US-Colombia military accord challenged in Bogota court

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

US-Colombia military accord challenged in Bogota court
53 mins ago

BOGOTA (AFP) – Colombia's Constitutional Court has decided to review an agreement giving US forces access to seven Colombian military bases after a group of lawyers filed a complaint arguing it is unconstitutional, court officials said Saturday.

The lawsuit claims the October 2009 military accord is invalid because it was signed by the government of President Alvaro Uribe without prior discussion in Congress, as mandated by the constitution.

The military pact, part of a joint effort to counter drug trafficking and insurgencies, has been denounced by neighboring Venezuela as US interference in the region, raising tensions between Bogota and Caracas.

The "Jose Alvear Restrepo" group of lawyers argues the military accord should have been discussed by lawmakers since it involves stationing foreign troops on Colombian soil, a court official said.

They also accuse Uribe of ignoring the advice of the State Council -- the highest court on administrative matters, which also urged that the congress take up the agreement before it was signed.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100306/pl_afp/colombiausagreementmilitary

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DU'er "rabs" broke this story early this morning after reading it in Colombia's El Tiempo:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x31691

[Peace Patriot]

1. "..signed by ...President Alvaro Uribe without prior discussion in Congress...". Why?

Why all the secrecy--from the Colombian people, from the Colombian Congress, from the other leaders of the region--many of whom are angry about it--and from the people who are paying for it--you and me?

Signed in secret by Ambassador William Brownfield, a Bush Junta appointee whom I suspect of being involved in a lot of evil deeds in Colombia and Latin America. I still don't know if it's coming to the U.S. Congress. How the promoters of this agreement--the Pentagon and others--have explained it (after it was negotiated and signed in secret) is that is merely confirms existing agreements. Does this mean that the U.S. military has had fighter jets and spy planes and their pilots, U.S. Navy ships and crews, and (if this number can be believed) 1,600 U.S. soldiers and U.S. 'contractors' (hauntingly described as "just a few military advisers), at SEVEN bases in Colombia, with total diplomatic immunity and with U.S. military use of ALL civilian airports and other infrastructure, without discussion or approval by either Congress? And why the effort to make it retroactive?

I have an in progress theory about this, that some truly bad shit has gone down in Colombia with U.S. military involvement and they (Uribe, the Bushwhacks) didn't think to get diplomatic immunity in writing. One possible candidate for really bad shit is the 2,000 bodies found in a recent mass grave site in La Macarena*, Colombia, with grave dates (but not names) from 2005 through 2009. Local people are saying that the bodies are of 'disappeared' relatives, friends and community members who were labor, human rights or political activists. The La Macarena "pacification" (clearing out of FARC guerrillas, mass murder of the local, non-combatant, community leaders and installation of a local government friendly to the narco-thug fascists who run the national government) was planned in Washington DC with close involvement of the U.S. military. And what was done in La Macarena has a lot of resemblance to wht the U.S. military is doing now in Afghanistan. My suspicion is that La Macarena may have been 'turkey shoot' practice for Afghanistan. In any case, the more we learn about this U.S./Colombia military agreement, the more suspicious do I become that it is covering something up, as well as opening up the possibility of the Pentagon using Colombia as a launching pad for aggression in the region--against Venezuela in particular, possibly also Ecuador and others.

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*The La Macarena massacre (includes a description of, and links to docs about, U.S. ops in La Macarena)
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303

The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/

[Judi Lynn]

2. And would we EVER have learned about tnhis mass grave if it had not been for the British

parliamentary delegation to Colombia last year? I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell we would.

I was lucky enough to learn from a Colombian transplant all the way back in 2000 or so that there were tons of American soldiers attached to Colombia even then. He had witnessed this before he even moved to the U.S.

God only knows what we're going to find out 10 or 15 years from now, once the heat is off, just as with the Kissinger-supported tortures and murders of over 30,000 Argentinians, or the Nixon planned and executed coup of Allende and the placement of butcher/thief Augusto Pinochet, and all those tortured and murdered people, or Bolivia, or Brazil, or Uruguay, or Paraguay, or Peru, etc., etc., etc.

Thanks for your priceless input, Peace Patriot. You have a lot of readers.

[justinaforjustice]

3. Thanks for Posting This News, Judi Lynn.

While the fascist Colombian government of Uribe hides its dead bodies in mass graves, the U.S. hides its funding of such terrorism from the American people by labeling it "top secret", hiding it from oversight by Congress and crafting appropriate falsehoods for dissemination to our own right wing media.

The U.S. was very much involved in Colombia's attack inside Ecuador's borders two years ago, using its base in Manta, Ecuador, to fly surveillance missions for the Colombian operation. When Ecuador refused to renew the U.S.s Manta base, the U.S. then entered into an agreement with Colombia for the placement of seven new U.S. military bases in that country, an agreement which gave total immunity to U.S. military and contractors within Colombia, just as they immunized our troops and contractors in Iraq. The U.S. is now to be completely surrounded by U.S. military bases in Colombia and the Caribbean.

U.S. taxpayers are likewise paying millions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury to opposition parties within Venezuela (the same parties which carried out the illegal coup against President Chavez in 2002), as well as funding groups which are pushing for Venezuela's oil-rich states of Zulia and Tachira to secede from Venezuela and join Colombia.

[Flaneur]

4. "Denounced by neighboring Venezuela..."

and pretty much the rest of South America, but AFP doesn't say that.