Mercenaries to Play Greater Role in ...Drug Interdiction, Crop Eradication

[whatelseisnew]

http://narconews.com/

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/3/31/13529/5779

.......snip........

Even more revealing of potential U.S.-coordinated interventions is the project’s directive to accomplish the PR task “through military action, action by non-governmental organizations, other U.S. Government approved action, and diplomatic initiatives, or through any combination of these options.”

The PR contractors will report to the U.S. Embassy of the respective partner nations, to which they are assigned, providing specific services such as Combat Search and Rescue, Joint Combat Search and Rescue, Non-Conventional Assisted Recovery, Evasion and Recovery, and Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape.

Anticipated “places of performance” listed in the planning document are: U.S. Embassy Military Assistance Advisory Group, Lima, Peru; U.S. Embassy Military Group, La Paz and Santa Cruz, Bolivia; U.S. Embassy Office of Defense Corporation, Panama City, Panama; and U.S. Embassy Military Groups of Bogota, Colombia; Quito, Ecuador; and Caracas, Venezuela, respectively.

The contractors also will administer the U.S. Embassy’s “Blood Chit” Program. Blood chits are notes, written in numerous languages, carried by aircrews in combat situations in the event they are shot down. They are used to aid the downed pilots and crew members in seeking assistance from local populations, who are promised through the blood chits that the U.S. government will reward them financially for ensuring the safe passage and return of these personnel.

.......snip........

[Robbien]

1. The people have chewed cocoa leaves for hundreds of years

and because of illegal shipment to the states, we demand they destroy the crops and their way of life. Now the people have to choose between their cocoa leaves or US bribes. Wonder which way those poor people will go.

Also, since we are now offering bribes to get the crop dusters back, the people must not have been returning the pilots. Isn't this against our policy of no negotiation with kidnappers?

[jayfish]

2. What Are The Legal Repercussions...

of shooting a mercenary who's fucking around on your property?

NOTE: This is sort-of rhetorical

Jay

[Say_What]

3. Despite pouring billions of dollars into Colombia, coca cultivation

continues and US military aid continues to increase even though Colombia has the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere.

<clips>

The State Department's new coca data

In a press release dated March 25 (Good Friday), a document so little-noticed that I only stumbled upon it this afternoon, the office of the Drug Czar (White House Office of National Drug Control Policy) is forced to admit some very bad news.

The release reveals that coca cultivation in Colombia did not decrease in 2004, despite a record-high level of aerial herbicide fumigation.

State Department estimates show a total of 114,000 hectares of coca planted in Colombia at the end of last year – just 8,000 hectares less than Colombia had in 1999, the year before Plan Colombia began. This is statistically about the same as the 113,850 hectares measured in 2003.

Let's just pause and consider these two numbers from the above table:

* Total fumigation 1999-2004: 566,935 hectares (more than half the size of the state of Rhode Island).
* Reduction in Colombian coca 1999-2004: 8,500 hectares.

That's right: one hectare reduced for every 67 hectares sprayed.

Meanwhile, note that the total amount of Colombian land estimated to be under coca cultivation - combining what was fumigated and what was “left over” – was 250,555 hectares – more than 2003 and just shy of the all-time high registered in 2002.

The inescapable conclusion we can draw from this data: nearly a decade after large-scale spraying began in Colombia, our fumigation program is not discouraging Colombian peasants from growing coca.

http://ciponline.org/colombia/blog/

[Robbien]

4. Wonder why Peru's numbers are down since 1996

and Bolivia's also.

Interesting that we are spending billions on a drug war in Columbia where the drugs are increasing, and in Bolivia/Peru drugs decreased over the last ten years.

[Julius Civitatus]

5. Fox guarding hen house

Mercenaries (as in pirates, guns for hire) in charge of erradicating drug crops?

You can see where this is leading...

[KansDem]

6. Yeah, where's a "Eugene Hasenfus" when you need one...

Eugene Hasenfus leaped into national celebrity when the Contra supply plane in which he was a "cargo kicker" was shot down over Nicaragua. Hasenfus (whose last name means "rabbit's foot" in German) was lucky enough to parachute to safety but unlucky enough to be captured by the Nicaraguan government forces.

His statements -- and a little black book with some very damaging phone numbers in it -- confirmed that the Reagan administration was engaged in a series of criminal acts amounting to illegal war, piracy and murder in attempting to overthrow the legitimate government of Nicaragua. As the tale unwound, it turned out that the merry men from the White House were stealing sophisticated weapons from U.S. military stores, smuggling them to Iran, selling them for exorbitant prices and funneling the money into "deniable" criminal organizations in Central America. A fine mess. Ultimately, President George Bush I, issued a series of pardons to his cronies even though none of them had yet been convicted of crimes -- thus granting a whole raft of unsavory characters, traitors and crooks permanent lifetime "get-out-of-jail-free" cards.

Eugene, however was not one of them. He spent several months in a Nicaraguan prison before being exchanged in a spy-swap. Afterwards, he dropped out of sight. Evidently, his life has been a bit of a downhill slide.

http://nwcitizen.com/wic/Quickly/WherearetheynowEugeneHase.html

Wasn't this White House "business venture" also running coke into the United States? It doesn't say so in this article, but I thought it was one side of the Reagan/Bush/Ollie North "Triangle Trade." I mean, those "cargo planes" weren't really coming back empty, were they..."

edited to add thoughtful comment...

[whatelseisnew]

7. Yeah at some point it became arms for hostages

before that it was an arms-drugs-hostages triangle.

I think if we broke out the micro-fiche , we might find the

proto-corporate media ignoring the drugs aspect right from the start.