Wasn’t McCain just down there in Bogota…
photo

maybe all the little leaks are the primer for the big leak it was mcCain the hero rescuing the hostages.
hollywood.

Posted by: annie | Jul 5 2008 13:10 utc | 3

somebody spliced audio of Charlie Manson talking with GWB talking.
The whole thing is 3 minutes long. I’m afraid to comment on it too much. Clearly, the exercise isn’t arbitrary – they have the same kind of drawl and both express a desire to make their mark, at least.

Posted by: H | Jul 5 2008 13:46 utc | 5

Uncle Scam, synchronicity, I was just thinking in the car, sure and McC was there in Columbia…
It is characteristic, some of these important people just have to be there, it is an adventure to them. Like Giuliani and Netenhayou (sp) being in London on the day of the 7/7 bombings. It is of course the deceptive aspect that draws them, the fictional scenario. And with their presence they signal ‘something is going on / is going to happen’ but they can’t keep away! They need the thrill of being conspirators, participating, or seeing at least a part of it ‘going down’..
On Friday morning my Columbian friend told me that 20 mil was paid before I heard it on Swiss Radio. She said everyone in her home town knew it. Today’s paper (le temps, pen of correspondent in Bogota) in the headline says that the senator Piedad Cordoba confirms that the official story is bogus.
On another note, my friend also tells me that in her town the ‘amnesty plus reinsertion program’ is working fine. The ex-terrorists (argh, I swore not to use that word anymore) are accepted and helped. Until the day they transgress – then its bye bye birdie. She was quite fierce about that.

Posted by: Tangerine | Jul 5 2008 15:06 utc | 7

Interview with Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador circa 4/08

Is it true that Reyes had contacted the French in order to negotiate the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt, when he was bombed?
Uribe doesn’t want peace, nor does he want hostages released, because Betancourt is a potential presidential candidate. It’s true that we’d known that contact would be made in a neutral third country in order to liberate them later on Ecuadoran soil. President Chávez also asked me if we could receive hostages in our territory because a transfer over the Colombian-Venezuelan border had become very dangerous. We were in the middle of that process. Those movements toward liberation of the hostages that the guerrillas entrusted to Reyes were precisely the reason Reyes was destroyed.

Posted by: annie | Jul 5 2008 15:39 utc | 9

Some terrorist assassinated Hitler. As it was a beheading there might be connection to some Taliban groups.

Posted by: b | Jul 5 2008 16:31 utc | 11

Hi pat, THE pat? Welcome back. Let us know more.

Posted by: b | Jul 5 2008 18:35 utc | 13

Iran warns of Gulf blitzkrieg, Hormuz closure

Iran’s military chiefs warned on Saturday that the Islamic republic would shut down the Strait of Hormuz vital for oil exports and use “blitzkrieg tactics” in the Gulf if it came under attack.
“All the countries should know that if Iran’s interests in the region are ignored, it is natural that we will not allow others to use it (the strait),” said army chief General Hassan Firouzabadi, quoted by the Fars news agency.

Also see,
The finishing touches on several contingency plans for attacking Iran

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 5 2008 19:40 utc | 15

pat
a ‘military operation’ did not happen & you know it. colombian newspapers will tommorrow report on an arrangement with certain members of farc
colombian ‘intelligence’ even with american infrastructure is & has been hopeless. if it indeed possessed human intelligence farc would have been finished long ago
colombia is one of the few whores left in latin america with her legs wide open enjoying it’s servant role to the empire. that uribe – a man whose taste for massacres is well known & recorded as is his familial relation to death squads. uribe’s utter servitude to the narcotrafficers is common knowledge even amongst conservative elements in colombia
it is a good thing for the hostages to be free – but it was not due to ‘intelligence’ in any form, military or otherwise
it is what is called in the blues business -‘last deal gone down’

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 5 2008 20:53 utc | 17

rgiap, you old marxist sweetheart. How’s life been?

Posted by: pat | Jul 5 2008 21:06 utc | 19

i’m slurping up the champaign as we speak pat

Posted by: annie | Jul 5 2008 21:42 utc | 21

If you’re right, and I hope you are, Sy Hersh may emerge in all this as a psyops tool.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 5, 2008 5:43:38 PM
Oh I guarantee it.

Posted by: pat | Jul 5 2008 22:10 utc | 23

I myself am enjoying a lovely Flor de Cana.

Posted by: pat | Jul 5 2008 22:14 utc | 25

nice to hear from you again Pat, could tell from your syntax it was really you! Figures, that!

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 5 2008 22:44 utc | 27

Thanks, anna. I endeavor not to stay too long.

Posted by: pat | Jul 5 2008 22:58 utc | 29

Panama has refused to host a US military base to replace the one the US has in Ecuador.

Posted by: Ensley | Jul 6 2008 1:28 utc | 31

And where have YOU been? How’s France? Or was it?

Posted by: pat | Jul 6 2008 2:10 utc | 33

Would that be with or without sarcasm, annie?
sorry for my non reply, i dozed off and still have a case of the fuzzies. possibly a wee bit of sarcasm to celebrate the occasion of your return to the ol waterin’ hole.
as you can see we’re still pluggin’ away callin’ a spade a spade ‘n then some.
sloth has joined the party. howdy sloth.
so..bogata, how cosmic. seeing as it’s sat night are you planning on snorting some of the local product w/your sidekicks down there?
hee hee . just kidding.

Posted by: annie | Jul 6 2008 2:25 utc | 35

seeing as it’s sat night are you planning on snorting some of the local product w/your sidekicks down there?
– annie
Ah, really, there goes the paycheck. Along with much else.

Posted by: pat | Jul 6 2008 2:36 utc | 37

Please don’t listen to Al.

Posted by: pat | Jul 6 2008 3:29 utc | 39

to (loosely) tie together the lone reference to the korean war in this thread w/ the more prominent focus on the u.s. military-to-military relationship w/ colombia, i’ll cite a passage from winifred tate’s 2007 study, counting the dead: the culture and politics of human rights activism in colombia:

The United States has been the primary model and ally for the Colombian military for the second half of the twentieth-century. This relationship began in earnest with Colombia’s provision of a battalion to fight alongside the United States during the Korean War, the only Latin American country to do so. In the context of the ongoing domestic “unrest” of La Violencia, the decision to send troops was viewed by some as pandering to the United States and a convenient means for the Conservative president to rid the corps of Liberal officers, but it undoubtedly left a lasting legacy. Exposed to the U.S. army’s weaponry, training and structure, the Colombians excelled on the battlefield and returned with a new vision of a professional military, including new ideas of military command structure, doctrine, intelligence, and communications. These lessons were widely taught in the reinstituted military academies and ushered in a new era of close ties with the United States. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was “extensive collaboration effort between [the] U.S. and Colombia in developing the latter’s internal security apparatus.”

i probably posted that excerpt previously. nowadays, since the cold war is kaput & the colombian military doesn’t really want to pretend to play along w/ all the particulars of SOUTHCOM’s “war on drugs” (esp when they would indict themselves in the narco trade), it’s easier for most observers to realize that two things are going on here — first, alliances w/ the u.s. allow the colombians to get plenty of aid, arms, and intel to exterminate their political enemies w/ impunity, and, second, the u.s. wants that other colombian import to keep flowing north.
from a sept 2005 GAO rpt, Efforts to Secure Colombia’s Caño Limón-Coveñas Oil Pipeline Have
Reduced Attacks, but Challenges Remain

Why GAO Did This Study:
Oil is one of Colombia’s principal exports. The Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline transports almost 20 percent of Colombia’s oil production. The pipeline originates in the Department of Arauca in northeast Colombia. It carries oil nearly 500 miles to the Caribbean port of Coveñas. The pipeline has been a principal infrastructure target for terrorist attacks by Colombia’s insurgent groups. During 2001, attacks on the pipeline cost the Colombian government an estimated $500 million in lost revenues for the year. The United States agreed to assist Colombia in protecting the first 110 miles of the pipeline where most of the attacks were occurring. We examined how the U.S. funding and resources provided to Colombia have been used, and what challenges remain in
securing the pipeline.
What GAO Found:
Since fiscal year 2002, the United States has provided about $99 million in equipment and training to the Colombian Army to minimize terrorist attacks along the first 110 miles of the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline, mostly in the Arauca department. U.S. Special Forces have provided training and equipment to about 1,600 Colombian Army soldiers. …

also see
Oil and US Policy Toward Colombia

The Bush administration has come up with numerous justifications for its annual handout of around $700 million in mostly military aid to Colombia. Of these, the war on drugs and the urgency of combating “narco-terrorists,” which is code for battling guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP), are the most common. Another oft-cited, and far more unlikely, reason for beefing up Colombia’s military is the administration’s ostensible desire to “defend democracy” in Colombia. There is, however, another factor driving US involvement in Colombia that receives rather less public attention: oil.
That concerns about oil were influencing the Bush administration’s thinking about Colombia was evident from very early on in the president’s tenure. The administration’s controversial May 2001 National Energy Policy report, which called for heightened government efforts to secure supplies of oil from abroad, noted that “Colombia has…become an important supplier of oil to the United States.” Colombia was in fact only providing about 3 percent of US oil imports at the time, but in light of the Bush administration’s enthusiasm for diversifying America’s sources of oil and its eagerness to reduce its reliance on the potentially unstable and/or hostile Persian Gulf oil states, Colombia attained significance.
This Bush administration emphasis on the importance of Colombia’s oil has been a feature of policy statements since 2001. One of the reasons behind US involvement in the country, the State Department explained in a 2003 report on policy toward Colombia, was that “Colombia has important reserves of petroleum, natural gas and coal.” The point was made again in April 2007 by State Department official Charles Shapiro in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, when he stated that “Colombia is a strategic energy partner with coal and petroleum production contributing to global energy supply.”
…

iow, pat is another cog in the global oil-protection service. watch out, if the altitude don’t get to yr head, the fumes most certainly will

Posted by: b real | Jul 6 2008 4:29 utc | 41