---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 06:51:25 -0400 Subject: Inferno: Plan Columbia Broadens (Plan Andean)... res ipsa loquitor... << But what did come as a shock was the discovery of language in the bill (apparently inserted late in the game by Foreign Operations subcommittee chairman Jim Kolbe) that not only gives the Bush Administration authority to send as many private military specialists as it wants to Colombia, but to send them in as heavily armed as they want--and with broad rules of engagement...>> << Entitled "Colombian Labryinth," the RAND report asserts that "drugs and insurgency are intertwined in complicated and changing ways but the former cannot be addressed without the latter," and concludes US-backed efforts to reduce the drug supply in Colombia have been ineffective, The reason, RAND says, is because the US has focused more on "counternarcotics" assistance (aid to anti-drug police and special military anti-drug units) rather than "counterinsurgency" (aid to Colombian military in its war with the left-wing FARC and ELN). While a number of investigative journalists and watchdog groups have demonstrated US aid and assistance has already crossed the line from counternarcotics to counterinsurgency, RAND recommends that the US once and for all dispense with the dubious notion that there's any difference between the two, and lays out an expansive proposal for increasing US military aid and assistance to Colombian government in its fight against leftist rebels. But use of US troops is something even the Bush Administration is leery of: at his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Peter Rodman, Bush's nominee to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, told senators that " None of us wants to get into a war. The word 'counterinsurgency' scares the hell out of everybody." >> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=vest20010717 -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------