COLOMBIA: Secret Documents Show US Aware of Army Killings in 1990s

Source: IPS News

COLOMBIA: Secret Documents Show US Aware of Army Killings in 1990s
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Jan 12 (IPS) - Declassified U.S. documents show that the CIA and former U.S. ambassadors were fully aware, as far back as 1990, that the military in Colombia -- the third largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt -- were committing extrajudicial killings as part of "death squad tactics."

They also knew that senior Colombian officers encouraged a "body count" mentality to demonstrate progress in the fight against left-wing guerrillas. In an undetermined number of cases, the bodies presented as casualties in the counterinsurgency war were actually civilians who had nothing to do with the country’s decades-old armed conflict.

Since at least 1990, U.S. diplomats were reporting a connection between the Colombian security forces and far-right drug-running paramilitary groups, according to the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA).

In the meantime, the U.S. State Department continued to regularly certify Colombia’s human rights record and to heavily finance its "war on drugs."

The declassified documents were published Jan. 7 by the NSA, a non-governmental research and archival institution located at the George Washington University that collects, archives and publishes declassified U.S. government documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.



Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45383

No

:hi:

More from the article:

~snip~
Cepeda also maintained that the activities of far-right death squads and the army’s "body count" killings were connected, and that the military used the paramilitaries to show results.

"The paramilitaries delivered to the army the bodies of people who were supposed members of the guerrillas but who were actually people selectively killed by those (paramilitary) groups," he told IPS.

When the killings became more and more widespread, the armed forces themselves asked the paramilitaries to hide the remains, to keep the country’s homicide rate from soaring any further, paramilitaries who took part in a demobilisation process negotiated with the right-wing Uribe administration have confessed.

The declassified documents demonstrate "that the U.S. military as well as U.S. diplomats and governments have taken a complacent stance towards this kind of practice," said Cepeda.

~snip~
The cable, whose subject line reads "human rights in Colombia -- widespread allegations of abuses by the army," cites reports that an army major "personally directed the torture of 11 detainees and their subsequent execution…carried out by cutting of the limbs and heads of the still living victims with a chain saw."

~snip~
McNamara also mentioned "an apparent June 7 incident of extra-judicial executions."

"The military reported to the press that, on that date, it killed 9 guerrillas in combat in El Ramal, Santander department. The investigation by Instruccion Criminal and the Procuraduria (legal authorities) strongly suggests, however, that the nine were executed by the army and then dressed in military fatigues. A military judge who arrived on the scene apparently realised that there were no bullet holes in the military uniforms to match the wounds in the victims’ bodies, and ordered the uniforms burned," said the ambassador.

We trained the fuckers!

School of the Americas.

:grr:

-Hoot

.
.
.

just their methods.

Teaching their version of Christianity and Democracy with guns and bombs.

400 years of occupation of the Americas

the USAmericans haven't changed a bit - -

still killing whoever gets in their way

Paul Wellstone.

Thousands of union leaders and others murdered by rightwing death squads and by the Colombian military (about half and half, according to AI).

Tortured; carved up with chainsaws, while still alive. Things like that.

Boffo police state/war profiteer boondoggle--$6 BILLION to Colombia, for the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs."

Cocaine traffic UP.

And their reward is to be? FREE TRADE (free fire zone on union leaders)!

------------

That's the OTHER issue Wellstone is not here to work on any more. He visited Colombia and was appalled at what he learned.

John Kerry investigated related issues and writes of narco countries - like Colombia in his 1996 "new War" book. Colombia is one of the main countries he wrote of.

one, but it was a big issue for him. He took the trouble to visit the graves of the victims in Colombia--and it was not a friendly visit. As he was inspecting a U.S. coca plant eradication site, one of the "war on drugs" toxic pesticide planes drenched his location "by mistake," as I recall the reports.

There have been a number of people in Congress, who have stood fast against the Colombian "free trade" deal because of Colombia's horrendous violence against union leaders and others. But still we send $6 BILLION in military aid to that government and its death squad infested military and political establishment. I don't know if Wellstone would have succeeded, but he would have been relentless in opposing further "war on drugs" aid to Colombia (as well as the "free trade" deal) and in opposing the war on Iraq. What did Kerry do about the war on Iraq? He voted FOR it. Did he learn nothing from the corruption and war profiteering in Iran/Contra and in Colombia? It was replicated in Iraq. Predictably. Nope, Kerry was hedging his bets. But Wellstone never did. He knew when something was wrong, and fearlessly sought to correct it.

Published on Tuesday, December 26, 2000 in the New York Times
Bush Should Start Over in Colombia
by Paul Wellstone

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month I traveled to Colombia to learn more about this war-torn country, whose military is getting nearly $2 million per day from the United States as part of an aid package that passed last June after narrow approval in the Senate.
I paid a visit to Barrancabermeja, an oil-refining port city on Colombia's Magdalena River. "Barranca," a city of 210,000, is one of the most dangerous places in one of the world's most dangerous countries. This year so far, violence in Barranca has killed at least 410 people. According to local human rights groups, most of those killed were the victims of right-wing paramilitary death squads.

These human rights groups operate in the midst of a 40-year-old civil war now in one of its most violent phases. Every year, the violence in Colombia kills nearly 4,000 people, most of them poor, powerless noncombatants. About 300,000 — more than half of them children — are forced from their homes each year. Another 3,000 people are kidnapped. Ransoms, extortion and the drug trade finance armed groups on the right and left.

In the name of the drug war, the American aid package approved this year allocates approximately 75 percent of its resources to Colombia's security forces. But Colombia's military is a deeply troubled institution, even though it has recently taken important steps to improve its overall human rights record.

The State Department recently reported that "civilian management of the armed forces is limited" in Colombia, and that in 1999 "the authorities rarely brought officers of the security forces and the police charged with human rights offenses to justice, and impunity remains a problem." Many members of the security forces continue to collaborate with the right- wing paramilitaries, who commit about three-quarters of the politically motivated murders in Colombia.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/122600-104.htm

This took real character for Wellstone to do this, especially in light of the fact his own party was backing Plan Colombia, set in motion by Bill Clinton and the Colombia's President Pastrana.

AWARE OF ??!!!!
Hell, we trained and supplied the Death Squads!

I've known about it for years (along with most of DU), and NOW ...these assholes are pretending to be "Shocked!"

Why am I not surprised!?
U$-Colombia Policy a disgrace!

slaughter living human beings actually feel it's acceptable to send US citizens' tax dollars by the boatload to Colombia? How does that work out with someone's conscience?

From the article:

The cable, whose subject line reads "human rights in Colombia -- widespread allegations of abuses by the army," cites reports that an army major{b] "personally directed the torture of 11 detainees and their subsequent execution…carried out by cutting of the limbs and heads of the still living victims with a chain saw."

The first time I heard about this practice from someone who left Colombia, I had never heard of this before. It seemed IMPOSSIBLE human beings could do this to other people.

It appears there are right-wingers in this country whose "consciences" aren't the least affected, who process this information with no problems whatsoever. I see them as being as hideous, as monstrous as the ones who do it. What a shame we have some who approve of this practice making decisions for our country in Washington. It's loathesome simply having some of them generously offering their opinions on message boards.

from My Lai to El Mozote, Abu Ghraib to Whitewater and the Winter Soldier, the Librul Media is a pack of vile villains, working to tar and blacken America's snowy-white Joan of Arc crusade to free the world from its Commie/Islamofascist rulers: the Media are traitors controlled by Stalin or Hamas, fabricating stories to make us question our unquestionable military and Leaders
even Grenada got hit by propaganda: it's not just made by cynics, a good portion of the Establishment believes this Jack-Chick-like crackheadedness
Israel could overtop the Deccan Mujahedeen 600% (oh, wait...) and Sammy Wurzelbacher will be right there, giving it a shoulder to cry on and reporting on how skeeeert it is

US: Award to Uribe Sends Wrong Message
Colombia’s Rights Violations Should Bar Its Leader From Award
by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International-USA, Center for International Policy, Human Rights First, Latin America Working Group, Refugees International, and the Washington Office on Latin America

January 12, 2009

(Washington, DC, January 12, 2009) – US President George W. Bush’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia is a disturbing example of the Bush administration’s disregard for serious human rights concerns out of zeal to show unconditional support to governments that it views as strategic allies, seven leading nongovernmental organizations said today.

The organizations include Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International-USA, Center for International Policy, Human Rights First, Latin America Working Group, Refugees International, and the Washington Office on Latin America.

Bush is giving the award to Uribe at a ceremony in the White House on Tuesday, January 13, 2009.

“The Bush administration has consistently turned a blind eye to Colombia’s serious human rights violations,” said the organizations. “Its selection of Uribe to receive this award only further tarnishes the Bush administration’s own reputation on human rights issues in the region.”

More:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/12/us-award-uribe-sends-wrong-message