colombiaweek.org
Eyewitness account on Plan Colombia

Loretta Nall has an excellent essay posted at Lew Rockwell based on her recent fact-finding tour as a Witness for Peace delegate in Colombia. She describes the picturesque surroundings of the jungle beautifully. Her description of US conduct in the country is not so pretty.

Plan Colombia, like the brutal tactics of the police in Alabama, involves aerial drug raids. In Putumayo, however, whenever a drug warrior pilot "thinks" he sees an offending plant, he pushes a button, effortlessly raining chemical hell onto families, homes, food crops, schoolhouses, livestock, water, and land. The mainstream media doesn’t report, however, that many times these pilots miss their intended targets. Plan Colombia destroys the livelihood of people whose only crime is poverty..

She discovers the real US interest in the area.

... the ugly metal pipeline snaking across the jungle, pumping oil, marring the scenery, and polluting the environment. The pipeline is the target of frequent guerrilla attacks. It is so frequently attacked, in fact, that more oil has been spilled in Colombia than in the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

She goes on to describe the devastation of the countryside by herbicide warfare.

"In March and May of 2004, the schools were fumigated."

"We had a school garden program where the children ate what they grew. It was very important because many of these children have had their food crops sprayed and their families cannot afford to feed them properly. The school garden was their only source of a balanced diet; for many, it was the day’s only meal. It was destroyed by the fumigation."

And the highlights of a Q & A session with a US official are most illuminating.
Here's what our government thinks of this atrocity being perpetrated with our tax dollars.

Another member of the delegation asked, "What are the farmers who have given up growing coca supposed to do when the U.S. sprays their alternative development crops and refuses to reimburse them for the damage and loss? Where are they supposed to go? What were they supposed to eat?"

The Official responded, "Plan Colombia is a science and we do not make mistakes. The farmers who say they were wrongly fumigated are liars. These people have bigger extended families than anyone in the U.S. can imagine. When something happens to one of them, they can always go and live with Uncle Fred."

Disgusting. Maybe someone should bomb his home with herbicides, rendering it unfit to live in and see how he likes losing everything and moving in with his Uncle Fred.

Loretta sums it well.

What does it say about America’s true moral values that we allow – and indeed pay for – this to occur?

How can we claim that we are saving lives from Colombian cocaine when more people are killed in Colombia every year trying to keep cocaine out of the U.S. than die in the U.S. from Colombian cocaine?

Good question.