WikiLeaks: Mario Montoya and Colombian False Positives (Colombian Army Commander General)

[Judi Lynn]

WikiLeaks: Mario Montoya and Colombian False Positives
by Michael Busch


When Major Gen­eral Mario Mon­toya Uribe was appointed com­man­der of the Colom­bian army in March of 2006, the US embassy in Bogota was largely unaware of his back­ground and bona fides. The Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Colom­bia at the time, William Wood, reported in a cable Wik­iLeaked on Fri­day, that rel­a­tively lit­tle was known about Mon­toya aside from his many dec­o­ra­tions as a career mil­i­tary man, his close per­sonal rela­tion­ship with then-president Alvaro Uribe, and per­sis­tent but as yet unsub­stan­ti­ated rumors that the com­man­der was cor­rupt and tied to con­ser­v­a­tive para­mil­i­tary forces through­out the country.

Lit­tle was Wood aware that Montoya’s cor­rup­tion and para­mil­i­tary ties would prove to be the least of his offenses. By the time he was relieved of his com­mand eigh­teen months later, Mon­toya was widely per­ceived to be a dri­ving force behind the breath­tak­ingly hor­rific deal­ings of mil­i­tary per­son­nel in the fight against drug– and guerilla-related inter­nal disturbances.

As I reported in 2009 when UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on extra­ju­di­cial, sum­mary or arbi­trary exe­cu­tion Philip Alston arrived in Bogota to inves­ti­gate the so-called “false pos­i­tives” case, over one thou­sand mem­bers of the Colom­bian armed forces were ulti­mately impli­cated in the mur­ders of count­less inno­cent civil­ians. The details are appalling. In many cases, vic­tims were recruited from poor neigh­bor­hoods and vil­lages through­out the coun­try, promised work oppor­tu­ni­ties else­where, then drugged and sold to mil­i­tary agents who arranged for their exe­cu­tions. The bod­ies were then dressed up in army fatigues, planted with weapons pur­chased on the black mar­ket, and claimed as suc­cess­fully elim­i­nated guer­rilla com­bat­ants by mil­i­tary personnel.

The evi­dence of false pos­i­tive extra­ju­di­cial killings sug­gests their sys­temic nature, a con­clu­sion cor­rob­o­rated by the Coun­cil on Hemi­spheric Affairs, which noted that “What is appar­ently new about the recent cases is that they have been moti­vated pri­mar­ily by inter­nal mil­i­tary incen­tive struc­tures, rather than polit­i­cal motives…They were killed so that army units and their com­man­ders could demon­strate “results” to their supe­ri­ors, and thereby win both finan­cial rewards and pro­mo­tions. In this war, progress has long been mea­sured by the num­ber of “enemy com­bat­ants” immo­bi­lized, prefer­ably killed, and career prospects often depend on demon­strat­ing such “results”…Investigations have revealed an exten­sive web of recruiter net­works pen­e­trat­ing poor neigh­bor­hoods across the coun­try, oper­at­ing in a shad­owy under­world in col­lu­sion with army con­tract agents. …For dis­patch­ing these appar­ent “positives”…the assas­sins could count on receiv­ing ben­e­fits such as paid hol­i­days, spe­cial courses abroad, pro­mo­tions and pay raises. ”

More:
http://www.gcadvocate.com/2011/02/wikileaks-mario-montoya-and-colombian-false-positives/

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0eRu35zcWH8c6/610x.jpg

http://www.vanityfair.com.nyud.net:8090/images/politics/2008/11/poar01_hostages0811.jpg

http://media3.washingtonpost.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/09/16/PH2008091603682.jpg http://formaementis.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2008/11/santos-bush-uribe-montoya.jpg

[Peace Patriot]

1. An informative analysis but I think it's a bit gullible about the Bushwhacks writing the cables.

These were low security cables (easily leaked) written in an atmosphere of "Alice in Wonderland" upside down, inside out, backwards LYING, DECEIT AND INSANE VIOLENCE. The pResident of the U.S. was acting like the "Red Queen"--"Off with their heads!"--slaughtering tens of thousands of people in Iraq, on a whim and the smell of oil. The same Bushwhacks were meanwhile shoveling $7 BILLION U.S. tax dollars in military aid to the SAME PEOPLE in Colombia who were murdering young men and dressing their bodies up as FARC guerrillas, to up their "body counts."

It is not believable that the U.S./Bush Junta ambassadors to Colombia were ignorant of this and other egregiously criminal activities of the Colombian military, its death squads and the Uribe mafia that was running the government. Uribe was the Bush Cartel's pet fascist, and in my opinion was tasked with consolidating the cocaine trade (eliminating the FARC guerrillas' coca leaf farms and operations and other independent growers/dealers) to control this trillion dollar-plus illicit revenue stream, and to prep Colombia for U.S. "free trade for the rich" by a scorched earth policy against human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political leftists and peasant farmers, as well as the displacement of 5 MILLION peasant farmers with state terror.

I believe that this was all done with the full knowledge, support and funding of the U.S. government, and very possibly with some participation by U.S. military and/or U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. (The Clinton State Department recently "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." And Brownfield and Uribe were awfully interested, last year, in getting a Uribe signature on a secretly negotiated U.S./Colombia military agreement that granted total diplomatic immunity to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. 'contractors' in Colombia.)

---

The article states that...

"When Major General Mario Montoya Uribe was appointed commander of the Colombian army in March of 2006, the US embassy in Bogota was largely unaware of his background and bona fides. The American ambassador to Colombia at the time, William Wood, reported in a cable...Little was Wood aware...". (my emphasis)

I say baloney. He knew. And there is more such baloney in the cables (later in the article) when Brownfield arrives, tasked with covering up Uribe/U.S. crimes. We really need to read Wikileaked cables with a skeptical eye, and the writer of this article, Michael Busch, has not done that. He accepts the U.S. embassy (Wood and Brownfield) narrative at face value.

And THIS--Bush Junta collusion on these crimes--explains why the Obama administration is protecting and coddling Uribe NOW. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to immunize Uribe from prosecution and to shower him honors and prestige.

Michael Busch concludes this article with:

"So the question remains: given the 2007 CIA report linking Montoya to the false positives scandal, and revelations of the commander’s ongoing closeness with and influence over Uribe, how long will the former Colombian president be able to continue denying any connection with the legacy of human rights abuses that pock mark his presidency?

"So the question remains," indeed. Uribe can go on "denying any connection with the legacy of human rights abuses" just as long as the U.S. government protects him from it--by extraditing death squad witnesses to the U.S. and burying them in the U.S. federal prison system out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors (and over their objections) and by whisking the chief spying witness against Uribe out of Colombia and getting her instant asylum in the U.S. client state of Panama, also over the objections of Colombian prosecutors. And they have done these things and more to protect Uribe because the U.S/BUSH JUNTA and its ambassadors and military commanders knew damn well what was going.

To understand these cables, you have to read them as a COVER UP IN PROGRESS. They were trying to decide who they could safely jettison (sacrifice, put the blame on) to protect Uribe and U.S. operations in Colombia.