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March 06, 2008

The Real News On Columbia, Venezuela & Ecuador

Below is a Real News segment on Colombia's attack on a FARC camp in Ecuador. Also, Robert Naiman examines Clinton and Obama's response to the raid here, and John Caruso pretends as though the United States could ever be treated like other countries here.

You should donate to the Real News.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Posted at March 6, 2008 12:56 PM
Comments

I have to agree with Caruso on this. After all it is quite in line with Obama’s position on sending the U.S. military into Pakistan to chase terrorists per the ABC news article below.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3434573&page=1

In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama called not only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan — with or without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama said, "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

The above Obama quote sounds rather a lot like something Bush would say. Everyone “hopes” Obama will be better, everyone “hopes” there will be change, the only problem is hope is no plan at all. We already know what Hillary is and stands for, there are enough bodies strewn about to attest to that.

It seems quite clear that neither Clinton nor Obama care about international law any more than Bush did. All that matters is American interests. It’s the same old jalopy with a new paintjob.

Posted by: rob payne at March 6, 2008 05:31 PM

Moon of Alabama has a good post on the connections between FARC and Uribe.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/03/columbia---farc.html

Are you guys behind this site?

http://www.despair.com/store.html

Seems right up your alley.

I can't get HTML tags to work in your comments. Don't know if it's by design or just a mystery bug(?).

Posted by: Bruce F at March 6, 2008 09:06 PM

WE can't seem to gain the upper hand on Iraqi Oil, perhaps Venezuelan Oil?

Posted by: Mike Meyer at March 6, 2008 11:26 PM

Antiwar.com recently posted an interview with Greg Palast on this attack here

http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/03/05/greg-palast-3/

Posted by: Edward at March 7, 2008 09:04 AM

I don't get the liberal outrage about this. These supposed left-wing humanists, Correa and Chavez, appear to be both supporting and supported by a narco-trafficking mafia. Rather than asking our friends what the hell they think they are doing, we instead tear into Uribe, who crosses an imaginary line in the jungle in order to fight back against this group.

I have no respect for Uribe's choice to kill rather than capture the FARC members in Ecuador. But the idea that a national border means a damn thing is not progressive or smart. And knee-jerk support for Chavez or Correa is no better than knee-jerk support for Bush. Chavez is sheltering the FARC. I know people who have seen FARC members in Venezuela; by all accounts Venezuelan National Guardsmen ignore them.

Also, the Real News host needs two things: he needs to learn how to pronounce Alvaro Uribe's name and he needs more sources.

Posted by: hedgehog at March 7, 2008 04:30 PM

Colombia's right-wing death squads have a closer relationship to the narco-trafficking mafia than FARC does - which is to say they're one and the same. And these right-wing militias with which Uribe's government is cosy - and the government's security forces themselves - are still responsible for the bulk of Colombia's political violence.

It's hard to see what the purpose of this attack was other than to stymie the hostage-release negotiations, for no other reason than that Chavez's and Correa's success in getting people released was making Uribe look bad.

It's sadly true that FARC's credibility has degraded immensely since the 90s, and they may soon be no more than the kind of criminal gang that other long term guerilla movements have become. There's a lot of reasons for that, though chief amongst them would be what happened last time Colombia's left laid down their arms and tried to pursue their aims politically. Google "Union Patriotica" if you're not up to speed.

Posted by: RobW at March 7, 2008 08:22 PM