 6, but rather the report to Blair on July 7 that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things." (He was already whistleblowing, so it wasn't something that he HAD said--i.e., the "sexed up" the prewar intel--it was something that he COULD say. What ELSE did he know?) He had friends in Iraq--from his visits there as UN weapons inspector. He had told them that if they cooperate with the UN inspections, there would be no invasion. (And he then told a friend that if there WAS an invasion, he would be "found dead in the woods"--a truly haunting prefiguration.) IF there was a scheme to plant the weapons, he was in a good position to hear about it (--and my distant judgment of his character--excellent scientist, true believer in his mission of stopping WMD proliferation--is that he would have been offended by it; this could even have been the trigger for his own whistleblowing--it pissed him off that such deception was attempted or planned.) IF the WMD-planting theory is true, the Blairites discovery that Kelly knew about this nefarious scheme would have put tremendous pressure on the Bushites (and the Blairites), because it would appear to them that the plot was in imminent danger of being exposed--whether it was or not. How far had it gone? Who all knew? There were a couple of reports in the Islamic press about botched US efforts to plant WMDs in Iraq (--and what happened to THOSE people (local observers)--Abu Ghraib?). Was the CIA itself about to expose them (contrary to their tradition of secrecy)? But mainly, WHO ELSE knew? If the Brits couldn't keep a lid on it, how many people, from how many directions, could come at them, with facts and evidence about this audacious effort to deceive? So, in their panic, they outed EVERYBODY--the entire network of deep cover foreign agents and contacts, built up over the years, of friends of the US and friends of humanity, whose job it was to keep us all safe from illicit traffic in weapons of mass destruction. The multiple-outing was because they DIDN'T KNOW--who had foiled them, and who knew. Their purpose: 1) to punish and disable anybody who had foiled their scheme (including getting them killed by their own governments or by other bad actors); or (if they were still trying to plant the nukes or other WMDs, in July 2003) to destroy the network of WMD detectors and foilers that was slowing things up. By fall 2003, with the CIA enraged at the assault on its own agents, and calling for an investigation, they had to give it up--and switch to "Iraqi freedom" as the motive for the war (which is just about the time that that "talking point" was brought forward). Someone upthread asked, why did they kill Kelly, and not Wilson and Plame? I imagine that Wilson and Plame have lived with that fear. But the critical difference between Plame and Kelly may be that Plame, as a NOC and a high-placed CIA operative, is sworn to a lifetime of keeping government secrets, and Kelly was not. He was a scientist on loan to different agencies (including the UN weapons inspection team). He was not a spy (that we know of). He was already whistleblowing. He was "off the reservation," and could not be trusted, when he promised, under interrogation, not to disclose "government secrets." Also, she has the protection of the CIA--which, if it kills its own, likes to make that decision itself, I would imagine. And Kelly did not have any such protection. The Blair government and British intel agencies cut him loose. They outed him to the press, and sent him home without protection and apparently without surveillance. And if he WAS under surveillance, they let him bleed to death all night under a tree near his house. (--doesn't add up--none of it adds up). As for Wilson, he, a) comes under CIA protection as the husband of a NOC, I would imagine, and b) sought the protection of widespread publicity for his dissent. Kelly, too, was the subject of a blazing public controversy in England--one caused by his government's deliberate outing of him to the press. He did not seek publicity. In fact, he backed down somewhat under the kleig lights. It may have been his fatal mistake, allowing the "many dark actors playing games"* around him to spin a web of deceit around his assassination. If he had stuck to his allegation 100% (re: the "sexed up" prewar intel--which turned out, of course, to be 100% true), and had not tried to backpedal a bit, and get himself out of the way of the Blairites' pointed guns, his murder might have been significantly more difficult to cover up, and the plan to kill him abandoned. It also may be a measure of the how dangerous he was to the Bushites/Blairites that they had him killed in the midst of the publicity. One more thought: Kelly's murder may have saved the Wilson's. Three WMD-related murders in one week was too much to cover up. ---------- *(On the day he died, Kelly wrote an email to none other than Judith Miller--an old colleague of his--in which he expressed concern about the "many dark actors playing games." She had emailed him, stating that a "fan" of his had told her that he did well in the hearing that week (note: by all accounts, except this one, he did NOT do well--he was severely stressed during the parliamentary hearing at which he backpedaled on his whistleblowing accusations). He wrote back to her that he would know more by the end of the week, and that there were "many dark actors playing games." He added "thank you for your friendship and support at this time." I've recently begun to wonder if that was an ironical tag. Did he suspect her of being one of the "dark actors"? Of how he got outed to his bosses? His emails to other friends of his that day were upbeat and forward-looking--about his daughter's upcoming wedding, and plans to return to Iraq. He may have been worried about "dark actors," but he was not suicidal. He thought the storm had blown over.) (Note: Miller had used him as a major quoted source in her book "Germs" about bioweapons, published just after 9/11.) *(Notably, Miller has refused to disclose the OTHER topics of conversation between her and Libby (besides Wilson/Plame and the NIE). Fitzgerald had to agree to this, to get her testimony against Libby on his perjury/obstruction. A week after her first conversation with Libby (mid-June) about Wilson/Plame and the NIE, Kelly was outed to his bosses (as the BBC whistleblower)--initiating the train of events that led to his death several weeks later (three days after Plame was outed). And the other thing that Miller has been secretive about is the "dark actors" email itself. She wrote the NYT news obit on Kelly's death, and did not disclose this email, or her close connection to the subject of the article. It was his family who later disclosed the email.) --------- So--does Fitzgerald suspect or know that there is something much worse behind the Plame/B-J outingS, beyond Cheney and the political coverup, that has caused him to grant immunity to the actual outers (political operatives), and to be digging deeper into this onion, in his stated purpose of understanding WHY these outings occurred? And is it this--that the Niger forgeries were just Part 1 of a yet more nefarious scheme to plant the weapons--a scheme hatched out of the Pentagon, by Donald Rumsfeld, that Cheney is now covering up? Dunno. And Rumsfeld name hasn't come up at all, so far, in this case (that I know of). Fitzgerald appears to be building a conspiracy case against Cheney. But when you add up all the people whom Fitzgerald has NOT indicted--and the lack of indictments on the outing crime itself (despite a lot of evidence against certain people, just in the available info)--you have to wonder if he isn't trying to go deeper. The non-indictments (so far) could be part of the strategy of nailing Cheney for conspiracy. But the WHY of that conspiracy is still not known, except on a superficial level (effort to silence dissent--political motive). -------------------------------------- Originally posted by Peace Patriot in General Discussion Thu Feb 08th 2007, 01:52 PM Comment #150 at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu... Visitor Tools
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