Latin American nations and the Bush administration spent the past week loudly arguing over what censure, if any, Colombia should face for a bombing raid that killed one of the top leaders of the FARC terrorist group at a jungle camp in Ecuador. More quietly, they are just beginning to consider a far more serious and potentially explosive question: What to do about the revelation that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez forged a strategic alliance with the FARC aimed at Colombia's democratic government.
First reports of the documents recovered from laptops at the FARC camp spoke of promises by Chávez to deliver up to $300 million to a group renowned for kidnapping, drug trafficking and massacres of civilians; they also showed that Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa was prepared to remove from his own army officers who objected to the FARC's Ecuadoran bases.
But in their totality, the hundreds of pages of documents so far made public by Colombia paint an even more chilling picture. The raid appears to have preempted a breathtakingly ambitious "strategic plan" agreed on by Chávez and the FARC with the initial goal of gaining international recognition for a movement designated a terrorist organization by both the United States and Europe. Chávez then intended to force Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to negotiate a political settlement with the FARC, and to promote a candidate allied with Chávez and the FARC to take power from Uribe. It looks like Chavez has been caught with his "finger in the pie" (I was going to put something else in the quotes but decided to keep it clean). HT Lucianne
#1
Considering that the FARC guy died right after a phone call from Chavez, and how Chavez's plan just blew up, it might be time to suggest that Chavez is "unlucky".
As superstitious as the region is, that might cause his downfall.
#2
See STRATEGYPAGE > COLUMBIA: FARC LEADERSHIP CRIPPLED. Article denotes that many LEFTISTS no longer suppor FARC becuz it has EVOLVED INTO A "CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION" [Mafia?], which infers by extens that LEFSISTS > FARC is no an IDEO/REVOLUTIONARY GROUP FOR "CHANGE"???
#3
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez forged a strategic alliance with the FARC
Question for you regional experts: would it be accurate to describe the current relationship as FARC being a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chavez regime?
For the Colombian government, Reyes' death is comparable in importance to what the capture of Osama Bin Laden would mean for the Bush administration. Picture at the link. He looks quite dead...
#1
The revolution is finally beginning to smell as bad as it looks...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/10/2008 16:05 Comments ||
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#2
Note that this piece is dated the 6th and so does not reference the death of Manuel Jesus Munoz, who like Reyes was a member of the FARC's nine-member secretariat, killed by his own bodyguards.
There are probably a lot of Colombians smiling now.
#2
That's no surprise to me, but I wouldn't have bought into the "Yellow Peril" or "Communist Menace" narratives of earlier generations either.
Do we really need to read any futher? Pearl Harbor was just a fig newton of our imaginations and those millions of dead under communism really didn't mind being murdered.
#3
one of the problems here is that we don't have good statistics in the moslem world
We don't know the actual number of polygamous marriages, the actual number of rape victims prosecuted for lewdness, the number of honor killings, the number of FGM (although the best numbers are for this last item).
This allows willfully leftish folks to brush off the problem.
Mark Bowden's 'The Dark Art of Interrogation' is still the modern standard for what torture does and doesn't do. Mr. Shane offers a quick review of the problem in the NYT, and given our 'debate' yesterday with the Toronto Troll, it's a useful article.
By Scott Shane
HOW do you get a terrorist to talk? Despite the questioning of tens of thousands of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last six years, and a high-decibel political battle over torture, experts say there has been little serious research to answer that crucial question.
The Bush administration has yet to fill the void, instead getting enmeshed in a defense of waterboarding which the Central Intelligence Agency says it has not used in five years but which critics have seized on as a powerful symbol of how not to conduct war. And Congress, for its part, has skipped over the question in passing a bill (knowing that it would be vetoed by President Bush) that bans harsh interrogations but requires the C.I.A. to use only the tactics listed in the Armys playbook.
Certainly the debate is rich in emotion, with each side claiming the moral heights: You approve torture! Youre coddling terrorists! But the arguments have been scant on science to back them up.
We dont have any idea other than anecdote or moral philosophy what really works, said Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, set to be published in June.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/10/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
the government spends billions on spy satellites but almost nothing on studying interrogation. This is true, he said, despite a broad consensus that interrogation might be the best source of information on an elusive, low-tech, stateless foe like Al Qaeda.
That's because there's no money in interrogation, and tons of money to be made from useless satellites.
#3
If we do need to get information from prisoners, and if waterboarding works (and especially if it is only 'kind of' torture), and if we have not used it in 5 years, then all the public posturing and argument suggests to me that there are other effective ways to get the information now.
If not by the US, then the Israelis or even the Europeans. And of course the Chinese and Russians. Just look at what people will do for a hit of crack or meth; I am sure our pharma-designers could make up something 'interesting.' It's 50 years now since the CIA started fooling with LSD; surely by now they have found ways to manipulate the hallucinations so the user sees that Shia dude float out of the well and tell him to talk, etc.
#4
The Apaches were quite good at it, especially the women. This is once outsourcing job I can support.
Posted by: ed ||
03/10/2008 8:49 Comments ||
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#5
There are long-term interrogation methods, then there are methods one may need in order to extract critical information needed on a timely basis.
For the former, thats what you do with the planners, financiers etc - pump them for data for quite a while to buidl a complete branching picture of the enemy, thier organization and controls.
The latter? thats the proverbial "There's a bomb in the city and its going to go off soon - where is the bomb?" type of scenario.
If we get reliable intel that there is a nuke strike planned and capable for a populated area, then I say skin the bastards if thats what it takes to prevent large scale loss of human life like that.
I'd rather be in the position of saying "sorry we had to do that" than facing a devastated populace with the knowledge that there were things we left on the table that we didn't do that could have prevented it. The morality of the interrogation methods means nothing to the thousands who would otherwise die horrible deaths.
"Well at least we were morally right and didn't torture the guy". Try telling that to the parents who are watching their 3 and 1 year old children skins slough off as they die of the same radiation poisoning that will eventually kill the parent too. Radiation from a dirty bomb that the terr knew about but that we didn't use enough force to extract that knowledge in time.
the Terrs inhumanity have volunatrily removed themselves from the realm of the humane. They chose the rules. They get the consequences.
#6
I'm sure we have done a lot of research on interrogation.
One problem with updating the various manuals, policies, etc. might be that the scientifically correct answers may be politically incorrect.
Another problem may be that the science itself is difficult. There aren't that many detainees who are similar enough that we can get a reliable database.
#8
To me, there is a BIG problem with revealing exactly which interrogation techniques we are going to use, and which we will not. If the bad guyz know what we are going to do, they can prepare themselves to withstand it. They can just say - "oh, you're the good cop and he's the bad cop." "You're just flattering me to trick me into revealing information." If they don't know what we are going to do, it should be easier to break them.
These are not prisoners of war we are interrogating. They can be coerced into revealing more than their name, rank and serial number.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/10/2008 12:53 Comments ||
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#9
I'm sure we have done a lot of research on interrogation.
The third "problem" could well be that nobody wanted to give the New York Times reporter any details. And what OldSpook said.
In an interview on the Waqt television channel, that was published by the mainstream right-wing Urdu daily Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, senior Pakistani newspaper editor Majeed Nizami discussed Kashmir's importance to Pakistan, called it the jugular vein of Pakistan, and added that Pakistan should not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to take it from India.
Nizami is editor in chief of both Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt and the English daily The Nation, as well as managing director of the Waqt television channel. Nizami articulated his views in an interview on Waqt, and the interview was reported by Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt.
The following is a summary of and excerpts from the report of the interview. [1]
Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt quoted Nizami as saying: "It is better to die fighting than to die from famine. Kashmir is our biggest issue, and showing flexibility on this matter is tantamount to treason. Anyone who shows flexibility on the issue, I will consider a traitor."
Nizami noted that Pakistan founder M. A. Jinnah had described Kashmir as Pakistan's shah-e-rag ("jugular vein") because all water comes to Pakistan from Kashmir.
According to the report, Nizami said that U.S. think tanks are predicting that Pakistan will become another Somalia by 2018-19, and that India too wants to dismantle Pakistan. He said, "In fact, in 1947 itself [the year Pakistan was created
out of India] India planted the time bomb of Kashmir in our foundations."
He added that the U.N. resolutions about Kashmir should not be forgotten, and that "no matter what the United States says about it, we should wait no longer for Kashmir's independence.
"Nizami said that his Waqt TV was, like the entire Nawa-i-Waqt group, the torchbearer of Nazaria-e-Pakistan (the ideology of Pakistan) and stood for the Pakistan envisaged by M. A. Jinnah and Islamist poet Allama Iqbal.
He said, "The establishment of an Islamic welfare state in Pakistan is our objective, and to achieve this objective we will use Waqt television, like the Nawa-i-Waqt newspaper."
Posted by: john frum ||
03/10/2008 18:08 ||
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#1
No doubt the Pakistani would if they could get away with it. On the bright side, they are great salesmen for US missile defense systems. How soon before Patriot and THAAD are operating in India?
Posted by: ed ||
03/10/2008 18:42 Comments ||
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#2
"It is better to die fighting than to die from famine"
They pop a nuke and famine will be the least of their issues.
India can and will counterforce. And the central government of Pakiwaki land will cease to exist, as will a large proportion of its population near those bases.
On the bright side, that lets us cut loose with everything we need into Talib territory.
#5
In that case, let's hope the Chinese originals have the same problem.
Posted by: ed ||
03/10/2008 18:55 Comments ||
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#6
U.S. think tanks are predicting that Pakistan will become another Somalia by 2018-19, and that India too wants to dismantle Pakistan.
That's the bit that interests me. The rest is a little man talking big. Because I suspect that were Pakistan to shoot off nuclear bombs/missiles in India, 'twould not be India alone that would shoot back... and the remaining Pakistanis would have other things to worry about than expanding their Caliphate.
#7
I think there is possibly an international protocol established long ago, that took the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) concept and expanded on it.
Simply put, it is an agreement between the US, Russia and China that if stinking little country 'A' uses a nuclear weapon against their hated enemy, stinking little country 'B', then the following will happen:
Most likely the United States will detonate so many neutron weapons over stinking little country 'A' as to exterminate ALL lifeforms in that country, but without otherwise harming it.
Buildings, rivers, land, would all be fine. And then, the now EMPTY stinking little country 'A' will be GIVEN to stinking little country 'B' as reparations for the nuclear attack. All 'B' has to do is throw all the dead bodies in a big pit full of feces and urine.
This means that if ANY stinking little country thinks it can attack its hated enemy, it will not just lose, but lose everything. And everything they have will be GIVEN to their hated enemy.
This is a threat that the leaders of every stinking little country that would want nuclear weapons will understand.
"You and your people will cease to exist. All your stuff will be given to those you hate, and it will be like you never existed. You, your people, and your culture will be gone for good."
#9
WAFF.com > HAMIL GUL SEES INDIA BEHIND TERROR ATTACKS. Anti-Paki AFGHANISTAN-BASED terror strikes, vv aproxi 20 terror training camps + 11 City-based Indian embassies [controllers] inside Aghanistan.
#11
Compare wid INDIA DAILY > INDIA'S COMMUNISTS DO NOT WANT/DESIRE NEW [Indian]ELECTIONS OR GOVT - THEY WANT TO KEEP AMERICA AWAY FROM INDIA'S NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS [+ weapons]; + INDIA-US NUKE DEAL AS SIGNED WILL [effectively]TRANSFER INDIA'S SOVEREIGNTY TO THE USA.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
