Colombian militia boss vows to spill political ties

[Judi Lynn]

Source: San Diego Union/Reuters

Colombian militia boss vows to spill political ties

By Patrick Markey
REUTERS
1:02 p.m. May 11, 2007
BOGOTA – A former Colombian paramilitary commander Friday promised to reveal the identities of politicians, executives and military officers who colluded with rightist death squads during a war against guerrillas.

Testimony by Salvatore Mancuso, who has been imprisoned under a peace deal with the government, threatens to inflame a political scandal already linking allies of President Alvaro Uribe to militia warlords accused of atrocities.
(snip)

Rights groups say the scandal over collusion is revealing what was an open secret for years. They also express fear that imprisoned militia bosses have kept their criminal groups active and that they are threatening victims seeking reparation.
Earlier testimony from Mancuso and others drew criticism from victims groups, who said militia bosses were being allowed to skirt the truth.
(snip)

“I don't know how comfortable Uribe's allies in the Congress are going to feel about this type of declaration.”


Read more: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070511-1302-colombia-paramilitaries-.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Since the chief of the military, and the former intelligence head (very close to Uribe)

have been implicated, and because the Colombian military is a pet project of the Bush Junta, upon which they have larded billions of our taxpayer dollars, I wonder how close these latest potential exposures (of "politicians, executives and military officers") are going to get to the US Embassy, Condi Rice, Undersec of State for Latin America John "death squad" Negroponte, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. Also, you gotta wonder if Negroponte was put in place to snuff some people out (witnesses, whistleblowers), and what's all this running around in Latin America that Bush, Rice and Negroponte have been doing lately?

One of the revelations in the Colombian scandals has been a plot of these cozy-with-the-government paramilitaries to assassinate Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and destabilize the Andean democracies with the new leftist (majorityist) governments (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador)--all rich in oil, gas and other resources. Also likely on the Bush Junta agenda is plotting and brutality against the big leftist movements in Peru and Paraguay. The leftist governments are notable for their hostility to the murderous US "war on drugs." They know that what it really is is a Bush Junta wedge into the region, to foment trouble. Is anything the Bush Junta does ever anything else? The "war on drugs" has always had ill purposes (for instance, Big Chem selling lots of pesticides to the US and Colombian governments, to destroy small farmers who might be growing a few coca leaf plants on the side, as they have for thousands of years--to make way for global corporate predator agriculture and resource extractors). Under Bush, it's also become a way of mass murdering union organizers, leftists and peasants, to keep fascists in power, of shoving the little guys out of the way for the big drug traffickers, and, more than likely, of forging a private army to make war on democracy in South America.

In any case, it's very bad for Bushites--and heartening to the rest of us--to have these dreadful rightwing activities in Colombia being exposed. And one can hope that the dots will be connected. The trend in South America is very much toward democracy and much, much better government--peoples' government. Likely, this is influencing events in Colombia, a dinosaur of the rightwing past. The future is Latin American self-determination and regional cooperation, with leftist governments elected in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. These are the new powers--who hold sway in the OAS and other organizations. I also hope that this, the Bush Junta's second front in the corporate resource wars, has been cut off--and I think it has. They may still create some further horror and suffering, but I think they have become so discredited and despised in South America, that they won't get very far.

[Judi Lynn]

2. It should be interesting if these investigations REALLY are allowed!

Hopefully Mancuso will be getting super security until after his complete testimony is available, you'd hope.

I recall reading former rebel senator Petro has nine bodyguards with him at all times now, since his own testimony was entered.

Found a link refering to far deeper elements which are harder to hear about in this country, but it's good to hope it will all come out, eventually:

Colombia- A Shill (proxy) Country For Us Intervention In Venezuela
By (with introduction by Carlos Herrera
Jan 30, 2005, 16:45

~snip~
Expansion of US military aid and bio-chemical warfare

Although the cover story for the expansion of US military aid to Colombia is that it is a part of a "war on drugs" in Latin America, yet its real purpose is well understood by the commanders of FARC and the Colombian military and paramilitary military forces. As one of the guerilla leaders stated, increased militarization of antinarcotics operation is a pretext for stepped up counterinsurgency action and extending the war against them by the U.S. <17>. And so did the paramilitary and military commanders who said "we do not differentiate between counter-insurgency and counter-narcotic operations-its the same thing. We do a raid on the drug-traffickers, and we know we're hitting the guerrillas" <18>.

However, to perpetuate the charade that U.S. is not directly intervening in Colombia, rather private corporation and organizations are the primary participants, much of the military and biochemical operation is "contracted out" to private firms and private armies. Early in 2003 the U.S. State Department reported that there are 17 primary contracting companies working in Colombia, initially receiving $3.5 billion <20>.

Biochemical warfare

Biological-chemical-bacteriological warfare against the peasants also started, full force, during 1998. DynCorp, a defense contractor and a Fortune 500 company, has a $ 600 million contract to carry out aerial spraying to eliminate coca crops which also contaminates maize, Yucca, and plantains-staple foods of the population; children and adults develop skin rashes. The herbicide that is sprayed, glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup, is manufactured by Monsanto, a US company. It should be noted that the aerial spraying with Roundup, in the manner in which it is done in Colombia, is illegal in the US where Glysophate is considered to be category II, highly toxic. Other chemicals sprayed are registered as category I, extremely toxic <22>. Fumigation, along with machine gun shootings, and a heavy military and paramilitary presence, linked to a low-intensity warfare have taken the lives of more than 1,300 villagers in various municipalities in FARC contolled Putumayo department <23>.

US and Colombia allege that revolutionary guerillas and drug traffickers from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela work in tandem; they find shelter in the trackless 1.9 million square miles area of rain forests and rivers of Amazon. To crush them a new American financed, $1.4 billion system for radar and sensor was installed to monitor this area <24>. (See below).

Resistance by Colombian revolutionary forces, along with Venezuela's progressive populist policies is a major threat to imperialist and its allies in Latin America. A victory for or even a modus vivendi with the revolutionary forces in Colombia along with Venezuela's successful policies are likely to present an alternate socio-economic model spawned by the WB/IMF and MNCs. This momentum has to be defeated by military force, if necessary, and Chavez has to go <25>.

Chavez has to go if Colombia is to be secured for MNCs

Coups and strikes failed to topple Chavez. With his victory at the Recall Referendum on August 15, 2004, he has emerged a bigger threat than before for imperialist and its subalterns in Latinamerica. Venezuela presents an example for other indebted and exploited countries of Latin America countries to take charge of their nations for its people. In the wake his Referendum victory, Chavez called on the country's private business operators to work with his government in moving the country away from capitalism. He stated "We have to eliminate large land holding in Venezuela. What we have done so far has been very, very superficial. Everybody expects Chavez to get tougher and deepen the revolution <26>. These are threatening words for those who follow the US, WB/IMF lead in establishing a capitalist, free enterprise, for profit economic order, and Colombia has affirmed to follow the WB/IMF policies <27>.
(snip/...)

http://www.axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/view.pl?archive=129&num=15402&printer=1