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"for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." I read a news blip about it early this year. I don't believe the word "unauthorized." I think the fine is actually part of a cover up of Bush Junta crimes in Colombia, by the Obama administration ("we need to look forward not backward" on the crimes of the rich and powerful).
Interesting parallel in the OP: "According to newspaper El Espectador, the American company was not licensed to use the military camp's facilities...".
I wonder if the "foreign persons" referred to in the State Dept. "fine" were the Colombian "trainees" mentioned in this OP, now being deployed as a private army from the U.A.E.--or were there OTHERS "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan"? How far back does this "unauthorized training" go? What were these "unauthorized" trainees doing and where?
I also wonder if one of the Bush Junta crimes being covered up is use of mercenary "trainees" to commit some of the murders that the Colombian military is notorious for--mercenaries operating from military bases that WE are paying for ($7 BILLION in U.S. military aid to Colombia), very possibly with U.S. military personnel present and/or involved (since the Pentagon considers Colombian military bases to be U.S. "forward operating locations" and is in residence at many such bases, "training" the Colombian military and carrying out joint operations with them).
Before the Obama administration pulled the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield (they kicked him upstairs), they let him SECRETLY negotiate and SECRETLY sign a U.S./Colombia military agreement that, among other things, provided "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. 'contractors' in Colombia.* At the time (circa 2009-2010), I wondered why the U.S. needed "total diplomatic immunity" signed by the mafioso running Colombia for the Bush Cartel--'President' Alvaro Uribe--when the U.S. military had been in Colombia for more than a decade. Apparently, the immunity had been informal to that point. Colombian and Pentagon spokespeople for the agreement, once it became public, claimed that the agreement merely "ratified" existing arrangements. Why did they need a SIGNED agreement so late in the day?
According to Amnesty International, half of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia have been committed by the Colombian military itself (and the other half by its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads). The U.S. trained and funded Colombian military units were also getting bonuses and perks for slaughtering civilians (for instance, boys lured by promises of jobs), and dressing their bodies up like FARC guerrillas, to up their body counts (to impress U.S. senators). Other targets: teachers, community activists, human rights workers, political leftists, journalists, peasant farmers (campesinos). Anybody doing any good, basically.
Five MILLION campesinos were driven from their farms by U.S. funded state terror. The U.S. corporate program requires wiping out local agriculture and making everyone dependent on Monsanto and Burger King for their food. It also requires creating a slave labor force, which is accomplished by driving peasant farmers from their lands into urban squalor. And in Colombia there is yet another reason for driving five million peasant farmers from their lands. While the main activity of campesinos is organic food production, feeding their families and local communities, many grow a few coca leaves for their own use or for a little extra income. These coca producing farm lands are "gold" to the big, protected drug lords, in the trillion dollar-plus cocaine trade. In addition to the massive slaughter of grass roots organizers and political opponents--in prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich"--I suspect that the Bush Junta was using the U.S. "war on drugs" (which they segued into the "war on terror" after 9/11), to consolidate this enormous illicit trade into fewer hands and direct its enormous profits to certain banksters, the Bush Cartel, the CIA and other favored pockets. (Or maybe the war between Rumsfeld/Cheney and the CIA was really about their cutting the CIA out of this trillion dollar-plus revenue stream? Hm. Worth thinking about.)
One other element in this mix is the Obama administration's protection and even coddling of Uribe, which has included removing witnesses against Uribe from Colombia, out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections, and giving Uribe cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard and appointment to a prestigious international legal committee. I have long suspected that these moves were not just rewards for the bloodsoaked prep of Colombia for U.S. "free trade for the rich," but because Uribe can rat on his pal Bush Jr.
In any case, like the Clinton State Dept. "fine" of Blackwater, this Colombian military investigation is likely the "tip of the iceberg" of a whole lot of joint Bush Junta/Uribe crime. And the vast criminal enterprise that they were likely using our $7 BILLION to create is not going to be easily dislodged, especially with the scaredy cats running things in Washington DC. (Well, to be fair, they may have good reason to be scared.)
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*(All hell broke loose in Latin America, when the provisions of this secret agreement were made public, mainly because the agreement included at least seven MORE U.S. military bases--or, "forward operating locations"--in Colombia. Venezuela cut off diplomatic relations with Colombia and began preparations to defend itself. Other governments strongly and publicly condemned it. Latin America was looking at a U.S.-occupied Colombia, with the USAF, the US army and the US Navy operating in Colombia with "total diplomatic immunity." (The agreement was also accompanied by a Uribe slander campaign against the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador, accusing them of supporting "terrorists." All seemed aimed at Oil War III.) Recently, the Colombian supreme court declared the agreement unconstitutional, because of its secrecy (no consultation with the Colombian legislature) and one wonders at the U.S. signing this agreement knowing that it likely violated the Colombian constitution. Did they think that Uribe had spied on and threatened Colombian judges sufficiently to get it okayed? (Yet another Bush Junta/Uribe brewing scandal--Uribe's vast illegal spying.) Did they not care--they just wanted an official signature (Uribe's) that could be used to argue "total diplomatic immunity" in the World Court or other court systems? The "unlicensed" and "unauthorized" use of Colombian military bases for an American company to deploy American recruiters and to "train" Colombians "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan" and for use as a private army in the Middle East surely has some connection to the need for "total diplomatic immunity" for U.S. 'contractors' in this secretly negotiated agreement. And I loathe to think of what it may mean that U.S. military personnel also needed signed "total diplomatic immunity" after eight years of Bushwhack control of the U.S. military.)
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