colombiaweek.org
Warm Welcome at the White House

Colombia Week has a new issue out with an excellent op-ed on "the victories" in the drug war. Thanks to US funded aerial eradication efforts, the CIA estimates 21% of the Colombia coca crop has been eliminated. Bush and his minions --never ones to let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a good photo op-- have declared this proof positive that the war on drugs is working.

However as W. John Green points out:

U.S. street prices for cocaine have not risen a cent and that the drug's supply has remained steady.

...as coca cultivation has been hampered in one place, it has moved on to others.

...spraying has pushed many coca farmers further into the Amazon and led many others to avoid detection by planting the crop on smaller parcels and interspersing it with vital food crops.

...the spraying is becoming more dangerous for the pilots. In 2003, at least six went down and four of those were shot out of the sky by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest guerrilla group.

Meanwhile, Uribe is in Washington, bartering trading rights for more "military aid", apparently unconcerned that the agreements would not be signed until 2006 when there should be a new administration. I don't like the sound of this.

Interviewed by the Bogota daily El Tiempo, Colombian Ambassador to the United States Luis Alberto Moreno said a Democratic presidential victory would not jeopardize support for Plan Colombia or a trade pact. "John Kerry's main foreign policy advisors, Rand Beers and Sandy Berger, know the situation perfectly well," Moreno said. "Kerry has always voted in favor of Colombia when the issue has come up before Congress."

Uribe, with the support of Bush, Tom Daschle and Henry Hyde is also asking to double the cap on military personnel and civil contractors allowed to be stationed in the country, but there's a least one legislator with common sense inside the beltway. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) on March 22 told Congress she opposes deepening U.S. involvement in that country's war:

"President Bush's policy in Colombia is a miserable failure. Risking the lives of more U.S. soldiers and wasting millions more taxpayer dollars on private military contractors will only make that policy worse. The Colombian people deserve more from the Bush administration than a policy that will escalate violence and do nothing to promote a peaceful resolution to a civil war that has ravaged that nation for more than forty years."

Indeed they do.