[News] US Escalates War Plans In Latin America

[Anti-Imperialist News]

US Escalates War Plans In Latin America
US Military: After Iraq, Latin America

By Rick Rozoff

<http://www.globalresearch.ca>Global Research, July 23, 2009
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40838>Stop NATO

On June 29 US President Barack Obama hosted his 
Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe at the White 
House and weeks later it was announced that the 
Pentagon plans to deploy troops to five air and 
naval bases in Colombia, the largest recipient of 
American military assistance in Latin America and 
the third largest in the world, having received 
over $5 billion from the Pentagon since the 
launching of Plan Colombia nine years ago.

Six months before the Obama-Uribe meeting 
outgoing US President George W. Bush bestowed the 
US's highest civilian honor, the Medal of 
Freedom, on Uribe as well as on former British 
Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

A press account of the time expressed both shock 
and indignation at the White House's honoring of 
Uribe in writing that "Despite extra-judicial 
killings, paramilitaries and murdered unionists, 
Colombia's President Uribe has won the US's 
highest honor for human rights." [1]

The same source substantiated its concern by adding:

"Colombia is the most dangerous country on earth 
for trade unionists. In 2006, half of all union 
member killings around the world took place 
there. Since Uribe came into power in 2002, 
nearly 500 have been murdered. In reply to 
concern about the assassinations, Uribe dismissed 
the victims as 'a bunch of criminals dressed up as unionists.'

"More than 1,000 cases of illegal killings by the 
military are being investigated. There are dozens 
of cases of soldiers taking innocent men, 
murdering them and dressing them up as enemy combatants. Hundreds of
members of the security forces are thought to 
have taken part in such activities." [2]

Colombia: Forty Year War

For over forty years Colombia, the last of 
Washington's remaining "death squad democracy" 
clients in the Western Hemisphere, has waged a 
relentless counterinsurgency war against the 
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC} and 
an equally ruthless campaign with its US-trained 
and -equipped military and allied paramilitary 
formations against trade union, peasant, 
indigenous and other organizations. An estimated 
40,000 have been killed and 2 million displaced as a result of the fighting.

In 1985 the FARC laid down its arms and entered 
into a peace process with the government of Belisario Betancur.

It helped found the Patriotic Union to 
participate in electoral and other peaceful 
activities but within several years as many as 
5,000 Patriotic Union elected officials, 
candidates, trade unionists, community organizers 
and other activists were murdered by Colombian 
security forces and government-linked right-wing 
death squads, especially the notorious United 
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and its 
late leader Carlos Castano. Eight congressmen, 70 
councilmen, dozens of deputies and mayors and 
hundreds of trade unionists and peasant leaders 
were slain and in 1989-1990 two of its 
presidential candidates were murdered within seven months.

Faced with complete extermination, the FARC 
rearmed and sought refuge in the southeast of the country.

In 1998 then Colombian President President Andres 
Pastrana permitted FARC a 16,000 square mile safe 
haven in the Caqueta Department.

The US then set its sights on an intensive 
counterinsurgency campaign to destroy the FARC 
infrastructure in the region and to uproot and 
destroy the organization altogether.

In January of 2000 STRATFOR, not a source known for opposing war, warned:

"The U.S. State Department recently announced a 
two-year, $1.3 billion emergency U.S. aid package 
for counter-narcotics operations in Colombia. The 
plan also is geared toward helping President 
Andres Pastrana negotiate peace with the 
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). 
But the plan will have the opposite effect. It 
will end the peace negotiations between the 
rebels and the government and re-ignite the war. 
Ultimately, the plan does little more than pave 
the way for greater U.S. involvement. [3]

It went on to say that "The bulk of the money 
pledged for counter-narcotics efforts will go 
directly to the military to fight the 
rebels....This will tip the balance of power away 
from the government in Bogota and toward the 
military, which has always opposed the peace 
negotiations. Ultimately, the door will open 
wider for greater U.S. involvement." [4]

Plan Colombia: Clinton's Parthian Shot

Colombia was already the largest recipient of US 
military aid in the Western Hemisphere by 2000, 
but the Clinton administration increased the 
Pentagon's role in the nation with what became Plan Colombia.

After entering office in January of 1993 bombing 
Iraq and later killing hundreds if not thousands 
of Somalis the same year, Clinton and his foreign 
policy team never abandoned the use of military aggression.

In 1995 it provided military planners and 
advisers for Croatia's brutal and ethnocidal 
Operation Storm and led NATO's bombing of Bosnian 
Serb targets, including retreating troops and 
refugee columns following them, leaving what is 
now the Bosnian Serb Republic strewn with 
depleted uranium and an epidemic of cancer cases.

Three years later it launched cruise missile 
attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan and on December 
16, 1998 began Operation Desert Fox, a deadly 
four-day assault on Iraq with 250 airstrikes and 
over 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles - the evening 
before scheduled impeachment proceedings against Clinton in the US Congress.

The following year the administration's use of 
military aggression reached its apex with the 
78-day US-led NATO assault against Yugoslavia, 
the first military attack against a European 
nation since Hitler's and Mussolini's from 1939 onward.

The administration's Parthian shot was Plan Colombia in 2000.

Colombia's President Pastrana conceived of a 
project the preceding year, 1999, that the White 
House redesigned for its own purposes.

As former US ambassador to El Salvador Robert 
White, sacked by the Reagan administration in 
1981 in preparation for unleashing its death 
squad and Contra wars in Central America, wrote 
after the US Congress passed Plan Colombia in June of 2000:

"If you read the original Plan Colombia, not the 
one that was written in Washington but the 
original Plan Colombia, there's no mention of 
military drives against the FARC rebels. Quite 
the contrary. (President Pastrana) says the FARC 
is part of the history of Colombia and a 
historical phenomenon, he says, and they must be treated as Colombians." [5]

An alternative American presswire reported that, 
"In early 1999, the Pastrana administration began 
peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces 
of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group.

"The president also made his first trip to 
Washington in search of aid against the drug 
trade. But when he got there, 'they changed the 
script on him,' according to Marco Romero of the 
Peace Colombia Initiative, a coalition created in 
September by 60 local non-governmental 
organizations (NGOs) seeking an alternative to the Plan Colombia.

"Pastrana's talks with U.S. congressional leaders 
and the head of the White House office on 
National Drug Control Policy, Barry McCaffrey, 
gave rise to the Plan Colombia, said Romero." [6]

McCaffrey is a retired Army General who earned 
his stripes in the Dominican Republic in 1965, 
Vietnam from 1966-69 and in Operation Desert 
Storm in 1991. He was also head of the Pentagon's 
Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) from 1994-96 and Deputy US Representative to NATO.

"In support of their request for aid to Colombia, 
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and 
drug czar McCaffrey told the U.S. Congress that 
the funds were to be used for 'restoring order in southeastern Colombia.'" [7]

With the passing of Plan Colombia the US 
increased military aid to the nation by over 
twenty times in just two years, 1998-2000, from 
$50 million in 1998 to over $1 billion in 2000, 
placing Colombia only behind Israel and Egypt in 
that category. In the ten years since 1998 US 
military aid was increased a hundredfold.

Earlier in the year a mainstream American news 
source said that "The Clinton administration's 
proposed $1.6 billion in emergency aid to 
Colombia is at least as much a counterinsurgency 
package as it is an anti-drug measure" and 
mentioned that "a member of Congress objected to 
White House efforts to sidestep the normal appropriations process." [8]

Weeks before the House vote one of the worse 
recent massacres of Colombian civilians occurred 
in El Salado, perpetrated by paramilitaries with army complicity.

Plan Colombia was drenched in blood even before 
it was formalized. In January of 2000 US 
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited 
Colombia to promote the initiative and in honor 
of her arrival the Colombian military killed 50 
of its citizens in an attack outside of the capital of Bogota.

The US Congress and Senate added over a billion 
dollars, sixty attacks helicopters and more 
special forces counterinsurgency advisers to the 
war in June. Approximately 70% of the 2000 Plan 
Colombia funds were allotted for the financing, 
training and supplying of army anti-narcotics 
battalions operating in southeastern Colombia, the former FARC safe haven.

Nominal progressives, the late Paul Wellstone in 
the Senate and Illinois Congresswoman Jan 
Schakowsky in the House, attached a human rights 
proviso that no serious person expected to be 
honored and only two months after the Congress's 
authorization of Plan Colombia Clinton used his 
presidential waiver to override the human rights 
conditions on the grounds of "national security."

Nine Years Later: Drug War Charade Gives Way To Naked Counterinsurgency

The escalation of counterinsurgency operations 
was packaged under the label of a war against 
drugs, of course. Nine years later Colombia 
remains the largest supplier of cocaine and heroin to the United States.

How seriously one should have taken this charade 
was indicated in April of 2000 when the former 
commander of the U.S. Army's anti-drug operation 
in Colombia, Col. James C. Hiett, pleaded guilty 
to not having turned over evidence on his wife, 
Laurie, for smuggling cocaine and heroin into the 
United States. His spouse pleaded guilty in 
January of planning to smuggle $700,000 worth of 
heroin into the US through the mail.

Colonel Hiett doubtlessly performed his duties in 
propagating the tale that the FARC was 
responsible for the lion's share of coca and 
opium cultivation and trafficking in the nation 
and that the US military was the best response to its alleged activities.

If one still had any doubts regarding the 
sincerity of American claims to be combating 
narco-trafficking and terrorism, within weeks of 
the passage of Plan Colombia Secretary of State 
Albright escorted the head of the so-called 
Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim Thaci, whose 
colleagues and allied drug cartels control most 
of the marijuana, hashish and narcotics traffic 
in Europe, to her old haunts in the United 
Nations Headquarters and her then current ones in 
the State Department, preparing him to become a 
future head of state. (Since last year he is in 
fact the president of what former Serbian 
president Vojislav Kostunica has aptly called the 
world's first NATO state. It is also the world's newest narco-state.)

After the events of September 11, 2001 in the 
United States the White House elevated the FARC 
towards the top of its targets list in the 
so-called Global War on Terror, though what role 
the group could have had in the attacks in New 
York City and Washington, D.C. is beyond any sane 
person's ability to discern or fathom.

By 2002 the Bush administration had discarded 
most of the drug war rationale and "Congress 
approved a law to allow American military aid to 
Colombia to be used in a 'unified campaign' 
against drugs and terrorism" and by 2008 "six 
years and $5-billion later, the Colombian 
military is Latin America's most skilled fighting force." [9]

American "Special Operations training provided 
many of the skills that showed 'the way to open 
the door to these remote jungle locations that 
were in the past inaccessible to the Colombian government.'

"Military units including Special Forces and an 
elite Commando Brigade were created. Eight 
regional intelligence units were set up with 
reconnaissance airplanes, and state-of-the-art 
air-to-ground communications. An Intelligence 
School was created, as well as a Counter Intelligence Center." [10]

Days before leaving office George W. Bush awarded 
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who rumors have 
linked to the former Medellin drug cartel and 
whose brother Santiago is accused of 
narco-trafficking and death squad connections, the Medal of Freedom.

Perhaps anticipating the honor and paying back 
the person most responsible for Plan Colombia and 
the increased military operations both within 
Colombia's borders and outside the country, 
Alvaro Uribe announced that he was conferring the 
"Colombia is Passion" award on Bill Clinton "at a 
gala event...in New York City" for "for believing 
in our country and encouraging others to do the same."

"Prominent Democrats on the guest list include 
former Clinton strategists Dick Morris and Vernon 
Jordan, former Clinton Cabinet members Lawrence 
Summers and Madeleine Albright, and several 
Democratic congressmen," most of whom presumably 
had the political survival skills not to attend. [11]

Earlier the same year "On the eve of a visit by 
U.S. President George W. Bush" and with no 
further pretense of a drug war "U.S. and 
Colombian soldiers arrived in the southern town 
of Cartagena del Chaira, a FARC stronghold, by helicopter...." [12]

As the narcotics issue has been downplayed, so 
the human rights component of Plan Colombia has 
been relegated to the realm of short-lived public relations manipulation.

In February of 2007 Colombian Foreign Minister 
Maria Consuelo Araujo's brother, Senator Alvaro 
Araujo, was arrested for connections to the 
paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

Uribe was untroubled by the above and said, "When 
they ask, why do I keep the foreign minister, I 
answer: She is not involved in the criminal 
activities that are under investigation." [13]

Plan Colombia has entered its tenth calendar 
year. In the intervening years covert and overt 
government and paramilitary massacres, many too 
grisly to relate, have continued unabated and 
drug cultivation and exports have been, if 
marginally dented, not substantially affected by 
what is still referred to when convenient as a drug eradication program.

Drug war claims notwithstanding, Plan Colombia's 
activities both within and outside the nation were actuated by other designs.

Colombia: Pentagon's Base In Andean Region

 From its very advent it was intended to be more 
than an intensification of the decades-old 
counterinsurgency war in Colombia and to be the 
opening salvo of a US campaign to escalate the 
militarization of the Andes region. White House 
and Pentagon plans to employ Colombia as a 
regional military force and operating base to 
police South America have gained new urgency for 
Washington with political transformations in 
Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and 
Paraguay heralding the end of US political, 
economic and military domination of the continent.

In its first full year of existence, 2001, a 
Peruvian Air Force jet shot down a civilian plane 
spotted by a US aircraft flown by CIA contractors 
with American missionary Veronica Bowers and her 
infant daughter on board, killing both as well as the pilot.

By 2006 the US had doubled the amount of military 
trainers and advisers stationed in Colombia and 
in the same year the nation's planes started 
violating the air space of neighboring Ecuador. 
The planes, and it would not have been unusual 
for US personnel to have been aboard them, were 
ostensibly conducting fumigation missions.

The Ecuadoran government denounced the actions as 
"unfriendly and hostile" and "Defense Minister 
Marcelo Delgado said...that army airplanes will 
fly over its border to prevent Colombian 
airplanes from entering Ecuadorian airspace...." [14]

In December of 2006 not only Colombian planes 
crossed the border into the country. Later in the 
month "Some 40 Colombians...fled across the 
border into Ecuador after they were attacked by 
Colombian soldiers," the Office of the UN High 
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ecuador reported. [15]

Twelve months before fifteen Colombians were 
killed and 1,500 displaced in the Narilo province 
in the country's southeast, bordering Ecuador. 
"Authorities remained silent as to whether this 
was a military operation against guerrilla 
fighters or a dispute between paramilitary groups." [16]

In early 2007 Marine Gen. Peter Pace, then chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Colombia and spent 
two days meeting with the country's military and 
political leadership. Shortly afterwards 
Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, 
about whom more will be said later, returned the 
favor and visited the Pentagon where he met with 
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. A Defense 
Department report of the visit quoted Pentagon 
officials as saying that "U.S. military support 
for Colombia, previously focused on combating 
drugs, has expanded to helping the Colombian 
military confront the country’s rebel insurgency" 
and that "U.S. Special Forces troops in Colombia 
provide Colombian forces military training...."[17]

Five months later Colombia built a third military 
base on its 2,219 kilometer border with 
Venezuela, initially stationing 1,000 troops in it.

Colombia has become a military outpost for 
Washington in confronting and threatening both 
Ecuador on its southwestern and Venezuela on its northeastern frontiers.

It is also part of a strategy that is more than 
regional and even continental in nature and scope.

South America: NATO's Sixth Continent

Since the implementation of Plan Colombia in 2000 
the US has enlisted several NATO allies for the 
counterinsurgency war in the nation and for 
broader purposes in the region. British SAS 
(Special Air Service) personnel have been 
assigned to the Colombian military for training 
purposes and Spain also sent military personnel.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has 
members in Europe and North America and 
partnerships in Asia (Afghanistan, Japan, 
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, 
Singapore, South Korea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan 
and Uzbekistan) and Africa (Algeria, Egypt, 
Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia) and with Australia.

The only inhabited continent it hasn't penetrated yet is South America,

In January of 2007 Colombian defense chief Santos 
traveled to Washington, London and Brussels, in 
the last-named city "for talks with the European 
Union," and then to Munich, Germany "for a 
meeting of NATO defense ministers." [18] Santos 
of course made the tour to garner more military 
aid from the US and its NATO allies. The European 
Union was reported to have provided $154 million annually as of that year.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned in 
September of 2005 that "We discovered through 
intelligence work a military exercise that NATO 
has of an invasion against Venezuela, and we are preparing ourselves for that
invasion."

He detailed the plan as consisting of a "military 
exercise...known as Plan Balboa [that] includes 
rehearsing simultaneous assaults by air, sea and 
land at a military base in Spain, involving 
troops from the US and NATO countries." [19] US 
troops deployed to the Dutch possession of 
Curacao off Venezuela's northwest coast were also 
part of the planned operation.

In spring of the following year it was reported 
that "Military maneuvers in the Caribbean are 
being carried out by the US, members of the North 
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and 
countries from the hemisphere - excluding Cuba 
and Venezuela, which are the potential objectives 
of this demonstration of force" and that 
immediately afterwards "Future exercises will 
involve roughly 4,000 soldiers from the US, 
Holland, Belgium, Canada and France, who are 
scheduled to participate in a maneuver being 
dubbed the Joint Caribbean Lion, to take place 
between May 23 and June 15 in Curacao and Guadeloupe." [20]

Colombian Counterinsurgency War: Model For South Asia And Central America

For the past several years the US has also 
recruited and deployed Colombian military and 
security forces for the war in Afghanistan, 
supposedly to replicate the Plan Colombia drug war component in South Asia.

In April of 2007 Washington transferred its 
ambassador to Colombia, William Wood, to 
Afghanistan to oversee the application of the 
Colombian model of counterinsurgency under the 
guise of combating drug cultivation. Two years 
later Afghanistan is estimated to account for 
over 90% of the illegal opium production in the world.

A Bangladeshi analyst observed that "Based on 
2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes the 
third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.

"Afghanistan and Colombia are the largest drug 
producing economies in the world, which feed a 
flourishing criminal economy. These countries are
heavily militarized and the drug trade is protected.

"Amply documented, the CIA has played a central 
role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.

"NATO, as an entity, has become an accessory to 
major narcotics proliferation and criminal 
activity. Opium is not truly being reduced: in 
fact all the figures show that it is on the rise. 
This is happening under the eyes of NATO as 
confirmed by several media reports." [21]

The intermediate way stations between Afghanistan 
and Colombia are Kosovo, not without reason 
dubbed the Colombia of the Balkans, and increasingly Iraq.

The pattern is impossible to ignore.

Ironically given the above contention, BBC News 
reported two years ago that "The US hopes that 
some of the lessons learned in Colombia can be applied to Afghanistan...." [22]

Last January the current chairman of the US Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullin, visited 
Colombia and was quoted as saying "Our 
military-to-military relationship is 
exceptionally strong. We need to stay with them. 
They have achieved things that are remarkable." [23]

This March Mullin traveled to Colombia, Brazil, 
Chile, Peru and Mexico. Upon returning his 
comments were summarized as affirming that "The 
U.S. military is ready to help Mexico in its 
deadly war against drug cartels with some of the 
same counter-insurgency tactics used against 
militant networks in Iraq and Afghanistan" [24] 
and that "the Plan Colombia aid package could be 
an 'overarching' model for Pakistan and Afghanistan...." [25]

A feature on US Central Command chief David 
Petraeus' plans for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan 
and Pakistan reported that "Military officials 
are also looking at U.S. relations with Colombia 
as a possible model for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 
saying something like Washington's Plan Colombia 
strategy could help the two countries against militants." [26]

The report from which the last quote is 
excerpted, "US sees lessons for Afghan war in Colombia," also includes this:

"Afghan police have already trained with their 
Colombian counterparts and Bogota is studying 
sending troops to Afghanistan to help out in eradication and de-mining." [27]

What is being exported to Afghanistan was made 
sickeningly evident last autumn when it was 
announced that Colombia had dismissed three 
generals and 22 soldiers of different ranks for 
the slaughter, at random apparently, of young slum dwellers in Bogota.

"The youths were lured from a Bogota slum with 
the promise of work; later their bodies were 
found in mass graves near the Venezuelan border.

"Human rights groups say that soldiers sometimes 
kill homeless people so that they can inflate 
their claims of success on the battlefield and receive promotion. [28]

Among the three generals asked to resign was 
General Mario Montoya Uribe, "the author of the 
policy to use body counts to measure success 
against guerrillas" [29] who "allegedly 
encouraged promoting officers whose units kill the most leftist rebels." [30]

A later report provided gruesome details:

"More than 1,000 cases of illegal killings by the 
military are being investigated. There are dozens 
of cases of soldiers taking innocent men, 
murdering them and dressing them up as enemy combatants. Hundreds of
members of the security forces are thought to 
have taken part in such activities." [31]

Recall in reference to the above that the report 
immediately preceding it states that the murdered 
were buried in mass graves near the Venezuelan border.

With this year's onslaught by the Sri Lankan 
military against LTTE strongholds appearing to 
have ended the nation's 33-year war, the 
Colombian government and its American military 
suppliers are waging the only decades-long 
counterinsurgency war in the world, one now in its fifth decade.

It has been and remains a war against the poor, 
the landless, the disenfranchised, anyone would 
opposes the privileges and abuses of the large 
landholders, the business elite, the US-trained 
military establishment and the upper echelons of the narco-mafias.

Nine years ago Plan Colombia was designed to be the terminal phase of that war.

The Colombia model is now the prototype 
Washington has openly identified for application 
in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mexico among other locations.

Plan Colombia: Reining In Resurgent South America

Plan Colombia, additionally, is now being 
increasingly revealed as a military strategy for 
suppressing a rising tide of discontent with the 
aftereffects of post-Cold War neoliberalism 
throughout South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

The US and the West as a whole have used the 
Colombian regime and its formidable military 
machine to intimidate its neighbors Ecuador and 
Venezuela and the Andean region as a whole. 
Bordering on Panama, Colombia is also a potential 
launching pad for attacks on Central American 
nations like Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

A brief chronology of the past year and a half 
will demonstrate the heightened role that is 
intended for Colombia by its sponsors in Washington.

In January of 2008 Venezuelan President Chavez 
said that the US and its Colombian client "don't 
want peace in Colombia because it's the perfect 
excuse to have thousands of soldiers there, the 
CIA, military bases, spy planes and who knows 
what other...operations against Venezuela."

He added, "I accuse the government of Colombia of 
devising a conspiracy, acting as a pawn of the 
U.S. empire, of devising a military provocation against Venezuela." [32]

On March 1st of 2008 Colombia launched a raid 
inside Ecuador and killed 24 suspected FARC 
members, including the group's second in command Raul Reyes.

An article titled "Colombian official says US intelligence helped raid on
rebels" reported that "the Ecuadoran air force 
found that Colombia used ten 500-pound bombs, 
similar to those used by US forces in Iraq, which 
'cannot be transported by Colombian airplanes.'

"Ecuadoran authorities also noted that a few 
hours before the Colombian bombing raid, an 
HC-130 military aircraft had taken off from the 
US air base at Manta, in southeastern Ecuador." [33]

Fearing that the armed incursion inside Ecuador 
was part of a broader plan of aggression, 
Venezuela deployed some 9,000 troops to its 
border with Colombia. On the day of the attack 
Venezuelan President Chavez warned his Colombian 
counterpart, "Don't think about doing that over 
here because it would very serious, it would be cause for war." [34]

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa broke off 
diplomatic relations with Colombia after the 
attack and when it was later discovered that the 
bombing had killed an Ecuadoran national, warned of further consequences.

On March 6 Venezuela decreed a state of general 
alert and sent ten battalions, tanks and planes to the Colombian border.

US President Bush told reporters that "America 
would continue to stand with Colombia." [35]

Three weeks later Ecuador announced that it would 
"install electronic surveillance equipment and 
boost its military presence along its border with 
Colombia" and President Correa warned that his 
country would ""never again" allow a foreign attack on its soil. [36]

US Military: After Iraq, Latin America

Also in April of 2008 the US Air Forces Southern 
director of operations, Col. Jim Russell, 
advocated that troops being withdrawn from Iraq 
be redeployed to the Pentagon's Southern Command 
which takes in South and Central America and the 
Caribbean. He stated at the time: "We think, as 
we move ahead, we will see more of a shift of attention towards the region.

“We’re seeing problems right at the mouth of 
Central America. That’s the gateway to our southern border.” [37]

On July 12, 2008 the US Navy reestablished its 
4th Fleet, encompassing South and Central America 
and the Caribbean as does the Pentagon's Southern 
Command, after it was disestablished in 1950 following World War II.

Earlier this year the chief of the Southern 
Command, Admiral James Stavridis, became NATO 
Supreme Allied Commander and head of the 
Pentagon's European Command. Three of the last 
five NATO top military commanders - Stavridis, 
his predecessor Bantz John Craddock and Wesley 
Clark - moved to that post from being head of Southern Command.

In May of 2008, clearly anticipating what has 
occurred this week, Venezuela warned Colombia not 
to allow a new US military base in La Guajira 
near the border with northwestern Venezuela. The 
latter's president said, "We will not allow the 
Colombian government to give La Guajira to the 
empire. Colombia is launching a threat of war at us." [38]

Less than a week later a US warplane penetrated 
Venezuelan airspace on a flight from the 
Netherlands Antilles. The Venezuelan government 
accused the US of spying on a military base on 
Orchila Island and "said the U.S. was testing 
Venezuela's ability to detect intruders and that 
the Venezuelan air force was prepared to 
intercept the plane had it not turned back toward 
the Caribbean island of Curacao." [39]

Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel said that "This 
is just the latest step in a series of 
provocations in which they want to involve our country." [40]

In September a bloody separatist ambush killed 
eight people in the Bolivian province of Pando. 
The government expelled US ambassador Philip 
Goldberg, an old hand at supporting violent 
secessionist uprisings in Bosnia and Kosovo 
earlier. The head of the nation's armed forces, 
General Luis Trigo, warned that "The Bolivian 
Armed Forces warned on Friday that they will not 
tolerate any more actions of radical groups or 
foreign interference in the country's internal affairs." [41]

Toward the end of 2008 Bolivia expelled US Drug 
Enforcement Administration officers and later 
announced plans to purchase Russian helicopters for anti-narcotics operations.

Today Bolivian President Evo Morales stated, "I 
have first-hand information that the empire, 
through the U.S. Southern Command, made the coup d'etat in Honduras." [42]

In October of 2008 Ecuador charged the CIA with 
infiltrating its military and knowing of the 
Colombian attack on its territory the preceding 
March. Defence Minister Javier Ponce told 
newspapers: "The CIA had full knowledge of what 
was happening in Angostura." [43]

At the same time Colombian Defense Minister 
Santos broadened his nation's bellicosity by 
aiming it toward Russia. Completely the creature 
of Washington and its military that he is, Santos said:

"Russia, with its 16,000 nuclear bombs, has a 
great desire to be a key player in the world. But 
its presence in the region will promote a return to the Cold War." [44]

Santos was alluding in particular to recent 
Russian-Venezuelan naval exercises in the 
Caribbean and to the fact that Russia has 
provided Caracas with advanced arms, warplanes 
and submarines, reflecting a general trend among 
Latin American nations - including Bolivia, 
Ecuador, Argentina and Nicaragua - toward 
increased military ties with Russia as a 
counterbalance to traditional American domination 
of their armed forces and to be able to defend 
themselves against US and proxy attacks. What 
Santos and his American sponsors fear is the 
effective demise of the almost 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine.

This March Venezuelan President Chavez labeled 
Colombian Defense Minister Santos "a threat to 
regional stability" and a "a threat to the 
stability and sovereignty of the countries in the 
region" who "again shows his contempt for 
international law" in reference to Santos' 
defense of the attack inside Ecuador last year. [45]

Santos reiterated his intention to continue 
striking alleged rebel sites in neighboring 
countries, evoking this response from Chavez a 
few days later: "In case of a provocation on the 
part of Colombia's armed forces or infringements 
on Venezuela's sovereignty, I will give an order 
to strike with Sukhoi aircraft and tanks. I will 
not let anyone disrespect Venezuela and its sovereignty." [46]

During the past few months the Pentagon has been 
training the armed forces of Guyana, Venezuela's 
eastern neighbor, both at home and in the United 
States. The use of French and Dutch island 
possessions in the Caribbean for military 
purposes has already been examined. With the 
election of Ricardo Martinelli as president of 
Panama this May putting that country back into 
the US column, the noose is tightening around Venezuela.

Ecuador refused to renew an agreement with the US 
for the use of its Manta military base and so 
Washington lost its basing rights there this 
month. With the corresponding announcement last 
week by Colombian President Uribe that he was 
turning five more military bases over to the 
Pentagon - three airfields and two navy bases - 
President Chavez was correct in seeing the move 
as "a threat against us," and warning that "They 
are surrounding Venezuela with military bases." [47]

Since the overthrow of Honduran President Manuel 
Zelaya on June 28, led by military commanders 
trained at the School of the Americas, alarms 
have been sounded in Latin America and throughout 
the world that the coup, far from being an 
aberration or anachronism, may mark a precedent for more in the near future.

And just as in the final months of the Bush 
presidency and the first seven months of the 
current one military operations in Afghanistan, 
for five years given secondary importance in 
relation to Iraq, have escalated into the world's 
major war front, so plans for direct US military 
aggression in Latin America, dormant since the 
invasion of Panama in 1989, may be slated for revival.

Notes

1) Russia Today, January 18, 2009
2) Ibid
3) STRATFOR, January 14, 2000
4) Ibid
5) Ottawa Citizen, September 6, 2000
6) Inter Press Service, December 21, 2000
7) Ibid
8) United Press International, April 11, 2000
9) Tampa Bay Times, July 12, 2008
10) Ibid
11) Associated Press, May 24, 2007
12) Associated Press, March 10, 2007
13) Xinhua News Agency, February 18, 2007
14) Xinhua News Agency, December 16, 2006
15) Xinhua News Agency, December 27, 2006
16) Xinhua News Agency, January 20, 2006
17) U.S. Department of Defense, February 1, 2007
18) Reuters, January 29, 2007
19) Australian Associated Press, September 4, 2005
20) Prensa Latina, April 10, 2006
21) The Daily Star, November 24, 2007
22) BBC News, July 8, 2007
23) Agence France-Presse, January 17, 2008
24) Reuters, March 6, 2009
25) Reuters, March 5, 2009
26) Reuters, October 16, 2008
27) Ibid
28) Radio Netherlands, October 30, 2008
29) Russia Today, January 18, 2009
30) Trend News Agency, November 4, 2008
31) Russia Today, January 18, 2009
32) Reuters, January 25, 2008
33) Focus News Agency, March 24, 2008
34) Associated Press, March 1, 2008
35) Reuters, March 4, 2008
36) Associated Press, April 22, 2008
37) Stars and Stripes, April 27, 2008
38) Associated Press, May 15, 2008
39) Bloomberg News, May 21, 2008
40) Reuters, May 19, 2008
41) Xinhua News Agency, September 13, 2008
42) Agence France-Presse, July 22, 2009
43) Reuters, October 30, 2008
44) Russian Information Agency Novosti, October 4, 2008
45) Trend News Agency, March 4, 2009
46) Russian Information Agency Novosti, March 9, 2009
47) Associated Press, July 21, 2009



For media inquiries: <mailto:crgeditor at yahoo.com>crgeditor at yahoo.com

© Copyright Rick Rozoff, 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40838>Stop NATO, 2009

The url address of this article is: 
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=14503>www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=14503 


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