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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd08022007.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd08022007.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>August 2, 2007</font><font size=3>
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</font><h1><font size=4><b>Chertoff, Chiquita and Death Squads<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4 color="#990000">
Banana Republic </b></font></h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>By
CHRIS FLOYD <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=5 color="#990000">A</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>s Jonathan Schwarz recently noted, there is a
deeply discouraging sameness about the outrages that dissenting writers
must address -- and a new front-page story in the Washington Post is a
perfect example. In fact, it's a piece that could have been written at
any time in the last 100 years or more: "Feds Look the Other Way
While United Fruit Company Peddles Death and Corruption in Latin
America"</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>Today of course, the infamous United
Fruit of yore (whose machinations in Guatemala led to a CIA coup that set
off decades of mass-murdering chaos) is known by the more perky name of
Chiquita, and conjures up cheery pictures of childhood banana-munching
around the family table. But while corporations may change their spots
(or their peels) and their personnel over the years, the nature of the
beast remains much the same, because its raison d'etre remains the same:
maximizing profit. And United Fruit/Chiquita has traditionally been
willing to push the banana boat way out when it comes to ensuring that
its exploitation of cheap labor remains undisturbed.</font><font size=3>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>In the case of Colombia, this meant
paying an officially designated terrorist gang -- the vicious killers of
the rightwing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- to keep
Chiquita's operations running smoothly in the war-torn nation. A whole
sordid history could be written about the extensive intertwining of
American government and corporate interests with AUC and the other
rightwing Colombian militias, but for our purposes here it is enough to
note that Chiquita not only paid AUC for protection from leftwing
militias, it also took an active and direct role in "in smuggling
thousands of arms for paramilitaries into the Northern Uraba region,
using docks operated by the company to unload thousands of Central
American assault rifles and ammunition," as the Post reports. In
turn, the paramilitaries used these weapons "to fund operations
against peasants, union workers and rivals."</font><font size=3>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>"I regarded this as a murder
investigation," says Roscoe Howard Jr., the former U.S. Attorney who
spearheaded a prosecution of Chiquita for its death-squad collaboration,
the Wall Street Journal reports. "Even though Chiquita didn't murder
anyone, that's what the money was used for -- to buy
weapons."</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>Earlier this year, Chiquita the
corporate entity paid a piddling $25 million to wash the blood from its
gleaming office walls. But now the company's human entities are facing
personal criminal charges for facilitating the murder, kidnapping, rape
and robbery of innocent human beings. To counter this, they are offering
a modified version of the Nuremberg Defense; it's not exactly that they
were "just following orders" from Der Leader, but they say they
did receive implicit permission from the Bush Regime to carry on funding
the Colombian death squads after corporate officials notified the Justice
Department in 2003 of their involvement with AUC. As the Post
notes:</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>"... last week, lawyers for the
former Chiquita executives sent letters to the Justice Department,
asserting that their clients did not intentionally break the law but
believed they were waiting for an answer from the highest levels of the
Bush administration."<br><br>
</dl>The man they sought out at the Justice Department the Assistant
Attorney General, one Michael Chertoff, now the gut-checking head of
Homeland Security. As the Post reports:</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>"Chiquita, [company officials told
Chertoff], would have to pull out of the country if it could not continue
to pay the violent right-wing group to secure its Colombian banana
plantations. Chertoff...affirmed that the payments were illegal but said
to wait for more feedback, according to five sources familiar with the
meeting...Sources close to Chiquita say that Chertoff never did get back
to the company or its lawyers. Neither did Larry D. Thompson, the deputy
attorney general, whom Chiquita officials sought out after Chertoff left
his job for a federal judgeship in June 2003. And Chiquita kept making
payments for nearly another year."<br><br>
</dl>But as we all know, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. And
there were many in the Bush Regime who did not regard AUC as real
terrorists; after all, they weren't Muslims, and they were only killing a
bunch of piss-poor Latinos -- along with political opponents of
Washington's much-favored Uribe administration in Bogata. What's not to
like. As the Post reports:</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>"But legal sources on both sides say
there was a genuine debate within the Justice Department about the
seriousness of the crime of paying AUC. For some high-level
administration officials, Chiquita's payments were not aiding an obvious
terrorism threat such as al-Qaeda; instead, the cash was going to a
violent South American group helping a major U.S. company maintain a
stabilizing presence in Colombia."<br><br>
</dl>As long as a "violent group" supports American policy or
corporate interests, they can let rip. We see this dynamic in operation
all over the world at the moment. It is part of a long-standing -- and
open -- policy of the Bush Administration to arm and fund violent
militias to do its dirty work. As I wrote here in Counterpunch back in
2004:</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>"Last month, in little-noticed
testimony before Congress, the Bush Regime unveiled its plans to raise a
host of warlord armies in the most volatile areas in the world, Agence
France-Presse reports. Bush wants $500 million in seed money to arm and
train non-governmental "local militias" – i.e., bands of
lawless freebooters – to serve as Washington's proxy killers in the
so-called "arc of crisis" that just happens to stretch across
the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Africa, the Middle
East, Central Asia and South America.<br><br>
<dd>"Flanked by a gaggle of military brass, Pentagon deputy honcho
Paul Wolfowitz told a rapt panel of Congressional rubber-stamps that Bush
wants big bucks to run "counter-insurgency" and
"counter-terrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas"
of the world – and in the hinterlands of nations providing
"sanctuary" for terrorists. Making copious citations from
Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked
aggressive war against "potential" enemies, Howlin' Wolf
proposed expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to
any nation that allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even
verbal encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour.<br><br>
<dd>"Any rogue state that countenances such freedom of speech within
its borders will become a prime target for "the path of
action," said Wolf, quoting Bush's most ringing Hitlerian phrase
from the 2002 manifesto. To relieve the overstretched U.S. military, the
"action" will be carried out largely by Bush's new hired guns:
religious and ethnic militias, tribal forces, mercenaries, cultists,
insurrectionists, druglords, pirates – basically anyone willing to slit
throats and terrorize populations at the order of the Oval
One."<br><br>
</dl>Of course, it is very good indeed that, against all odds, there
remain some honest prosecutors in the federal justice system willing to
do what should have been done a century ago: hold corporate chieftains
responsible for the crimes they beget in their slavering pursuit of
profit. But it also clear that the Chiquita executives were given the
same kind of nod-and-wink for murky dealings that their illustrious
predecessors have always received from Washington. That they may now be
hoist on their own petard is their own tough luck; but they are certainly
not the only ones who should be in the dock.</font><font size=3>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>Chris Floyd</b> is an American
journalist based in the UK and a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. He
is the writer of the political blog,
<a href="http://www.chris-floyd.com">Empire Burlesque </a>, and author of
the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush
Imperium.</font><font size=3> <br><br>
<br><br>
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