Didn't know that.
And your other comments and questions are very informative and intriguing. Leon Panetta, CIA head, was in Bogota a few weeks ago. I figured it was to cut Uribe loose. The CIA/Pentagon now want former Defense Minister Santos (the 'Donald Rumsfeld' of Latin America) as 'president' of Colombia, is my guess.
I think there are MANY U.S./Bush Junta bodies buried in Colombia, literally* and figuratively, and one of their problems is that Uribe knows too much. Another is they know too much about Uribe, and that is probably how they got him to sign that nefarious document, which formalized total diplomatic immunity for the 1,600 U.S. 'military advisers' (U.S. soldiers and U.S. 'contractors') in Colombia.
Another problem for our corporate rulers and warmongers is how to keep Batchelet from running for president again in four years. She was critically important to stopping the U.S./Bushwhack coup attempt against Evo Morales in Bolivia in Sept 2008, and to many other aspects of Latin American unity and political/economic integration.
One our most rightwing posters at DU the other day mentioned the "ancient conflict" between Chile and Bolivia, apropos of nothing, as an example of how there is no "unity" in Latin America. Batchelet recently settled that conflict (cause of a war about a hundred years ago), by granting Bolivia access to the sea in northern Chile. But U.S. client state, Peru, then started making trouble about it. While Alan "free trade corruption" Garcia, president of Peru (25% approval rating), doesn't have much cache in Latin America, this new billionaire in charge of Chile might be able to segue that "ancient conflict" into a lot of trouble--in service to Hillary Clinton's obvious "divide and conquer" strategy in Latin America. (I think this rightwing poster is 'plugged in,' so to speak.)
When I look at horrors like La Macarena*, I sense both the likely need for covering a lot of things up, and also the criminal usefulness of Colombia to the U.S. in so many ways. (My suspicion about La Macarena is that it was 'turkey shoot' practice for Afghanistan. And my suspicion about the U.S. military buildup in Colombia and the region is, of course, that the Pentagon has a war plan for grabbing Venezuela's oil--the largest reserves in the world, twice Saudi Arabia's--and the State Department has plans to use that and other trouble-making, bullying, lying, dirty tricks and mayhem, to prevent Latin American unity on "common market" lines.)
Thus, the need for old CIA hand, Leon Panetta, to visit Bogota, followed up by the U.S. National Security Advisor meeting with Uribe.
Something is going on. It's difficult to read the entrails, but we keep getting hints that it has to do with destabilization/hit squad/coup and war plans (Bush Junta) vs "divide and conquer" and maintaining at least minimal democratic cosmetics but still servicing the multinationals and the war profiteers (Obama/Clinton). Two different strategies with the same goal--asserting U.S. domination of the region. I also keep wondering about Bushwhack appointees like Wm Brownfield (who signed the U.S./Colombia military agreement) still being in place in ambassadorial positions (Brownfield in Bogota), and Jim De Mint (Puke, SC--an all Diebold touchscreen state), who has blockaded Obama appointees and seems to be our actual Sec of State. De Mint 'released' some Obama appointments as soon as Clinton switched directions on the rightwing coup in Honduras. (And De Mint in fact triumphantly announced that he had 'won'--that he had forced Clinton to support the coup. This may have been a shadow play, but still, it's interesting as to the continuity from Bush Junta to Obama/Clinton policy.)
Cover up the horrors of U.S. policy in Latin America. Try "divide and conquer" for a few years. Then--when Latin America resists "divide and conquer," which I think they will--Oil War II?
Looking back on the continuity from Bill Clinton to Bush Jr., on Iraq, might be instructive. Clinton softened Iraq up, with 12 years of crippling sanctions and perimeter bombings, so that, by the time the U.S. military invaded, Iraq had no air force--no protection whatsoever against weeks of heavy bombing which slaughtered an estimated 100,000 innocent people--and a pretty ragtag army that was easily defeated. What followed was the guerrilla resistance to invasion, which was crushed with horrid tactics--arbitrary imprisonment, torture, home invasions, destroying whole neighborhoods (Fallujah and others), and the deliberate creation of civic mayhem. This resistance had absolutely nothing to do with Al Qaeda or 9/11--until maybe very late in the game, when Al Q maybe saw it as an opportunity for recruitment (if the Pentagon can be believed). The purpose of all this was twofold: to get control of Iraq's oil, and to occupy the Middle East.
Are we going to see a similar continuity in Latin America--Hillary Clinton preparing the way for a U.S. grab of Venezuela's oil and U.S. military occupation of at least the northern/middle region of Latin America? It is already occupying Colombia--about the half of the northern region of South America--and is working on occupying--and retaining occupying forces in--the Central America/Caribbean region (esp. Honduras as a base of operations from which to attack the surrounding democratic/leftist governments). Northern Venezuela (where the oil is) would 'complete' the picture.
To 'complete' the picture of the "Project for a New American Century," in the Middle East, they needed to add Iran. That proved difficult. But it's quite interesting that Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, has come to the defense of Iran. Are Latin American leaders also seeing this parallel--that, in the eyes of the Pentagon and U.S. corporate rulers, they are no different from the Middle East as a region targeted for U.S. imperial control?
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*The La Macarena massacre--2,000 bodies found in a recent mass grave in Colombia (includes a description of, and links to docs about, U.S. ops in La Macarena)
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/
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