US official vows 'good explanation' for Colombia bases

[Enrique]

Source: AFP

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gZlu6LJFzxm3evzE67DJgyKgLTVg

US official vows 'good explanation' for Colombia bases

By Yana Marull (AFP) – 4 hours ago

BRASILIA — US President Barack Obama's national security advisor said Tuesday Washington will give a "good explanation" for plans to deploy US military units to bases in Colombia, after unease expressed in Latin America.

Retired general Jim Jones told reporters after meeting Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim in Brasilia that the goals of the agreement being negotiated allowing the use of the bases would be detailed.

The matter "will have a good explanation and a satisfactory outcome," he predicted to reporters as he began two days of talks with Brazilian officials on that and other defense issues.

Brazil and other Latin American nations, including Venezuela, Ecuador and Chile, expressed alarm at the announcement last month that the United States military would use and expand bases in Colombia.

Bogota had initially said three air bases would be used for the US fight against drug trafficking.

But the head of the Colombian military, General Freddy Padilla, said Tuesday two army bases and two navy bases would also be given US access under the deal, bringing the total to seven military facilities.

US General Douglas Fraser, in charge of US Southern Command operations covering South America, stressed after a meeting with Padilla in Cartagena, Colombia, that no deal had yet been struck.

(...)

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gZlu6LJFzxm3evzE67DJgyKgLTVg

[bemildred]

1. LOL. Just as soon as we figure one out. nt

[Judi Lynn]

25. Yep, if they had a good excuse they would have shared it already.

Could be that "good excuse" will have to be a violent answer to some explosive new event which suddenly appears from nowhere, either in Colombia and Peru, the only two countries remaining who still are US-directed and have sufficiently beaten down and intimidated the dissent in their two massively poor populations, all others finally managing to fight their way toward more democratic government.

First, the bogus attack which will call out for a severe, and swift retaliation, as in the sinking of the Maine, or the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or 9-11, or other Operation Northwoods-like events, and the follow-up, then the pompous announcement it would be unpatriotic if we did NOT flood the area with 7 bases in order to beat down the upsurge of new commies, or narco-traffickers, or other rowdy entities either within the two US-controlled countries, or from alleged skirmishes from those mean countries which have tried desperately to shake off the choke-hold by US right-wing interests.

[Zhade]

29. So much for change. Imperial America marches on.

NT!

[Judi Lynn]

30. Apparently we're supposed to thank the F.S.Monster that John McCain wasn't elected,

in order to find any way to feel relief at all after the election.

Had he been able, no doubt he'd already have leveled Honduras in his haste to slaughter Zelaya, his family, and every potential supporter, then go after the other countries for their lack of approval.

Somehow, it doesn't feel like enough to celebrate, knowing it could have been even worse!

[EFerrari]

2. They're not just "deploying" troops to bases. They want 7 new bases. n/t

[Bacchus39]

27. no they don't. they would use 7 existing Colombian bases. n/t

s

[unkachuck]

3. "...plans to deploy US military units to bases in Colombia..."

....watch out SA, shock and awe coming your way....

[Wilms]

4. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have to go. NOW!

Oh. Wait.

[Nevernose]

5. "used for the US fight against drug trafficking"

You mean the fight we've been waging for decades with shit to show for it? Or couldit be that we're just propping up, militarily, a friendly right-wing government?

[Peace Patriot]

6. Here's my guess at the plan for Oil War II-South America:

1. Blame all the results of Bushwhack grand looting and other mind-boggling crimes on Obama, starting about...now? Soon, anyway.

2. Diebold him out of office in 2012, and bring on Hitler II.

3. Implement the next oil war in South America, for which much ground work has already been laid, including an intense psyops/propaganda campaign against the presidents of the two main oil targets--Venezuela and Ecuador; $6 BILLION in military aid to Colombia--whose government and military have one of the worst human rights records on earth--as the launching pad against Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil provinces, which are adjacent to Colombia in both cases, and where the Bushwhacks have larded fascist secessionist groups with millions of dollars in US taxpayer money (through John McCain's US taxpayer-funded "International Republican Institute" and other USAID-NED as well as covert budgets); identify these fascists as "patriots" and "freedom fighters," and then--as Donald Rumsfeld urges, in an op-ed in the Washington Post (12/1/07)--provide "swift" U.S. support to (Bushwhack) "friends and allies" in South America. The main goal: to create fascist mini-states in which U.S. global corporate predators can regain control of the oil. Secondary goals: smashing the leftist democracy movement in Latin America; imposing "free trade" directly--not just by corruption, but by force--with the government providing the death squads to murder union leaders (as in Colombia). Venezuela's main oil reserves are located on its Caribbean coast, for which the Bushwhacks reconstituted the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean last summer (which has been mothballed since WW II), and arranged the recent coup in Honduras, in order to maintain the U.S. military base there, and a population controlled by a fascist coup government. Honduras has a long history of being used as a "lily pad" country for U.S. aggression--it was "death squad central" during the Reagan reign of terror. And, with El Salvador and Guatemala (adjacent to Honduras) electing leftist governments, Honduras' president beginning to advocate for the poor and for Honduran sovereignty, and given Honduras' strategic position, with a long coast on the Caribbean and access to the Pacific, the coup was essential to this war plan.

Alternatively, they could contrive some sort of "Gulf of Tonkin" incident to drag the U.S. into this oil war before Obama leaves office, and perhaps use it as an item in their false narrative for the 2012 election. It is not at all clear that Obama has control of all the levers of our government, and in particular the Bushwhack moles that remain at the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department (including some very curious, last-minute Bushwhack ambassador appointments in Latin America, and a couple of quite evil long term holdovers), and at other locations within the government, at critical junctures of decision-making and power. This latter scenario--initiation of this second oil war during Obama's tenure--has me very worried, at present, because of the intensification of the propaganda campaign against Chavez so evident in our corpo/fascist media, and somewhat muffled but on-going in overt government policy, and no doubt raging in covert policy and psyops channels. Propaganda campaigns like this--so very like the WMDs in Iraq (replete with South America's "Judith Miller" at the NYT--Simon Romero)--do not come cheap, and are not activated for no reason. The lies about Chavez are mind-boggling. And there is a similar propaganda campaign that we don't much hear about, run by Colombia's narco-thug rulers, against Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador.

Be warned, my friends. Be warned. There is just too much evidence accumulating that this war plan is real, and could be imminent. The SEVEN U.S. military bases in Colombia is just the latest warning sign--a rather big one. Rumsfeld's op-ed was an early warning sign. The white separatists' secession riots last September in the gas/oil rich provinces of Bolivia--funded and organized right out of the U.S. embassy--may have been a test run. Fascist leaders in both Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil rich provinces openly talk of secession. These countries may be facing U.S.-instigated civil war. And we may be facing yet another Iraq. It may not have the same war strategy (outright invasion), but it will have the same purpose--to steal the oil. The events in Bolivia, and now Honduras, are more evidence still. The Bolivian coup was defeated with the help of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, acting through the new South American "common market"--UNASUR. As a Bushwhack test run, it taught the Bushwhacks to avoid any forum in which the combined strength of allied Latin America countries could out-maneuver their coup plans. Thus, for the Honduran coup, they set up PRIVATE "talks" in Costa Rica, run by an unofficial, U.S.-appointed negotiator, Oscar Arias. The goal is to legitimize the coup regime--something that UNASUR did not permit in the Bolivian situation. This preserves the coup's power, whether Zelaya returns or not, to continue Honduras' status as a client state of the U.S., and especially as a U.S. military base.

I still believe that Obama is sincere in his stated policy of peace, respect and cooperation in Latin America. I don't know if he has the power to implement it. And I think there is good reason to suspect that Clinton is colluding with the Bushwhacks on this planned war. (She's being advised by John Negroponte, for godssakes! This is not proof of her collusion. She may be just picking his brain in a very difficult situation. People in positions of power sometimes have to do that. Maybe she's using him, not the other way around. I'm just saying it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Clinton was collusive, and it would surprise me to find out that Obama was.) As for any power that we, the people, have to prevent our country from inflicting more horror on the world, in the interest of global corporate predators, what can I say? We seem to have none at all. On the other hand, the evil lords are still bothering to propagandize us, which means that we still have potential power. They VERY MUCH want us to believe that Chavez is a "dictator" so that, when they instigate civil war there, and smash Venezuela's democracy all to pieces, and send U.S. troops to support Latin American "patriots" and "freedom fighters," we won't give a crap. But it's something, I guess, that they think that our giving a crap might be important; might even--some day--topple them.

[EFerrari]

7. I used to think that you were a little too pessamistic about a possible

military attack on Venezuela.

The empire is not going to let Latin America go without a real fight, that much is abundantly clear.

[Peace Patriot]

9. You know what it was that really put me on the trail of this planned war (if that's what it is)?

It was Rumsfeld interjecting himself right into the middle of the Uribe/Chavez hostage negotiation thing (Uribe asking Chavez to do it, then withdrawing that request at the last minute, etc.) in the first paragraph of that op-ed. There is evidence of last-minute editing of that first paragraph--possibly to keep up with unfolding of events that weekend--indicating that Rumsfeld was paying close attention, and possibly calling the shots. Someone got Uribe to rescind his request to Chavez, just at the moment of Chavez's first hostage negotiation success. Then the Colombian military shot rockets at those hostages. Was Rumsfeld behind the whole thing--trying to set Chavez up for a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages? Anyway, it got my attention. It struck me as very odd that Rumsfeld--forced to resign from the Pentagon only a year before, over the Iraq War--was writing an editorial on Latin America. All my alarm bells went off. And I started looking at events in Latin America from a war strategist's point of view. The establishment of war assets--the 4th Fleet, the seven bases in Colombia, etc. The systems tests they were doing (the bombing/raid on Ecuador; the Bolivian fascist insurrection--their trying to secede and take Bolivia's gas/oil resources with them). The blatant psyops (the CIA "suitcase" caper out of Miami, to try to paint Chavez as corrupt; the miracle laptops that Colombia's "Office of Special Plans" keeps leaking things from, to try to paint Chavez and Correa as terrorists, etc.) The even more blatant "Big Lie" propaganda about Chavez ("Chavez the dictator"). These things are not just corpo/fascist politics, I began to think. They are preparations for war. Now Honduras is put in place--another war asset.

Along the way, I've stumbled across corroboration from South American leaders. Correa outright stated that there is a three-country war plan using civil war/secession to get control of the oil (Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia). And Lula da Silva said that the 4th Fleet is a threat to Brazil's oil. The 4th Fleet is not benign. One could attribute all this very expensive U.S. militarism--and its absurd justification, the "war on drugs"--to war profiteering. But when you add the war profiteering to other events and realities (f.i., where Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil is located, the intense propaganda campaign against Chavez and so on), things start pointing to an actual "hot" war, an oil war.

Rumsfeld has always given me the willies--even more so than Bush and Cheney. I could see him overseeing Hitler's death camps, in his smart nazi boots. His soul is ice. His interest in South America (which he entitled, "The Smart Way to Defeat Tyrants Like Chavez")-- just after he was denied Iran's oil--was and is extremely worrisome.

[EFerrari]

10. Yes, Rumsfeld may look incompetent but he's not stupid.

On the contrary, he is very smart.

When I saw Chavez nationalizing the ports, that was a big relief. For one thing, those ports were a nexus for the oligarchy's drug running. But, more important, Ven needs them to be secure in case of a military emergency.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Who in his/her right mind would have ever dreamed a Democratic State Department would turn to

"Death Squad" John Negroponte for advising. Malignant, predictable timing in all this, with Negroponte looming right back into view, having been so closely associated with Honduras' death squads during Reagan, but then we find out the Honduras Coup President Micheletti has brought back the original leader of Honduras' vicious, notorious death sqaud, Batallion 316, Billy Joya as his security advisor.

Putting the Iran/Contra crap right back into play, apparently. There's no reason to avoid the idea this whole scheme was well planned out well before _Bush left his stolen Presidency, just as Dwight Eisenhower's Pentagon already had the men (Cuban exiles, etc.) assembled and trained in Guatemala (whose government they had overthrown in 1954) preperatory to the Bay of Pigs well before John F. Kennedy was elected, and inherited THAT filthy trap.

Looks completely cyclical, unlikely to be retired without meeting greater resistance, and one would hope by now, Latin America has already learned enough from earlier suffering and loss how to make it harder to do it to them again.

If Obama plays along with their game, he'll sacrifice Latin American people, and the US right-wing will be the winner. If he doesn't lay waste to them, try to overthrow all the populist leftist Presidents, and considers the well-being and natural right of Latin America to run its own affairs, the US right-wing will make a national defense issue of it, howling about Latin American leftists coming to take over the US, and it will be used politically to wreak havoc with his Presidency.

Hope we see movement from President Obama which will be original, which will break with tradition before its too late, and we will also see an increase and protection in Latin America solidarity which has been building steadily for over a decade, as they pulled away from the nightmare of US-assisted coups and bloody butcher puppet dictators.

[Xicano]

8. Gee I wonder who borders Columbia?

Hmmm, lets see. Oh yeah, Venezuela and Ecuador do. Wow Obama, how strategical. Hey even Panama borders Columbia (just in case they get the big idea their country belongs to them).

Sigh, when will this empire ideology stop?

[Xicano]

11. dup

.

[elehhhhna]

17. Didn't gw buy like a zillion acres in Paraguay a few years ago? Woner how that fits in.

& welcomwe to DU!!!

[Xicano]

20. Thanks for the welcome elehhhhna

:hi:

[Peace Patriot]

24. I could never find confirmation for it, and I don't know if it occurred.

Rumor was 100,000 acres right over South America's major aquifer.

But, meanwhile, Paraguay elected a leftist president--Fernando Lugo--overturning 61 years of rightwing rule (including a long period of cruel dictatorship). They also rescinded their non-extradition law and their immunity law for the US military (making Paraguay a much less desirable destination for the Bushwhack criminals). The Bushwhacks may have been planning on a leftist-free zone in a swath covering several countries in the heart of South America--Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru. Lugo foiled them in Paraguay. Evo Morales--with Brazil's, Argentina's and Chile's particular help--foiled them in Bolivia (where the Bushwhacks were funding/organizing the white separatists right out of the US embassy--the goal was secession, in the gas/oil-rich provinces of Bolivia that are adjacent to Paraguay). And Peru is still hanging out there, as a Bushwhack "paradise" (hell), in the middle of all those leftist governments.

Brazil also helped in Paraguay. Paraguay doesn't have oil. All it really has is hydroelectric power. Paraguay's contracts with Brazilian companies were unfair to Paraguay. Brazil's president re-negotiated them with Lugo, to yield more revenue for Paraguay, an extremely poor country. Thus, leftist bolsters leftist, and democrats and advocates of the poor majority in one country bolster democrats and advocates of the poor majority in another. It is this power blockade in favor of the poor majority that the Bushwhacks dearly wanted to bust up, and still do. But it will probably take a full-scale war to do it--with planning for that war still in progress. (SEVEN new U.S. military bases going into Colombia; the Honduran coup--to retain that "lily pad" country for U.S. aggression; reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean--and other indications.) The plan is to smash Latin American democracy to pieces, topple all the social justice governments and regain global corporate predator control of the oil (and other resources).

[Xicano]

12. I wish to quote Dr. Martin Luther King.

since I've seen many references of MLK when people are promoting Obama.







Allow me to quote Dr. Martin Luther King because it seems to me President Obama doesn't know the man.

Dr. Martin Luther King:

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investment accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin , we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

---

And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."

[Judi Lynn]

15. Truer now, if possible, than it was when it was written. Wonderful, and clear, and so right.

Thank you for placing this where we can read it, or read it again, and think about it seriously.

Welcome to D.U., Xicano, and thanks for the images, as well. :hi:

[Xicano]

21. Thanks for the welcome Judi Lynn

:hi:

[redqueen]

19. Thank you.

:thumbsup:

[Xicano]

22. Hi redqueen

:hi:

[Peace Patriot]

23. Wow! Thanks! The great MLK! Bookmarking! nt

[girl gone mad]

14. Someone please pass the memo along to this administration..

the U.S. empire is so over.

[Judi Lynn]

28. Doesn't look as if they're going to take "no" for an answer.

After 10 Years Brazil and Neighbors Still Opposed to US's Plan Colombia
Written by Juliana Sojo
Thursday, 06 August 2009

Colombia is likely to become the regional hub for the Pentagon's Latin American activities and its Fort Apache as U.S. and Colombia near a cooperation agreement that would expand U.S. military presence in the country. The U.S. seeks to increase its influence in Colombia as it counts down the days until its lease expires on the Manta, Ecuador base that Quito terminated on mainly political grounds.

The new Colombia agreement is meant to extend the use of seven of the country's military bases in what is estimated to be a ten year lease arrangement. The agreement is said to also include terms for preferential arms and aircraft sales to the Colombian military. Currently, U.S. military presence in Colombia cannot exceed 800 Department of Defense Employees and 600 civilian military contractors, all of which have immunity for criminal prosecution in the country.

Leaders of a number of Colombia's neighboring countries have expressed their concerns, as U.S' expanded military role in the country appears to further besmirch Bogotá's good name. As a result of the pending accord, Venezuela's Chávez has removed his Ambassador in Bogotá, stating that the base agreement represents an act of aggression on the part of the neighboring country.

Presidents Lula of Brazil and Bachelet of Chile also have strongly condemned expanded U.S. military presence in Colombia and the lack of prior discussion with the affected nations. While South American leaders requested a meeting of UNASUR's Defense Council in order to obtain a clear explanation of the agreement from Colombia, it appears that neither President Uribe nor his Foreign Affairs minister Jaime Bermudez will be attending such event, although Colombia is sure to be attacked for its role.

As a result of the anticipated bitter regional debate, Uribe and Bermudez have begun a regional tour to explain the details of the proposed military deal and Colombia's so called terrorist threat. So far, the tour has had mixed results, as Bolivia's Morales deeply opposed the initiative, stating that allowing foreign military bases on Colombian soil represented an act of aggression to the region's democracies.

More:
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/11059/

[Vidar]

16. They facilitate CIA drug purchases & death squads.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Why the U.S. Government Hates Venezuela

August 4, 2009 at 17:43:18
Why the U.S. Government Hates Venezuela
by shamus cooke

The propaganda wheels are turning fast. The barrage of anti-Venezuela misinformation that began while Bush was in office has intensified in recent months. Not a week goes by without the U.S. mainstream media running at least one story about the “dictatorial” Venezuelan government. Historically, the U.S. government’s foreign policy “coincidentally” matches the opinion of the media and vice versa.
A front page New York Times article on August 2, 2009 cited “new evidence” that the Venezuelan government “still” supports the FARC a peasant-based guerrilla group that has fought the Colombian government for decades.

This “new evidence” is a mere recycling of the last tactical attempt to link the Venezuelan government with the FARC: computers were supposedly confiscated from FARC leaders that showed innumerable ties to Venezuelan government officials. Of course, anybody can write anything on a computer and say it came from somewhere else. Evidence like this needs only a willing accomplice the media to legitimize it.

The Venezuelan government denies the accusations. But even if Venezuela maintained a policy of openly supporting the FARC, it would be more justifiable than the U.S. policy of openly supporting the Colombian government. Colombia is the most-hated and repressive government in the western hemisphere, but the U.S. gives billions of dollars of financial, military and political aide. This despicable relationship has not ended under Obama, but has in fact strengthened.

The recent announcement that the U.S. military would move potentially thousands of troops to Colombia, where they will access five Colombian military bases, has put Venezuela and the rest of Latin America on alert. The Obama administration has not explained the move publicly, though Latin Americans need no explanation.

The continent has a long history of being exploited by U.S. corporations, who work in tandem with the U.S. government to oust “non-cooperative” governments, using countless tactics to meet their objectives including clandestine C.I.A. coups.

More:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-the-U-S-Government-Ha-by-shamus-cooke-090803-589.html

[Judi Lynn]

26. Uribe wins some, loses some on whirlwind tour (won ONE!)

Uribe wins some, loses some on whirlwind tour
By MICHAEL WARREN (AP) – 16 hours ago

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has said almost nothing in public about his meetings with South American presidents this week in response to fears that the U.S. military could become too powerful on the continent if given long-term leases on Colombian bases.

Halfway through his trip, Uribe won solid support in Peru, and Chile's president called the U.S. bases deal an internal matter for Colombia only days after she said the whole region had legitimate concerns. But Bolivia's Evo Morales blasted the U.S. plans Wednesday, while Uribe had very little to say during his stop in Argentina.

Still on the agenda for Uribe were meetings with leftist presidents in Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil — the latter where the U.S. national security adviser, Jim Jones, acknowledged the deal could have been explained better to the region's leaders.

U.S. officials haven't released details, but Colombians have said U.S. forces would have access to at least seven Colombian bases. They say there would be no more than 1,400 American personnel in the country helping support Colombia's fight against drug trafficking and leftist rebels.

"There is no magic, nothing secret under the table," Jones said. "Just to make sure, we will send a military briefing team around to interested countries in the region to make sure everybody understands what this is and what this isn't.

More:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i55mOcbo0ZxkNjgjmndA9Iwr6-SQD99T440O0