Chávez: Uribe handed over his country to be pardoned for links with drug traffic

[AlphaCentauri]

In a renewed onslaught on the Colombian government, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez accused on Monday his Colombian counterpart Álvaro Uribe of giving his country away in exchange of pardon for his links with drug traffic and paramilitaries.

The leftwing leader who froze relations with Bogotá in protest against an agreement on the use of Colombian military bases by US troops, has had strained relations with Uribe even though both countries have a common border and lively trade, Reuters reported.

"Colombia's president is so in troubles that he surrendered Colombia for pardon. That was the price set by the Yankees," Chávez said during a speech to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Constitution bolstered by him as soon as he took office.

"I have no doubt of who President Uribe is; where is he from: paramilitaries, drug traffic and some of the darkest, most putrid networks one can imagine," he said.
http://english.eluniversal.com/2009/12/07/en_pol_esp_chavez:-uribe-handed_07A3162691.shtml

[Peace Patriot]

1. One of my theories about the numerous dirty Puke Congresscreeps of the Bush junta--

people like "Duke" Cunningham and Tom Delay--is that the Bushwhacks wanted to have people they could blackmail and positively recruited larcenous candidates for public office and then gave them a lot of rope--no oversight, corruption/neglect of the Justice Dept.--as a leash. We were having a "scandal a week" there of relatively ordinary corruption (compared to the big Bushwhacks) pretty much throughout the Bushwhacks' tenure. It seemed to be their purpose to create a "culture of corruption" at many levels for many different power uses. Uribe, who got his start as the go-to guy for the Medellin Cartel, and graduated to being the go-to guy for the Bush Cartel in South America, appears to be an example of this type of Bushwhack recruitment on the international scene. Some fifty of his close political cohorts (including family members) are under investigation, indicted or in jail for their ties to rightwing death squads and drug trafficking. And "special protection" of Uribe himself, by the Pentagon/CIA, may be why he hasn't been indicted and may explain why he has agreed to the 'South Vietnamization' of Colombia, with this mindboggling, secretly negotiated US/Colombia agreement for SEVEN new US military bases in Colombia, NO LIMIT on the number of US troops and 'contractors' who can be deployed there, total diplomatic immunity for US soldiers and 'contractors' for whatever they do there, and US military use of all civilian airports and other facilities.

These kinds of provisions are more reminiscent of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam than anything a Latin American politician would agree to--especially in the current political atmosphere in Latin America of assertion of Latin American sovereignty and independence. Trade groups like Mercosur REQUIRE that member countries rescind immunity laws protecting the US military, for instance. And even rightwing leaders like Calderon in Mexico are sensitive on Mexican sovereignty issues. (They accepted billions in US "war on drugs" booty from the Bushwhacks, but insisted on Mexican control of the funds and operations--no infusions of DEA agents running around Mexico--and it was a good thing, too, because they were thereby able to call off the bloody border war that the Bushwhacks instigated, pulled back from that horror and began talking about decriminalization). And many of the countries with leftwing governments have thrown the US military, the US "war on drugs" and the DEA out of their countries (notably Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Paraguay). Sovereignty is a BIG issue in Latin America.

So I figured, in Uribe's case--this outright giveaway of Colombia's sovereignty to the Pentagon--it must be bribery. (The US lards $6 BILLION on Colombia in military aid--they must have a few spare billions for direct control of Colombia's civilian and military politicians.) I also figured that Uribe's mafia-like network and crimes were typical of rises to high office in Colombia and peculiar to Colombia because of its massive, embedded cocaine economy. In most countries (including our own, pre-Bush Junta) corruption like this gets laundered at the political level--it's not so blatant.

However, these remarks of Chavez put a new coloration on US control of Uribe--that Uribe was chosen as the beneficiary of CIA-supported elections because of his filthy criminal connections, and has been encouraged to dig himself in deep, so that he is entirely dependent on his CIA/Pentagon handlers--for both his political power and his immunity from indictment.

Another thing I've more fully realized--given the recent US-sponsored rightwing coup in Honduras, and this startling plan for a huge US military buildup in Colombia, and the evidences of Obama administration collusion on both--is that this kind of filthy US control over foreign leaders is not unique to the Bush Junta. It is endemic in our filthy global corporate predator and war profiteer controlled political/economic system. The continuum from Clinton to Bush to Obama, on this kind of policy in Latin America, has become very apparent. In order to have "change we can believe in"--in Latin America, or here, or anywhere--I guess we really need to give up all hope that change can emerge from the filthy global corporate predator/war profiteer system that the USA has become. Every time we place hope in this system, we find ourselves in another war.