Uribe Hands McCain A Present - We Call Bullshit

This is huge--I am relieved and glad they got the American contractors out--but this is bullshit. The Colombians could have gotten them earlier but they waited for the McCain visit, and anyone who doesn't believe that is lying to themselves.

French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans were rescued from leftist guerrillas by Colombian troops, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Wednesday.

Santos said all of the former hostages were in reasonably good health after being held for years in secret jungle camps.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, has been holding about 40 high-profile hostages it has sought to exchange for jailed rebels.

The Americans, three Defense Department contract workers, were captured in 2003 after their light aircraft crashed in the jungles while on a counter-narcotics operation.

The FARC, waging Latin America's oldest insurgency, demanded that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe pull back troops from an area the size of New York City to facilitate talks.

We told you about how the McCain trip to Colombia was announced:

McCain, rather pointedly I thought at the time, FAILED to mention the Americans being held hostage in Colombia for the last five years.

Due to the nature of McCain's trip to Colombia--unexpectedly--and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's outspoken denunciations of Barack Obama--well, was this all a setup? Granted--the FARC is collapsing and the recent setbacks have indicated to me that the hostages would soon be released.

Was McCain--the former POW--going to Colombia knowing his old friend Uribe was going to hand three American POWs over?

Sorry to be cynical, but I am. I am thrilled the Americans are free--it is long overdue and their families have suffered. But, come on.

--WS

The Hostages No One Talks About

US citizens have been held hostage in Colombia for five years, and aside from very casual mentions in the media, they have largely been forgotten. Speaking their names isn't even something this government can do when it is on Colombian soil--it would draw attention to another diplomatic failure.

Don't be surprised if you have never heard of Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell; The [Washington] Post has published only three substantial stories about them in the past five years. All three are U.S. citizens who were working for Pentagon contractor Northrop Grumman when their surveillance plane crashed in a remote Colombian jungle on Feb. 13, 2003. Since then, they have been hostages of the FARC, confined with chains and forced to endure a nightmarish life of isolation, disease and brutality.

The three men were taken hostage after their plane crashed into the remote Colombian jungle. This was certainly not the first or only time the US has lost aircraft and personnel in Colombia:

In July 1999, an American spy plane monitoring the skies and intercepting communications traffic crashed into a mountainside in Colombia, killing the seven men on board - five of them US military personnel.

It's difficult to specify what, if anything, the Bush Administration has done to secure their release. By antagonizing the government of Hugo Chavez, the United States cannot expect any help from the Venezuelan allies of the FARC.

Even worse, from the perspective of the captives, their government and media rarely even speak about them. It's not just The Post: Both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have visited Colombia in the past year, but neither mentioned Gonsalves, Howes and Stansell in their prepared public statements.

[Luis Eladio] Pérez, a former Colombian senator, could not help but feel the men's distress. At the time Bush visited, Pérez was chained by the neck to Howe. Taken hostage himself in June 2001, Pérez lived with the Americans from late 2003 to late 2004, and then again from October 2006 until his release in February. The 55-year-old politician was freed in a deal orchestrated by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and appears to be in remarkably good health now. But he is anguished about those he left behind. "It hurts me to be here enjoying coffee and knowing that they are there in the jungle chained to each other," Pérez told me. "I'm not happy to think of them rotting. I haven't stopped one day trying to help them."

Pérez came to Washington in part because the men gave him letters addressed to President Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the presidential candidates and The Post, among others. FARC guards confiscated the letters, so Pérez is trying to deliver their messages himself. "They are asking the country to please not abandon them," he said. "They are saying that they love their country, they love the flag, that they are rotting in the jungle and please do something for them."

What could be done? Pérez wishes that Bush would consider the FARC's demand that two of its members imprisoned in the United States -- including one sentenced in January to 60 years for conspiring to hold the Americans hostage -- be exchanged for the three men. He points out that Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has expressed a willingness to exchange FARC prisoners for hostages and that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to accept FARC detainees temporarily in France if it will lead to the release of Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who holds French citizenship.

Taking care of our own and doing the difficult work of diplomacy is the Achilles heel of the Bush State Department. Letting a few narco-terrorists go would do what in the war on drugs? Set us back a decade or more? We're so far behind in the war on drugs that it wouldn't make a lick of difference if we let a few of them go. Good luck to them--anyone we let go would be ostracized by their former associates anyway. Keeping them in prison does what for us when we could let them go and get our personnel back?

It all comes down to the State Department. It used to work pretty well. It used to be something to be proud of. Good people led astray and held back and forced to retire is the best way to describe what we have right now. We have eviscerated our diplomatic corps. We have hundreds of empty positions and a desperate need to engage our friends, enemies, and neutral partners on every level.

Jackson Diehl goes on to say:

Among other things, the release of convicted FARC terrorists would undermine what has been a successful extradition program between Colombia and the United States and give a political boost to a crumbling movement. The implosion of the FARC has been a huge setback to Chávez, who was trying to rehabilitate it and use it as a vehicle to export his "Bolivarian revolution" to Colombia.

Therein may lie the Americans' best hope. Pérez confirms that the FARC "is looking for a political solution" in conjunction with Chávez. He's hoping its leaders can be convinced that such an end must begin with a unilateral release of the remaining hostages. "The FARC must make a decision," Pérez said. If Betancourt or other hostages die, he added, "it will be the end of the FARC." That would be a triumph for Colombia and for the Bush administration -- but not much consolation for three American families.

Perhaps the next President will solve the problem. Sad to say, we're just running out the clock.

Ties Between Venezuela and Colombian Rebels Alleged

In March of this year, the US government stated that the possibility of ties between the government of Venezuela and the FARC were unacceptable:

The United States accused unnamed members of Venezuela's left-wing government [in March 2008] of conspiring against neighboring Colombia by supporting Marxist guerrillas.

Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, said files discovered on a rebel chief's computer in March contained "troubling" evidence about ties between some Venezuelan officials and guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"It will either have to commit itself to using its relationship with the FARC to promote peace or it will have to explain why members of its government are conspiring against a democratic neighbor," Shannon said in a speech in California.

Venezuela quickly denied the claims:

Venezuela insists files seized by Colombian forces during a cross-border raid in Ecuador in March indicating Caracas-FARC links, are fake.

US intelligence has recently claimed the files retrieved from the laptop of the slain FARC's second-in-command Raul Reyes showed strong ties between Caracas and the FARC guerrillas.

"We don't recognize the validity of any of these documents," Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States Bernardo Alvarez said, AFP reported citing an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

"They are false, and an attempt to discredit the Venezuelan Government," he added.

Following the March 1 attack of a FARC camp in Ecuador by Colombian forces, Bogota claimed it had found files showing ties between the rebels, Venezuela and Ecuador.

Yesterday, the contents of the files were released:

High-ranking officials in Venezuela offered to help Colombian guerrillas obtain surface-to-air missiles meant to change the balance of power in their war with the Colombian government, according to internal rebel documents.

Venezuelan officials served as middlemen with Australian arms dealers and agreed to help the rebel commanders travel to the Middle East to receive missile training, according to files on computer hard drives seized by Colombian authorities and shown to The Washington Post. In interviews, Colombian officials said they have no evidence that the guerrillas obtained the antiaircraft missiles but added that Venezuelan authorities appear to have provided light arms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The disclosures have already started to reverberate in the Bush administration and among Latin America policymakers on Capitol Hill, where a small group of Republicans has proposed classifying Venezuela, a major oil exporter to the United States, as a state sponsor of terrorism. The United States and Europe long ago blacklisted the rebel organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as a terrorist group.

At Colombia's request, Interpol, the international police agency, has completed an extensive forensic analysis on the hard drives, which were confiscated in an army raid on a rebel camp on March 1. On Thursday, Interpol is expected to announce that there is no evidence that anyone tampered with the hard drives after they were seized, though the agency cannot vouch for the veracity of the rebels' claims, according to an American official knowledgeable about the study.

The documents are the latest to be released among 16,000 files and photographs being reviewed by Colombian and U.S. officials that describe meetings between FARC commanders and Venezuelan officials, including Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín; the military intelligence chief, Gen. Hugo Carvajal; other top generals such as Clíver Alcalá; and Amilkar Figueroa, who organizes Venezuela's civilian militias.

Once again, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez rejects the findings:

President Hugo Chávez, who has publicly lauded the FARC and characterized Colombia's government as illegitimate, ridiculed the latest batch of correspondence Sunday as "imbecilic documents." He cast Colombian President Álvaro Uribe as a "manipulator" linked to drug trafficking and charged that the Bush administration is using the documents as a pretext to invade Venezuela from Colombia.

Communications Minister Andrés Izarra, speaking to a group of American newspaper editors on Tuesday in Caracas, called the findings "laughable."

"It's part of the lies that are spread around every day against what we are doing," he said.

Not everyone is backing the administration:

After a recent fact-finding trip to the region, Carl Meacham, a senior aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted in a report that a hard line against Venezuela could damage trade with the United States and inadvertently strengthen Chávez's position.

Colombian officials have also debated the ramifications of a tough stance, since it could endanger $6.5 billion in annual trade with Venezuela. Santos, the defense minister, said, "I want to normalize relations with Venezuela because it would be convenient for all of us." He added: "But to do that, they cannot help the FARC."

Colombian officials and former FARC guerrillas said the close ties between the group and Venezuela are not new, though officials in Chávez's government and rebel commanders have drawn closer since 2005.

My Bullshit Detector is Beeping Like Crazy

Colombia is accusing the FARC rebels of seeking the components of a radioactive "dirty bomb" that would scatter radioactive debris over a geographic area. The charge was leveled by Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos, at a U.N. disarmament meeting in Geneva. It upped the rhetorical ante considerably.

Santos claims that a raid against the rebel group had yielded a laptop with information that indicated the rebel terrorists were actively seeking radioactive material. "This shows that these terrorist groups, supported by the economic power provided by drug trafficking, constitute a grave threat not just to our country but to the entire Andean region and Latin America," he said in a statement that was posted in Spanish on the UN disarmament conference's Web site.

He did not indicate with whom he believed the rebels were negotiating, and offered no empirical evidence to support his claims that the rebels were seeking 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, of uranium.

I'm not saying unequivocally that the story is entirely without merit, I'm saying the odds are about 50/50 that it is entirely without merit. Here is what is making my bullshit detector go crazy - besides the lack of supporting evidence. You don't exactly process uranium with cases of ether. It's slightly trickier than manufacturing cocaine and requires lab equipment that is a bit more sophisticated than you will find in a mobile, makeshift jungle lab.

Given the track record of lying by this administration and it's allies, the presence of American troops in Colombia and the fact that Venezuela is an OPEC member, and let's just say I need to see a hell of a lot more proof than a ranting diatribe delivered while beating frantically on the terrorist fear-drum by Colombia's vice president.