O'NEIL/CHASKEL: Pass FTA and amend Plan Colombia

Colombian President Uribe is a CROOK. With capital letters. He worked with the former drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and he was a notorious collaborator of the now defunct Cartel of Medellin. The DEA and the Pentagon know perfectly who is Uribe, but for dirty politics, they have kept secret his criminal file and has been sealed as Confidential Noforn/Winintel due to unexplainable "National Security" reasons. Besides, Alvaro Uribe, as Governor of Antioquia, created the bloodthirsty Paramilitary Groups, culprits of killings up 45,000 Colombian peasants, union leaders, human right activists, teachers, students, civil innocent people, just during 6 years of Uribe's tenure. Alvaro Uribe has been using the Plan Colombia, (financed with the US Taxpayers), to increase the repression, to pay snitches, to pay rewards to militaries by killing innocent young people, then presenting the bodies as "guerrilla death in combat". Yes, dear reader. Your taxes are being used for killing Colombian innocents. The problem in Colombia has just one name ALVARO URIBE. His corruption has been considered the worst in the Colombian History.... PLEASE, DON'T MIX DIRTY US POLITICS IN COLOMBIA. PLAN COLOMBIA WILL TAKE LITTLE TO LITTLE MY COUNTRY TOWARD AN OPEN CIVIL WAR. DO NOT REWARD A NARCO-CROOK GRANTING to HIM THE FTA. AS A COLOMBIAN NATIONAL, REPRESENTING 38 MILLIONS OF ANTI-URIBE PEOPLE, I CONSIDER YOUR POSITION WRONG AND IMMORAL.

A DECLASSIFIED PENTAGON REPORT CLAIMS URIBE ONCE WORKED FOR PABLO ESCOBAR In September 1991 the U.S. Department of Defense compiled a list of individuals believed to be associated with Colombia's notorious Medellin drug cartel. There are 106 names on the newly declassified intelligence document, and they read like a who's who of thugs, assassins, midlevel traffickers and crooked attorneys. The cartel's ruthless kingpin, Pablo Escobar, was prominent on the list, of course, along with the former Panamanian dictator Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. But the real head turner is item No. 82, which reads as follows: "Alvaro Uribe Velez--a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the U.S.... Uribe has worked for the Medellin cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria." The Pentagon report portrays Uribe in a light sharply at variance with his current image as Washington's main ally in the U.S.- financed war on drugs in South America. But in those days, he was among dozens of Colombian pols who openly opposed the extradition of their drug-trafficking countrymen. Uribe has since changed his views--and, in fact, his government has sent scores of drug traffickers to the United States for prosecution since he took office. The report was obtained by the National Security Archive, a Washington-based nongovernmental research group. The identity of the document's author was removed by Pentagon censors. The detailed thumbnail descriptions of the Medellin cartel's associates suggest that the data came from Colombian or U.S. counter-narcotics officials, and the text states at the beginning that the report "forwards profiles on the more important narco-terrorists contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels." It is stamped CONFIDENTIAL NOFORN WNINTEL, meaning that its contents shouldn't be shared with foreign nationals

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH DOCUMENT ABOUT COLOMBIA-2008 HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS CAUSED BY PARAMILITARY FORCES CREATED AND SUPPORTED FOR ALVARO URIBE'S REGIME I. Summary and Recommendations. In Colombia, more than in almost any other country in the Western hemisphere, violence has corroded and subverted democracy. Too often, killings and threats—not free elections or democratic dialogue—are what has determined who holds power, wealth, and influence in the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between paramilitary groups and important sectors of the political system, the military, and the economic elite.Paramilitary groups have ravaged much of Colombia for two decades. Purporting to fight the equally brutal guerrillas of the left, they have massacred, tortured, forcibly "disappeared", and sadistically killed countless men, women, and children. Wherever they have gone, they have eliminated anyone who opposed them, including thousands of trade unionists, human rights defenders, community leaders, judges, and ordinary civilians. To their enormous profit, they have forced hundreds of thousands of small landowners, peasants, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous persons to flee their families’ productive lands. The paramilitaries and their supporters have often taken the abandoned lands, leaving the surviving victims to live in squalor on city fringes, and leaving Colombia second only to Sudan as the country with the most internally displaced people in the world.With their growing clout aided by drug-trafficking, extortion, and other criminal activities, paramilitaries have made mafia-style alliances with powerful landowners and businessmen in their areas of operation; military units, which have often looked the other way or worked with them; and state officials, including numerous members of the Colombian Congress, who have secured their posts through paramilitaries’ ability to corrupt and intimidate. Through these alliances, paramilitaries and their cronies have acquired massive wealth and political influence, subverting democracy and the rule of law........................You can read the whole document if you go to the web page of Human Rights Watch.