It IS weird. And it also shows what happens to countries that are invaded by the U.S. "war on drugs"--they LOSE their sovereignty.
But, more than this, we had a situation with Bush/Uribe whereby the U.S. colluded on a coverup of Uribe's crimes (and, if the truth were known, Bush Junta crimes) in Colombia. Thus, prisoners who had intimate knowledge of Uribe's close ties to rightwing death squads and drug trafficking, for instance, could be--and were--'extradited' out of Colombia, and away from nosey and outraged Colombian prosecutors, and placed in the power of U.S. federal prison authorities, and U.S. federal courts (both of which played along) and, ultimately in the power of the President or whoever the Hell was (and still is) running our government.
I don't think that most of our people have any idea of the level of corruption of U.S. policy in Latin America, especially in U.S. client states, Colombia and Honduras. Also, our people don't know that this mafia don, Uribe, who ran Colombia during the Bush Junta, is included in the general amnesty that Obama agreed to, for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other Bush Junta thieves and war criminals.
When Obama announced that "we need to look forward not backward" on Bush Junta crimes, i.e., that there are some people who are too powerful to prosecute (they teach that at Harvard Law School), I waited to see if Uribe would be included in this glittery company of the immune. I wasn't sure he would be because he is SO DIRTY--over a hundred of his closest cronies, including family members, already in jail or under investigation for death squad activity, drug trafficking, election fraud and other crimes, and Uribe himself with a history of ties to rightwing death squads that goes back to the beginning of his career. I thought he might be considered too much of an embarrassment and thus a hindrance to U.S./corporate aims in Latin America. But no, he was soon TEACHING AT HARVARD! --with a cushy academic sinecure also at Georgetown (where George Tenet is an alum). Gawd. They aren't just protecting him--they're HONORING him! Further, the U.S. State Department intervened in a U.S.-filed lawsuit against Drummond Coal for its death squads in Colombia, to insure that Uribe would not be required to testify. AND somebody in State had the bright idea of appointing Uribe to a prestigious international legal commission (the one investigating Israel's firing on a peace boat--Uribe no doubt did U.S. bidding in that forum, in a tit for tat).
This is a big deal--the Obama administration covering up the crimes of the Bush Junta, including the crimes of their 'made man' in Colombia. And I think it reveals that it is not only Colombians and Hondurans who have lost their sovereignty to the U.S./corporate international police state. Our Constitution is in shreds. Our elections are now a corporate 'TRADE SECRET." The international legal order--the Geneva Conventions, etc.--that was so hard-won in WW II, is in shreds. The bad guys are in charge and no one--not the President of the U.S., nor the legal authorities in Colombia, nor anybody else--has the power to move against them.
= new reply since forum marked as read
