Colombia: documents reveal US complicity in atrocities

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia: documents reveal US complicity in atrocities

Submitted by WW4 Report on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 18:21. A report released July 29 by the interfaith peace group Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) details how US aid to the Colombian military has been supporting army units whose members have killed hundreds of civilians. Drawing on extensive data from the offices of Colombia's Prosecutor General (Fiscalía), Inspector General (Procuraduría) and armed forces, as well as the US State Department and 20 human rights organizations, the report shows that billions of dollars provided under the rubric of Plan Colombia have abrogated US human rights law and contributed to the killing of thousands of civilians by the Colombian army.

"The US has provided more than $6 billion in support to Colombia since 2000," said John Lindsay-Poland, FOR's research and advocacy director. "This money is used to fund military units that have been proven to murder innocent civilians. That is outrageous and needs to stop."

US law prohibits support to any foreign military unit for which there is credible evidence of gross human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings. The report's analysis strongly suggests that implementation of the so-called Leahy Law—named for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)—in Colombia requires suspension of US assistance to nearly all army fixed brigades.

Susana Pimiento Chamorro, FOR’s action director, said, "The State Department must be held accountable to human rights laws, and Colombia is an example of where this mandate has failed." State Department officials have said that the Leahy Law is implemented better in Colombia than almost anywhere else in the world.

The study, entitled "Military Assistance and Human Rights: Colombia, U.S. Accountability, and Global Implications," also has implications for other areas of US foreign policy. In Pakistan, the United States has spent more than $12 billion in military assistance—including for training and equipping units operating in tribal areas, where human rights groups have credibly reported hundreds of extrajudicial killings. Some aid to the Pakistani military has been legislated through coalition funds not considered "assistance," thereby circumventing Leahy Law.

More:
http://ww4report.com/node/8898

[dipsydoodle]

1. Best mail a copy to Her

So that She can throw it in the paper bin.

[RC]

2. Our own President has authorized extra-judicial killings of US citizens.

So what's a bunch more brown people?

[Peace Patriot]

3. Back in the 1980s, during Reagan's reign of terror in Central America, the U.S. Congress

also passed a law, in that case against covert (or overt) U.S. war on Nicaragua.

The Iran-Contra hearings, in which Reagan's henchmen got off with a handslap (or scott free), and Reagan himself--that ikon of massive thievery by the rich--was never held to account for blatantly violating the laws of the United States, with its plainly ILLEGAL covert war on Nicaragua--as well as egregious human rights crimes--was a turning point in our country, favoring presidential war. War by fiat. The very thing that our Founders--the writers of our Constitution--sought so fervently to prevent.

A Democratic Congress failed to uphold the Constitution, then, too.

I watched those hearings, chaired by a Democrat--Sen. Daniel Inouye (HI)--with increasing angst, as it became apparent that our party leaders were still complicit with the war profiteers, even after the horrors of Vietnam and the lessons of Vietnam. The full meaning of the "military-industrial" complex came home to me then. But the implications of those events for the future, were, of course, impossible to see. One could only guess. I never ever guessed that it would be as bad as this--a fascist junta seizing the White House and invading another country, and slaughtering a hundred million innocent people in the first days of bombing alone, to steal their oil, and the massive, unprecedented theft of our public treasury in the Forever War--the war on Afghanistan, the "war on drugs," the U.S. militarization of Latin America, U.S. funded murder and mayhem, in Colombia, in Honduras, in Mexico--and the increasing possibility of Oil War II: South America (not to mention Iran).

The problem of possessing a vast war machine, in the midst of diminishing democracy, is that it is a standing invitation to tyrants to USE IT. This is a problem with any standing army, as our Founders knew. But THIS army--this privatized army, which sucks trillions of our tax dollars out of social programs into the pockets of war profiteers--this massive killing machine, over which the American people have lost any control whatsoever--will be the end of our democracy, the end of our long prosperity, and, indeed, could even bring on the end of Planet Earth itself and all life on Earth.

I never descry this terrible situation without proposing a solution. We must--we MUST--restore transparent vote counting in this country, if we want to see democracy restored and if there is to be any hope for serious reform. Transparent vote counting--vote counting that everyone can see and understand--is THE bottom line condition for democracy. That bottom line condition was removed, during the 2002 to 2004 period, by the fast-tracking of 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines all over the country, with the code owned and controlled now mostly (80%) by ONE far rightwing corporation (ES&S, which just bought out Diebold), and with virtually no audit/recount controls. What this means is that the far rightwing, and their multinational corporate and war profiteer puppetmasters, have the capability--the EASY capability--of installing Bush Junta II at any time. They can meanwhile play the system in many ways, including permitting an Obama to be elected (on a wave of public revulsion at unjust war), but shaving his mandate and inflicting him with a "Blue Dog" Congress.

There are many things gravely wrong with our system, but without the ability to elect reformers--without even the ability to verify whoever ES&S says that we elected--we cannot even BEGIN to change things. We are blockaded. That's what 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting was designed to do. It is the final nail in democracy's coffin.

With transparent vote counting, we, the people, have a CHANCE against "organized money" (as FDR called it). Without transparent vote counting, we have no chance.

So, this is a MUST. And it is still doable, since control over voting systems still remains at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some potential influence. (There is NO federal legal mandate that requires electronic voting or 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. This coup was achieved by means of corruption--a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle from the Anthrax Congress).

Our situation is dire. The solution is democracy.