A troubled U.S. military presence on Ecuador’s coast

[donsu]

http://news.bostonherald.com/international/americas/view.bg?articleid=181390


The U.S. military’s lone outpost in South America is a modest affair - some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time.

But these surveillance planes play a vital role in keeping Andean cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States and are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.

That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington’s foreign policy in a region where President Bush’s administration now has few reliable allies.

(not true that it's the US military's lone outpost in S.A.)

-snip-

”There is a widespread feeling that Washington is carrying out an extensive, mostly security, anti-drug program with Colombia, with little regard for the severe consequences - growing violence and refugees - on Ecuador,” said Michael Shifter, deputy director of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

-snip-

Located on the coast some 160 miles southwest of the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, Manta is well situated for its mission. But the U.S. military, which got the Manta lease after it was forced to abandon Howard Air Base in Panama in 1999, would be wise to start looking elsewhere, according to Anna Gilmour, a Latin American analyst with Jane’s Defense Information Group.
-snip-
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shut them down, bring them home

the neo con drug war is a money making scam among other things.

[Benhurst]

1. The way things are going, The World's Only Superpower is going

to be left playing with itself.