What the Farc files really reveal

What the Farc files really reveal
A conservative thinktank's attempt to reheat widely discredited Colombian military claims about Farc is pure black propaganda

Greg Grandin and Miguel Tinker Salas
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 May 2011 20.30 BST

The release Tuesday of a "dossier" of Farc files, which were supposedly seized by the Colombian government in 2008, is truly a non-event. The report, by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), appears to be an attempt by hawks in the US and the UK to perpetuate, using "black propaganda", the failed policies of the George W Bush administration, as well as previous administrations of the cold war era, to which they respectively once belonged. All of its conclusions are based on the false premise that the documents that it claims to analyse are entirely trustworthy.

Impartial observers of the events surrounding the supposed capture of computer files from the Farc, and their subsequent revelation in the media, have long ago concluded that the files are highly dubious at best. The Colombian military, which claims to have obtained the documents from computers and flash drives following an illegal bombing raid on a Farc camp inside Ecuador in March 2008, is the only party that can know for sure whether the documents are authentic.

The IISS, and others who want the world to believe in the documents' authenticity, rest much of their case on the supposed verification of the files by Interpol. But what Interpol actually said, in its 2008 report on the documents, was that the Colombian military's treatment of the files "did not conform to internationally recognised principles for the ordinary handling of electronic evidence by law enforcement". Interpol noted that there was a one-week period between the computer documents' capture by Colombia, and when they were handed over to Interpol, during which time the Colombian authorities actually modified 9,440 files, and deleted 2,905, according to Interpol's detailed forensic report. This "may complicate validating this evidence for purposes of its introduction in a judicial proceeding", Interpol noted at the time.

Following their remarkable initial "discovery" and "capture" (the computers, we were told, survived a bombing raid completely unscathed), the Colombian military made "revelations" that quickly turned out to be false. A photo depicting a high-level Ecuadorian official meeting with the Farc was revealed to be a fake. Even more embarrassing, the Colombian military's claims that files showed the Farc were planning to make a "dirty bomb" were publicly dismissed by the US government and terrorism experts.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/10/farc-files-colombia-venezuela

K & R for later viewing.

But you gotta wonder WHY they're bothering with more of this warmongering crapola. What do they know about the next ES&S/Diebolding of America that we don't know and can only guess at? Or do they have their war triggers rigged to corner Obama into Oil War IV? Or, has he already agreed to it?

They've got me spooked all right. I thought the Venezuela oil war had been put on the back burner.

Slimon Romero has been on it, too--the New York Slimes' "Judith Miller" for Latin America.

Something's up.

Simon Romero has lasted the longest, and he IS the Latin America Judith Miller.

You can spot these people a mile away. They heap praise upon right-wing maggots like Alvaro Uribe, and throw fits over the leftist presidents, Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, and of course took every effort to malign Honduras' President Zelaya.

They were completely silent as Peru's Alan Garcia closed several radio and tv stations, and called out yet another massacre upon indigenous Peruvians, this time at Bagua. Didn't seem to bother them in the slightest.

They came to decide there were two "good leftists," Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and Michelle Bachelet, although they NEVER referred to the fact each one was persecuted by earlier right-wing military dictatorships in their respective countries, Michelle Bachelet's own father DYING after being tortured in prison, Michelle and her mother both having been tortured. Not one peep from the US corporate leftist attack dogs over any of this searing background.

Never one word, either, about the fact that Argentina's Nestor Kirchner was himself tortured in prison by Argentina's military dictatorship, and not one syllable concerning the fact Brazil's current President Dilma Rousseff was tremendous tortured, herself, thrown into prison for being a very strong leftist during Brazil's hell on earth.

The only purpose they serve is to attempt to spread misinformation to the looneytoons of the right, the non-reading, permanently xenophobic, teabagging, proudly ignorant rubes.

Checking my files, I find that they day after Condi Rice's smoking gun/mushroom cloud remarks in September 2002, they were out with a claim that Iraq could be only months away from having nuclear weapons if it got the necessary materials. This assertion was then picked up by the British government and mixed in with Niger forgery stuff.

In 2007, they were talking about how easy it would be to go to war with Iran.

Not a good bunch of people.