Correa Casts Out US Military

Seems like the right move on his part. The president really should be "in the loop" about matters of international espionage with one's generalissimos and neighbors. But this story has been brewing for a while. See my previous post on April 10, 2008: Ecuador’s Prez Charges Disloyalty in Defence Dept./CIA Collusion for more.
Ecuador's leader purges military and moves to expel American base
By Simon Romero, Published: April 21, 2008
MANTA, Ecuador: Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuadorean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 American military personnel from an air base here in this coastal city.
Correa — who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs — said that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA." He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration's top ally in Latin America.
[...] Still, tensions persist over his clash with top generals, which emerged after Colombian forces raided a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador last month. The raid against the rebel group, the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, put Ecuador and its ally Venezuela on edge with Colombia. Twenty-five people were killed, including Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorean operative for the group, known as the FARC.
The face-off between Ecuador and Colombia ended at a summit in the Dominican Republic, but it has begun again over revelations that Ecuadorean intelligence officials had been tracking Aisalla, information that was shared not with the president, but apparently with Colombian forces and their American military advisers.
The leak became evident when video and photo images surfaced in Colombia and Ecuador showing Aisalla meeting with FARC commanders.
[...] In a rebuke of senior military officials, Correa named as defense minister his personal secretary, Javier Ponce, who was an outspoken critic of the armed forces in his previous careers as a poet and an editorial writer at some of Ecuador's largest newspapers.
[...] Unlike the armed forces of most other countries in Latin America, Ecuador's military has retained substantial economic might since a military junta transferred power to a civilian government in the 1970s.
[...] Correa has not challenged these financial interests. But he and his political supporters are moving forward with efforts to shift the military away from its traditional reliance on training and assistance from the United States and toward strengthening ties with the armed forces of other South American countries.
The first indication of his plans to shift the country's focus was his promise to end the American presence at the Manta base once the United States' lease expired in 2009.
[...] Meanwhile, the assertions that American intelligence agencies were exerting too much influence in Ecuador have raised concerns among Correa's critics in Ecuador that he could take a radical turn like that of Chávez in Venezuela. Correa has been relatively moderate in his policies so far during his presidency.
For now, at least, the last word on the issue may rest with Ponce, the rumpled poet thrust into the public eye as Correa's new defense minister.
In an interview in Quito, Ponce, 59, mentioned the moderately leftist governments of Brazil and Chile as potential partners for increased military cooperation, subtly suggesting a reluctance to depend heavily on Venezuelan aid, as countries like Bolivia have done. But he was also clear about relying far less on the United States.
"We must get past our legacy of relying too much on military relations with the United States, with President Bush showing little regard for national borders or sovereignty," Ponce said. "The risk of remaining too close to such a partner is one of ideological contagion."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/21/america/21ecuador.php

Is Colombia the New Iraq?

The format is the same, be it Vietnam or Iraq or the Americas after European invasion. As Warren Zevon said: send lawyers, guns and money. Here are excerpts from today's Democracy Now! Amy Goodman interviews Mario Murillo, Helga Serrano and others about Colombia's "incursion" [just a little one!] into Ecuador:
With US Assistance, Colombian Troops Attack and Kill 20 FARC Rebels Inside Ecuador
Mario Murillo: [...] Raul Reyes, as you rightly put forward in the introduction, is the—was the second in command. Basically, he was considered the official ambassador, diplomat of the FARC, who traveled all around the world, to El Salvador, to Latin America, to Europe, talking with all different kinds of leaders, and he was perhaps the most visible of all the FARC commanders,[...] So knocking him down, killing him the way he was killed, was a big public-relations victory for Alvaro Uribe Velez, the President of Colombia, especially in light of what has been going on over the last couple of weeks.
[...] It [Colombia's "incursion"] came at an opportune time, because there’s been criticism of Uribe Velez for not really carrying out serious measures to release the hostages that the FARC have been holding for some time now. Just last week, four hostages were released by the FARC to the Venezuelan government because of the intervention of Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan government. And those people, when they got to Venezuela, those people who were in captivity for five, six years, immediately started criticizing and calling into question Uribe Velez’s positions, basically saying that, you know, we were walking through the jungles for 250 kilometers, and we didn’t see one soldier in sight. One of them actually said that—the FARC operate in the countryside—they move in the countryside and the jungles much like fish in water. So there was a lot of criticism as to the security policy of Uribe, not to mention the political strategy of refusing to negotiate with the FARC to eventually release the hostages.
Now that you knock out somebody like Raul Reyes, such a high visible figure in the FARC for so many years, it’s almost as if it’s a moot point, because it adds to the idea that Uribe Velez has been arguing for so long, that we can win this fight militarily, and we’re not going to sit down and negotiate with these, quote-unquote, “terrorists.”
[...] And what we see right now in 2008 is a process where the US military assistance, eight years of Plan Colombia, six years of Uribe’s total war carried out against the FARC, and a real stepped-up improvement in the communications technology that the Colombian armed forces are using, resulting in this kind of attack leading to the death of Raul Reyes, it would be hard to imagine that this kind of cross-border incursion could have occurred without the knowledge, without the understanding of the United States, especially given the large presence that the US has particularly in the southern part of the country.
[...] HELGA SERRANO: [...] We are outraged in Ecuador. We cannot imagine that our country that is a neighbor and that we have about 500,000 Colombians here, which our country has received in solidarity, because they have been displaced because of the conflict of the war in Colombia, and that President Uribe pays us like this, by bombing our country, by being a puppet to the Bush administration, by using military bases like the Tres Esquinas in Colombia to carry out the attack. And we are asking and demanding an investigation to see if the base in Manta was also used in this attack.
[...] We are outraged, and we are having a big demonstration on Thursday, March 6 at 6:00 in the afternoon. There are demonstrations already going on yesterday. There will be another one today. And many organizations are calling—are supporting President Correa’s position. He has got a very firm position. And we are demanding, once again, the closure of these military bases, which we feel are the structure from which these kinds of activities are carried out.
Read or watch more at:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/4/with_us_assistance_colombia_carries_out
I hope I'm wrong but this situation may get very, very hot now that the "nuclear threat" is becoming part of our downstairs neighbors' arsenals.
Here’s a cute little “news” report from Assyrian International News Agency [uh huh!] which states:
Colombian Terrorist Was After Nuclear Bomb
Posted GMT 3-4-2008 7:55:32
Colombia's armed forces and national police performed one of the most spectacular anti-terror strikes in history, taking out FARC chieftain Raul Reyes, the No. 2 terrorist in the Marxist cocaine-trafficking guerrilla group.
Using American training and satellite technology, the hit took out a member of the FARC's inner circle for the first time, ending all illusion of safety at the top. Identified by his Rolex watch, the Marxist thug had a $5 million price on his head.
Better still, Colombia's well-trained armed forces seized three of his computers with some surprising contents: A FARC plan to buy 50 kilograms of uranium to expand into international terrorism.
Colombia's victory followed a series of powerful blows against other FARC leaders. As defections from the group rise and the terrorist leadership is decapitated, a picture emerges of a war being won after nearly 50 years of fighting.
Mmmmm boy! Smells like yellowcake with oregano! But reading this is like a blast from Pravda’s past. Hold your noses, or just have a good laugh at this "news" report:
http://www.aina.org/news/20080304015532.htm