Colombia Declassified: Massacres of the State

The terrific National Security Archive at George Washington U. has released another bombshell of a report based on their tireless work to declassify US intelligence reports. Last year, some might recall them releasing US produced evidence from 1991 listing PResident Uribe as one of the top drug dealers and assasins in the country.

This latest report focuses on the relationship between Colombia's military and the right-wing paramilitaries, whom many have suspected worked together. Well we don't have to suspect any more.

We have first-hand reports that Colombian soldiers "had donned AUC (paramilitary) armbands and participated directly" in one of the massacres in which 150 were kille that month. We have frank assessments from Officers explaining why they choos to ignore the mass killings perpetrated by certain (rightist) groups. We see the US having full knowledge of such, despite the repeated public denials from Bush and Uribe.

The piece, written for Colombia's largest magazine Semana, concludes with the following:

"Cooperation with paramilitary groups was implied, according to the colonel. Abuses were tacitly condoned by the expectations of senior military leaders who sheltered themselves behind a wall of plausible deniability. Former Fourth Brigade commanders Harold Bedoya and Jorge Enrique Mora "looked the other way," he said, and "never allowed themselves to become directly involved in encouraging or supporting paramilitary activities." The once (Bedoya) and future (Mora) armed forces commanders simply "turned their backs to what was happening and felt the Colar [Colombian army] should in no way be blamed for any resulting human rights atrocities committed."

The generals just might get their wish. The lenient terms of surrender and the strict time limit imposed on investigations of paramilitary crimes ensure that they will uncover little new information on the critical role that Colombian military officers have played in fomenting and the groups, thwarting what might otherwise have been an opportunity to use the demobilization process to gather valuable information on the underpinnings of paramilitarism in Colombia. Unless an effort is made to explore this history of collaboration, it is unlikely that Colombians will know either justice or peace."

Add to that the new "Peace Accord" Uribe is pushing that would disallow any future extraditions to the United States of key drug traffickers and cartel leaders.
So lets recap, we have a leader of a country implicated by US DIA intelligence as a key supporter of the Medallin Cartel, who presides over a military who participated in (and allowed) massacres of civillians, who today wants to immunize those same drug dealers and paramilitaries from facing justice. Just imagine if this was a left-wing leader, say Hugo Chavez? The man would be looking at US bombs falling by now.