Chavez foe: Venezuela a refuge for Colombia rebels

[Zorro]

Source: AP

A prominent opponent of President Hugo Chavez accused the socialist leader's government on Wednesday of turning a blind eye to leftist Colombian rebels taking refuge in border areas of Venezuela.

Tachira state Gov. Cesar Perez said both leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups from Colombia operate in nearly a third of his border state, but he said Venezuelan troops ignore the rebels and try to root out only the right-wing militias.

"The guerrillas are there with the government's blessing and the military has orders to leave them alone," Perez told The Associated Press in an interview. "The government only fights the paramilitaries, and I think it's good they fight them, but the government has to do the same with the guerrillas, and it isn't doing that."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091112/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_venezuela_colombia_5

[ShortnFiery]

1. Here we go again ... back to the "death squads" of the 1980s? n/t

[Dreamer Tatum]

2. Can't possibly be true...someone will be along shortly to straighten it all out nt

[ronnie624]

9. They wouldn't dare.

We already have the word of a Chavez political opponent. What more do we need?

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. ?

I think we all already know too much about what the harm and the coups the U.S. creates and plots in Latin America. In other words, I no longer believe the Latin enemy of the U.S. is totally evil.

[Joanne98]

4. He's a liar and the AP has no cred left!

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

6. What exactly are you disputing in the article?

[EFerrari]

17. Well, I for one am pretty sure this guy's name is Perez.

[ChangoLoa]

18. So what?

Maybe the most common name in Venezuela... Pérez.

[EFerrari]

19. Whooooooooooooooosh

[ChangoLoa]

20. Ok I thought you were implying that he was related to Carlos Andrés Pérez...

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

21. Is the FARC operating in Venezuela?

To me, the main question is this. Are the FARC operating in Venezuelan soil? If you believe the answer is yes, than this idea that Colombia has absolutely no right to strike there seems pretty ridiculous. Chavez can rant and rave about Venezuela's sovereignty all he wants, it doesn't pull at many peoples' heartstrings if he doing so while violating Colombia's.

[EFerrari]

24. How the hell is Venezuela violating COLOMBIA's sovereignty?

All the countries that border Colombia have been dealing with paras and refugees on their borders for DECADES.

This is not a Hugo Chavez problem although wingers love to claim it is. This is a homicidal government in Colombia problem and all the bordering states AND the poor Colombian people voting with their feet are in agreement on this point.

It's pathetic and obvious. The region despises the Colombia government -- Chavez gets fingered. The region objects to the new arrangement between the US and Colombian bases -- Chavez gets fingered.

Some people really need to get a map of South America and learn something more than the Fox ticker gives them.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

27. It's pretty obvious...

First, if the FARC are using Venezuela as a safe haven, which it appears they are, that's clearly something the Venezuelan government should consider a problem - after all, as Chavez is so eager to point out, outside actors should be respecting Venezuela's sovereignty and not using that nation as their playground. The fact that Chavez doesn't consider the FARC in Venezuela a problem is, in itself, very telling so to Chavez's true feelings and motivations in this debacle.

Secondly, has it occured to you that Chavez gets singled out because he's a blowhard who has consistently attempted to make himself a major player on the world stage? In other words, he gets singled out because he consistently acts out, sometimes in pretty ridiculous ways (i.e. the Bush "devil" speech).

Third, and I'm not sure why I even have to spell this out for you, but allowing a terrorist organization to flourish within your borders and launch attacks on your neighbor pretty clearly violates your neighbor's sovereignty.

Fourth, I'm glad to see you've abandoned the "it's like saying the U.S. supports the drug cartels" argument. However I notice the humility of admitting how flawed the comparison was escapes you though.

[EFerrari]

31. Wrong. First, all the countries bordering Colombia

are having problems because Uribe's government is corrupt and homocidal.

Venezuela is not special among that group of impacted nations.

And no, Chavez does not get singled out because of his personality. He gets targeted because he's winning.

And no amount of spelling is evidence that FARC is allowed by the Venezuelan government to operate freely on their soil although that would be their call.

And, I didn't say the US supports drug cartels. The CIA would never put up with that kind of competition.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

33. Nice try

First, does the fact that this is occuring in other nations somehow lessen the fact that it is occuring in Venezuela?

Secondly, the reason we're discussing Venezuela is because Chavez is the one raising the biggest stink about how other nations ought to respect the territorial integrity of his country. Apparently what holds true in the case of the Colombian and United States' militaries however doesn't extend to Leftist terrorist organizations, because Chavez certainly doesn't have his panties in a wad, prepared to go to war over the fact that the FARC have invaded his country. And again, I've got to stress, this is a fact that's extremely telling - even if you're not willing to acknowledge it.

Third, winning what, exactly? His country has been invaded by a Leftist terrorist organization, by Right Wing paramilitaries, and by Colombian drug cartels, on top of which his bid to pressure Colombia into rejecting the deal allowing the U.S. military further access to Colombian military bases has fallen flat on its face.

Fourth, I will ask again what measures the Venezuelan government has taken to halt the FARC's activities on their soil. I assume the reason you continue to dance around this question is because you haven't found any.

And finally, essentially, you did. You argued that the FARC operating in Colombia is comparable to drug cartels operating in the United States. It was a pretty zany argument on your part, I must say.

[EFerrari]

37. Wrong again. I didn't argue that FARC operating in Colombia

is analogous to Mexican drug cartels operating here. I compared the spillage from Colombia to the spillage from Mexico.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

38. Of course, the difference being that the United States spends billions

and pours vast resources into mopping up that "spillage". Again, for seriously the fourth time, how many raids of FARC camps has Venezuela undertaken? How many massive round ups of FARC fighters? I mean, we both know the answer... the difference is that you're unwilling to simply come out and say it. Even though Chavez has backed off on his public support for the FARC, at best, he's still turning a blind eye to the fact that they're operating within Venezuela, terrorizing its citizens, and using Venezuela as a launching pad for attacks on Colombia.

[EFerrari]

41. Again, more wildly unanchored assertions.

LOL

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

44. Do tell.

"LOL"

[Braulio]

48. What is Chavez winning?

I wonder, what do you think Chavez is winning at this time? I see a country with a very sick economy, no electricity, water rationaing, a very high inflation rate, going into debt at a very fast pace, and very little investment due to lack of confidence in the communist regime.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Lagomorph]

7. Probably more like...

Drug operations and people trying to steal the stuff. Call it left or right if you want, but its about the green.

[BolivarianHero]

8. Good.,..Make the paramilitary fuckers bleed...

Guerrillas represent legitimate dissent against tyrannical governments whereas paramilitaries are just thugs hired by multinationals and tyrannical governments.

[Kurska]

10. Hmmfff, you know ultimately one armed resistance movement is the same as the other.

They are armed and they are trying to use those arms to resist something, usually governments, more frequently in that region each other.

I think the people of the venezula border wouldn't like being killed for "legitimate dissent" any more then by "armed coporate thugs", you're bringing death to your country by inviting either group in. Chavez needs to send both packing for the good of his country.

I'm not going to equate them, but remember when Pakistan thought they could control the Taliban and use them as a weapon against their foes, yeah those sorts of groups always turn on government that support them, fundamentalist, right wing, left wing, they all turn on you in the end.

[EFerrari]

11. Right wing nutcases have been trying to tie Chavez to these folks

in the same way the teabagging birthers call Obama a dictator.

It just doesn't work.

Chavez nor his government have any better command or control over the Colombian resistance than Colombia has. And Venezuela has nothing to gain from allowing its citizenry to be at risk of life and limb from the fallout of Colombia's ongoing civil war.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

13. Maybe

In the sense that Chavez doesn't call the shots on who they attack or where, you're right, but if he's allowing them safe haven within Venezuela than he does have a bit of control over them, doesn't he?

[Downwinder]

15. Does the US control Cubans in Florida? n/t

[EFerrari]

16. What evidence do you have that this is the case?

Is Obama providing "safe haven" for Mexican drug cartels?

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

23. You're right, evidence that Chavez is directly aiding the FARC is weak

however, anyone who has been paying attention realizes that Chavez is sympathetic to the FARC and has advocated on behalf of the group on the world stage. When one couples that with Venezuela's seeming unwillingness to do anything about the FARC fighters on their soil, it seems some support is behing given.

Also, we spend billions attempting to stem the drug trade, imprison those involved in it, and break the backs of drug cartels. As Chavez has done nothing even remotely comparable to the FARC, I'm not sure where you think there's a comparison to be made. How many FARC fighters has Chavez imprisoned again?

[EFerrari]

25. There is zip evidence that Chavez is directly or indirectly aiding FARC.

In fact, he has called for them to put down their arms.

And you have no evidence that Venezuela is unwilling to "do anything about" FARC on their own soil but the claims of a political opponent.

Btw, the War on Drugs is a big boondoggle. We don't stem anything. Since Bolivia and Venezuela kicked the DEA out, their drug interdictions have reportedly gone UP not down.

And why would you want Venezuela to become involved in Colombia's civil war? Why would that be a good idea? Sounds like a strategy for disaster to me.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

28. Weeeeeeeeeeelllllll

Chavez has sent mixed messages with regard to the FARC, praising them and advocating for them in some instances, calling on them to put down arms in others. That's what politicians do, they send mixed signals in an attempt to appease various actors. Why you're choosing to focus exclusively on what the message have been *some* of the time is beyond me, because that's only half the story. I guess looking at this thing as a whole means accepting some things you find politically inconvenient?

Secondly, if I'm wrong, what has he done about the FARC within Venezuela's borders? Earlier in this thread you attempted to compare the FARC's presence in Venezuela to the presence of drug cartels here in the U.S. Let's run with that. How many massive round ups of FARC members has Venezuela conducted under Chavez? How many FARC fighters have been arrested? How many camps raided?

Third, I think it's fair to say Venezuela has *already* become involved in Colombia's civil war. That happened the minute the FARC, the paramilitaries and others crossed the border. The question is, what is Venezuela going to do about it? Will it allow these groups to use its territory as a launching pad for attacks or will it push them out and maintain order? The kicker is, Chavez is more concerned with raising a ruckus over the U.S. military's expanded presence in Colombia than in taking care of what is quite clearly Venezuela's responsibility in all of this. He's more concerned with his own inflated ego than the territorial integrity of his country.

[EFerrari]

30. There is nothing ambiguous in telling FARC the time for armed conflict is over.

And are you asking if Venezuela conducts raids whose human rights violations are universally condemned as ours are? No, not to my knowledge.

As for Venezuela's "involvement" in Colombia's civil war, you are aware that there are other countries that border Colombia, aren't you? Or do you really need a map?

In fact, every government bordering Colombia is suffering the same fallout as Venezuela and they are all also opposed to the new base agreement. To single out Venezuela is utter bullshit.

And as for your characterization of Chavez, does it irk you more that he is brown or that he is successful?

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

34. Again, Chavez is talking out of both sides of his mouth

On the one hand, telling the FARC to disarm while on the other hand allowing them to continue to wage their war from Venezuelan soil. Why acknowledging this is so difficult for you is beyond me. You're so concerned with not being played by FOX News that you're missing the fact that you're being played by Hugo himself.

Yes, I'm aware that other nations border Colombia. That in no way refutes or lessens my argument.

And finally, ah, yes, the age ol' "we'll shut'em up by accusing him of being racist!" routine. Frankly, it's a little played out and comes off as more of a sign of the weakness of your arguments than anything else. Nice try though. Really. :rofl:

[EFerrari]

43. And you've yet to show that FARC is under Venezuela's wing.

Seriously, you're way out of your league here.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

45. Actually.

My mistake, I assumed the fact that the FARC are allowed to operate on Venezuelan soil with no real interference on the part of the Venezuelan government, a government whose leader has made no secret of his sympathy for the organization, is, in itself, evidence that the FARC are under Venezuela's wing. After all, that's the conclusion most reasonable human beings would make (at least those who are more concerned with viewing this conflict objectively than with keeping Chavez on some pedestal...) With that said, I went into further detail on this in the other thread (Aligned with Chavez (Morales, Bolivia)...). See post #11 over there.

[EFerrari]

50. You have yet to establish the "fact" that FARC is "allowed" to operate In Ven.

And no, I won't be "seeing" any more of these repetative, spun posts.

[Judi Lynn]

51. Oh, why not? Who doesn't have time to read all of everyone's old posts?

It might be more stimulating than whittling wood or playing horseshoes. Or maybe not.

http://therockymountainstradingpost.com.nyud.net:8090/images/whittling_a_stick_end.jpg http://i.ehow.com.nyud.net:8090/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/5136971/254882_Full.jpg

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

53. No real effort has been exerted to drive them out or halt their operations

If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it. Until then, it's quite clear the FARC are being given free reign in parts of Venezuela.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0613/p07s04-woam.html

[Judi Lynn]

12. Apparently you're unaware the paras (death squads) have been known for ages

by human rights groups everywhere, by anyone who watches Latin American events, as the henchmen with direct ties to, sometimes working in tandem with, the Colombian military.

There are court testimonies from paras describing massacres conducted WITH active members of the Colombian military. There have been trials of officials with ties to the paras. There have been direct lines established between the paramilitaries and a large number of Colombian Senators, and even members of the Presidential cabinet, on and on and on and on.

If you had any ambition you'd search and inform yourself of the fact that human rights groups all have made statements that the paramilitaries are responsible for a HUGE majority of the killings in Colombia. They aren't shy, they've put it in written reports. They ALSO have made statements that the paramilitaries have NOT demobilized, as claimed by the Colombian government, but have formed new groups and taken new group names, while still carrying out the same kinds of assassinations and massacres.

Do yourself a favor and spend some of your posting time researching instead, so you will be able to discuss US Latin American policy from a reality-based point of view. If you're not discussing situations truthfully, you're really not dealing honestly with the people who do make the effort to do their homework, and ARE discussing things they know are true. They shouldn't have to take time to carry you along.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

22. Still not sure how

a guerilla group that kidnaps, tortures, and puts bullets into the heads of peasants is somehow better than paramilitary groups that kidnap, torture, and put bullets into the heads of peasants. But I guess morality goes out the window so long as you agree with the politics behind the brutality, eh?

[Judi Lynn]

26. The Colombian government has killed off the progressive candidates for office

starting in 1948. Every time the progressive people backed a signficant candidate he was murdered. The struggle has lasted all these long years, and the oligarchs have killed them off every time they attempted to seek office, as they absolutely refuse to allow opportunity for the very poor to find a better life for themselves.

As has been explained before, never have so few had so much, and so many had so little. That's the way they intend to keep it, no matter how many helpless people are destroyed. The oligarchs have had ALL the power since the beginning.

Any search you undertake for any length of time will lead you to statements from human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and many others regarding the facts that the paramilitaries are responsible for the lion's share of the murders, political assassinations, massacres, and the fact the paramilitaries have NOT demobilized: they have merely regrouped, formed other organizations and have taken new names, and have continued business as usual, no matter what Colombian government supporting assholes claim.They are lying.

Just stumbled across an article which covers some of the information:

Along for the ride: how Colombia's paramilitaries retain power: the U.S.-backed government appears to be doing all it can to help paramilitary commanders evade hard time.

~snip~
The paramilitary movement took shape more than three decades ago when drug traffickers, ranchers, military officers, and businessmen began forming regional private armies. The most notorious, Death to Kidnappers, was formed in 1981 by drug-trafficking brothers Fabio, Jorge Luis, and Juan David Ochoa, whose sister was being held by one of the country's leftist guerrilla groups.

But the paramilitaries have rarely engaged in combat against the guerrillas. Instead, often working closely with government forces, they've focused on unarmed social movements, assassinating thousands of trade unionists, peasant leaders, human rights advocates, and politicians. "They've destroyed the legal left," says Hector Mondragon, economic adviser to a coalition of rural, black, and indigenous groups.

Paramilitaries have also carried out most of the war's civilian massacres, a major factor convincing three million Colombians to flee their homes since 1985. Now 61 percent of the nation's arable acreage is in the hands of 0.4 percent of landholders, according to a study by the Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute and the Colombian Agriculture Research Corporation. Paramilitary chiefs themselves acquired more than twelve million acres abandoned by peasants between 1997 and 2003, according to a December report by the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement. Bolstering the land grabs, Uribe and his allies have removed teeth from agrarian reform laws, including a 1936 measure allowing public reallocation of parcels left idle.

Paramilitaries have played a key role in turning the narcotics trade into Colombia's largest export sector. The United States has requested extradition of at least seven paramilitary chiefs on drug-trafficking charges. They include Mancuso and AUC founder Carlos Castano, now missing. Both were indicted INDICTED, practice. When a man is accused by a bill of indictment preferred by a grand jury, he is said to be indicted. in 2002 for allegedly exporting more than seventeen tons of cocaine over the previous five years.

Across the country, the paramilitary movement has infiltrated city halls, provincial governments, and federal agencies, most notably the health care program and the attorney general's office. The infiltration helps them control a range of illegal activity. "Here in Cucuta, not a single kilo Thousand (10 to the 3rd power). Abbreviated "K." For technical specifications, it refers to the precise value 1,024 since computer specifications are based on binary numbers. For example, 64K means 65,536 bytes when referring to memory or storage (64x1024), but a 64K salary means $64,000. of coca is sold without their authorization," says Wilfredo Canizares, executive director of the Progress Foundation, a human rights group in that city. "They'll kill you."

The AUC's major rival has long been the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia a guerrilla group that doesn't let its leftist ideology get in the way of taxing coca farmers, kidnapping for ransom, or murdering civilians. Near La Gabarra, a town just north of Tibu, the FARC carried out the country's worst massacre in years last June, gunning down thirty-four peasants on a paramilitary coca ranch. But in some parts of the country, FARC and paramilitary units are now managing the illegal economy in harmony. They've reached nonaggression pacts, protected drug transport routes together, and exchanged drug-processing materials for coca.

Many legislators adore the paramilitaries. Senator Miguel Alfonso de la Espriella fondly recalls attending high school with Mancuso and reuniting with him in 1999 to help negotiate the release of a senator the AUC had kidnapped: "Mancuso told me he would have greeted me with a hug if we weren't in public."

President Uribe has similar ties. "Uribe's family was very close to the Ochoa and Castano families," notes National University political scientist Mauricio Romero, who studies the paramilitaries. "Saying so publicly here in Colombia is very risky, very dangerous, but I believe there's some continuity over the last twenty years. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights.

Uribe directed Antioquia Province's Civil Aviation Authority Civil Aviation Authority civil to 1982, a time when the agency granted licenses to known drug traffickers, according to a 2002 biography by Joseph Contreras of Newsweek and Fernando Garavito, a Colombian columnist who fled the country after receiving death threats over the book. As Antioquia governor from 1995 to 1997, Uribe was one of the leading promoters of Convivir, a national program of civilian watch groups known for human rights atrocities and paramilitary links.

But by the time Uribe won the presidency in 2002, the United States was providing Colombia hundreds of millions of dollars a year in military aid. "The AUC had lost its strategic value," Romero says. "The government assumed it would be able to control the country without assistance from irregular forces." The Uribe administration quickly initiated peace talks with the AUC as if the group had been fighting against the government. In December 2002, the AUC declared a "unilateral ceasefire," a gesture that proved hollow. Paramilitaries killed or caused the disappearance of at least 1,899 people during the next twenty-one months, according to the nongovernmental Colombian Commission of Jurists The following lists are of prominent jurists, including judges, listed in alphabetical order by jurisdiction.

"Some of those who were presented as paramilitary members to be demobilized turned out to be common criminals and were included in the demobilization," notes Susan Lee, director of Amnesty International's Americas program. "And the people who were paramilitary members continued to commit very, very serious human rights violations."

Murillo's organization has developed into a vast clandestine network known in whispers as "the office." The group oversees drug dealing and gas smuggling throughout Medellin, and it controls many liquor stores, taxis, buses, and charities. In many districts, Murillo's people extort To compel or coerce, as in a confession or information, by any means serving to overcome the other's power of resistance, thus making the confession or admission involuntary. To gain by wrongful methods; to obtain in an unlawful manner, as in to compel payments by means of threats of from home-owners and businesses in a door-to-door process known as "vaccination." His teenage sentries stand guard on street corners, wearing baggy pants and packing pistols and knives.

"They're the same as before the demobilization," says a twenty-five-year-old woman hunched over a sewing machine in Comuna 1, a district on a steep mountainside. Murillo's group stops by every week to extort a few dollars from her shop, which assembles counterfeit Reebok sneakers. Police look the other way, she says, even as the paramilitaries recruit girls into prostitution.

More:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Along+for+the+ride:+how+Colombia's+paramilitaries+retain+power:+the+...-a0132674579

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

29. Right, I don't think anyone's disputing your headline, but...

the question remains, so what? That doesn't change the fact that in many respects, the armed groups on the Left and the Right use many of the same tactics.

[EFerrari]

32. That's the BS Fox "but they do it, too" argument.

Maybe you'd benefit from reading up on Colombia before tossing out accusations that have no merit whatsoever.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

35. Here's the thing, in many cases, both sides do engage in the same brutal tactics

Why that's difficult for you to admit is a mystery to me. Perhaps your political bias doesn't allow you to acknowledge it? I don't know. However, my pointing out this very basic fact of this conflict should in no way be mistaken as a excusing one side or the other's brutality. If that how you were reading my post, than you were mistaken.

[EFerrari]

36. It's no mystery. I do have a problem agreeing with baseless assertions.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

39. So what exactly is baseless?

Are you arguing that the FARC do not kidnap people? That the FARC do not torture people? That the FARC do not murder people? Be specific here.

[EFerrari]

42. See any of my last 25 responses to your wildly irresponsible

and unsupported posts. And then, see them again. Buenas.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

46. When in doubt, stonewall, eh friend?

[EFerrari]

54. You mistake your cognitive filters with anything that I'm doing.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

55. That'd be true if you had pointed me towards vast efforts on the part of Chavez to rein in the FARC

elements on Venezuelan soil and I just simply missed or ignored them. But you haven't pointed me towards them and won't (because they haven't taken place). It's really not a question of me filtering out and ignoring relevant data here.

[Judi Lynn]

40. Haven't heard of ANY leftist groups taking whole villages and torturing them.

Have never heard of leftist groups using chainsaws to gut and dismember Colombian human beings while their neighbors and relatives are forced to watch,.
Human Rights Watch Report

"The Ties That Bind: Colombia & Military – Paramilitary Links"

7 SOA GRADUATES CITED

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, issued February 23, 2000, presents detailed and abundant evidence of continuing ties between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups. Complied by Human Rights Watch and investigators from the Colombian government, the report implicates three brigades that operate in Colombia’s three major cities, including the capital, Bogotá. The report reveals that despite claims by the Colombian Army, military support for the paramilitaries remains national in scope. In fact, the cited brigades function in areas of the country where military units are receiving or are scheduled to receive U.S. aid.

The investigation found that as recently as 1999 Colombian Army officers established a "paramilitary" group composed of active duty, retired and reserve duty officers. "Paramilitaries," such as this, operate in coordination with the military. This means that the Colombian military shares intelligence, plans and carries out joint operations, provides weapons and munitions, provides support with helicopters and medical aid, and coordinates with the paramilitaries on a daily basis.

It is important to note that though human rights violations attributed to the Colombian military have diminished over the past several years, abuses by the paramilitaries have skyrocketed to 70% of all violations. The military-paramilitary ties allow political violence to continue while the Colombian Army maintains a relatively clean human rights record, making it eligible for U.S. military aid.

More:
http://www.peacehost.net/soaw-w/Colombia.html

We all can find TONS of links to reports, and court testimonies taken from ex-paramilitaries. TONS. We've discussed them here for YEARS.

You can yammer endlessly here, trying to shout us down but you're not going to win any converts. We know better.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

47. Chainsaws or machetes makes no difference to me

Whether they happen to use chainsaws or machetes makes little difference to me. The fact remains that both sides in this conflict kidnap, torture, and murder people on a regular basis.

Also, while I'm aware of the crimes of the paramilitaries, this idea that this justifies the crimes of the Leftist guerillas is hogwash. If anything, both sides have done their share of spurring the other on in this conflict.

[Judi Lynn]

49. Dominion of Evil: Colombia's paramilitary terror

Dominion of Evil
Colombia's paramilitary terror
by Steven Ambrus
Amnesty International magazine, Spring 2007

Colombia's paramilitary demobilization is unearthing the staggering magnitude of paramilitary terror-and the unholy alliance of political, military and business leaders that sustained it.

In the early 1990s, a butcher named Rodrigo Mercado got fed up with paying protection money to Colombia's leftwing guerrillas. Unable to shake them off, he sought financing from ranchers, politicians and businessmen and raised a 350-man militia. Then he went on the rampage. People accused of leftist sympathies in the state of Sucre were shot. Others were carved to bits with chainsaws, buried in mass graves or fed to alligators. Mercado delighted in the killing, survivors say. Moreover, it provided benefits. As thousands of people fled, Mercado and his men seized control of local governments and acquired vast tracts of farmland and shoreline. Then they used their new possessions to dispatch boats loaded with cocaine to foreign markets.
"They were merciless," said Arnol Gómez, a community leader from the town of San Onofre. "They had so much power that no one could do business or run for office without their approval. Even the police supported them."
Today, after a decade of terror and destruction, an edgy calm has settled over the rolling grasslands and tin-patch towns where Mercado spent his fury. The warlord has been dead for more than a year, a victim of bloodletting in his ranks. His troops have fully demobilized through a 2003 peace deal between the government and a paramilitary umbrella group known as the United Self- Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Local farmers have returned to their tiny plots of plantains and corn. But criminal investigators are only now uncovering graves on Mercado's abandoned farms. And with hundreds of people dead and hundreds more still missing in Sucre, the painful process of uncovering the truth about what happened there and in other areas of paramilitary control is just getting underway. For the first time, Colombians are confronting the immense dimensions of the paramilitary terror that has gripped their country for four decades, and the unholy alliance of military, business and political leaders that propelled it forward.
"Colombia is at a crossroads after years in which the paramilitaries infiltrated the world of legitimate business and the agencies of local and national government," said Iván Cepeda, the son of a left-wing senator who was murdered in 1994 by an alliance of military and paramilitary operatives. "Colombia will either become a nation of laws and democratic institutions or sink further into violence, authoritarianism and the denial of basic rights."
In 2005, Colombia's Congress passed the "Justice and Peace" law governing the demobilization, trial and reintegration of 31,000 AUC combatants, including commanders accused of war crimes and drug trafficking. Harshly criticized by human rights groups and the United Nations, the law allows paramilitary leaders to serve reduced sentences of eight years on special farms and contains loopholes likely to let top commanders keep millions of hectares of stolen land.
The law does, however, give prosecutors new incentives to unveil the truth. Because paramilitaries lose sentence reductions for crimes they fail to confess, it has energized a crusading prosecutor general and Colombia's supreme court to unravel the paramilitaries' criminal activities and to discover their connections with the highest spheres of money and power. Critics say that witness intimidation and legal trickery will prevent the paramilitaries from coming clean. But the dominoes are beginning to fall.
In March 2006, police seized the computer of Rodrigo Tovar, a former AUC commander. Tovar, a scion of the coastal aristocracy, was an enchanting and cosmopolitan rancher whose demobilization ceremony in March 2006 turned into fiesta attended by two former governors, much of the local elite and one of the nation's most famous musicians. But Colombians were scandalized to learn from an October 2006 attorney general's report that many of Tovar's "demobilized troops" were not paramilitaries at all, but unemployed farmers paid to act the part. And they were outraged when investigators discovered tape recordings and documents on Tovar's computer detailing the murder of nearly 600 merchants, union members and suspected leftists, as well as paramilitary alliances with the power brokers of five states on Colombia's Atlantic coast. Tovar and his men had ruled the region. They bankrolled the campaigns of congressmen and mayors. They organized electoral fraud. They bribed dozens of policemen and military officers and skimmed public contracts in social security, health and agriculture.
"This is further confirmation that the paramilitaries control the state, the economy and the system of justice in large chunks of Colombia," said Gustavo Duncan, a security analyst and expert on the AUC. "With their private armies and drug profits, they are more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia in regions where they have become the very state itself."
In the wake of these revelations, the political establishment is reeling. Nine congressmen-all of them allies of President Álvaro Uribe-are being investigated on charges ranging from helping create and finance paramilitary groups to murder and corruption. Several mayors and former governors are also under investigation, and the former head of the DAS, Colombia's equivalent of the FBI, is on trial for erasing paramilitaries' files and conspiring with them to commit electoral fraud in the 2002 presidential elections. With the pressure building on many fronts to confess, ranchers and other powerful businessmen are acknowledging for the first time that they supported the paramilitaries for years.
"2006 will go down in history as the year in which the country learned how far the tentacles of paramilitarism reached," pronounced Semana, Colombia's leading newsweekly, in an end-of-year editorial in which it made "paramilitarism" its person of the year. "Though many Colombians knew that the paramilitaries controlled various regions of the country ... nobody imagined that this scourge had become a cancer that was silently eating away the pillars of democracy."

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Colombia/Dominion_Evil.html

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Rather than spending your time trying to bait conscientious people who DO know what they're talking about, take times out and start getting a reality based foundation in the subject you're attempting to discuss.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

52. I'm aware of the brutality of the paramilitaries

Where you ever got that idea that I wasn't is beyond me. But hey, keep filling the thread with unnecessary articles if that's make it takes to make you happy.

[Downwinder]

14. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.