Declassified US cables link Uribe to Colombia drug cartels

[Judi Lynn]

Declassified US cables link Uribe to Colombia drug cartels
Joshua Goodman, Associated Press
 Updated 1:04 pm, Saturday, May 26, 2018



Photo: Fernando Vergara, AP
Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe stands between Ivan Duque, presidential candidate for Democratic Center party, right, and his running mate Martha Lucia Ramirez during a campaign rally in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 20, 2018. Colombians will go to the polls on May 27 for a first round presidential election.


BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — As Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's most powerful politician, was making his rise to the presidency more than two decades ago, U.S. officials were repeatedly told that the up-and-coming politician had ties to the nation's drug cartels, according to newly declassified State Department cables.

The cables were obtained and released Friday by the National Security Archive, a non-profit group, as Uribe's handpicked candidate, Ivan Duque, is the frontrunner in polls to win Sunday's presidential election.

They describe meetings between 1992 and 1995 between American officials and Uribe as well as other Colombian politicians in his then Liberal Party.

In one 1993 cable, then Senator Luis Velez told a U.S. Embassy political officer that Uribe was a cousin of the Ochoa crime family that partnered with Escobar and had financed his political campaigns.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Declassified-US-cables-link-Uribe-to-Colombia-12945699.php

LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142068404




George W. Bush awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Álvaro Uribe

[TimeSnowDemos]

1. In South America, with few exceptions...

If there's a corrupt or violent thug they're probably being funded by or allies with the US.

The millions killed by US backed groups, with US weapons and support, almost all of which were left wing and a huge majority of which were civilians, is a blotch of US history, made even more abyssmal by the fact that most Americans don't know about it.

Included in that is literally a war to protect slave labor for a US comporation.