The Blitz is On (Colombia, Bush, Uribe)

[Judi Lynn]

The Blitz is On
Part I

The Colombia Card is Being Played, with Chávez Scheduled to be Taken to the Cleaner. Meanwhile, Rice heads today to Medellin with Democratic legislators in tow, to win approval of controversial FTA with Bogotá

• A prime weapon in the U.S. inventory to reduce Chávez to size and build up Colombia’s President Uribe is a recent government-funded report produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which claims that the South American nation, Colombia, is safely “back from the brink of crisis.” But in terms of its conceptualization and implementation, the contracted document and the campaign surrounding its publication raises serious questions. These include the conservative organization’s objectivity due to its longtime advocacy of Plan Colombia, and its vigorous support of the pending free trade pact with Bogotá.

• The CSIS Colombia project is more about being part of a well-timed public relations campaign than about bona fide research.

• The CSIS report represents an important component in the lobbying effort by Bogotá and the Bush administration to convince Capitol Hill to approve the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, and is based as much on half truths and strategic omissions as it is on value-neutral research.

• If anything, it could be argued that Colombia’s prospects for modernization and stability and its credentials as a voracious foe of regional drug trafficking have at best stagnated, and at worst have suffered grave attrition, under the Uribe administration. The discarding of extradition for demobilized paramilitaries is an example of this.

• Uribe is lionized by State Department, but is a doubly tainted figure.

• Bush administration relates a fading tale to Democrats over Colombia’s demure virtues.

(snip)

Curiously enough, Uribe’s repeated interferences with ongoing investigations by the Supreme Court threaten the rule of law he so insistently claims to defend, just as he maintains close ties with some of the notorious officials tied to the rightist vigilante band, the AUC, which has been labeled a “terrorist” organization by the State Department. Moreover, on the eve of Colombia’s 2007 local elections, Uribe openly interfered in the electoral process, stating that Bogotános should not vote for candidates who are supported by the guerrillas—indirectly referring to Samuel Moreno from the opposition party, Polo Democrático, who has no proven connections with any guerrilla group. President Uribe’s lack of respect for his country’s democratic institutions and processes is appalling. Thus, it is shocking to see how in the passage of only two years (especially regarding stepped-up recent internecine political strife in Colombia) CSIS, in a publicly-funded project, handed out by the Bush administration, can claim that what is probably the most violent country in Latin America can be properly described as being “back from the brink.”

Freedom of the press?
Robert Dahl has argued that “democracy and its fundamental institutions presuppose the existence of certain fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press.” But Colombia is apparently falling behind its peer nations in terms of freedom of expression, as the current administration has failed to allocate sufficient resources, let alone capable leadership, to protect these basic rights. Freedom House’s 2006 Report on Colombia states that “Colombia remains the most dangerous country for journalists in continental South America, and violence and harassment of journalists by state and non-state actors are the primary impediments to a free media.”

What is more remarkable is that in 2002, (the year in which President Uribe assumed office on August 7) Freedom House, an established conservative group, which to a large degree is publicly funded, categorized Colombia’s freedom of the press as “partly-free,” but in subsequent years (2003-2006) the organization lowered its status to “not free” in order to reflect “the worsening impact of the armed conflict on journalists.” The International Press Institute’s 2006 Review on Colombia has found that “the groups involved in Colombia’s civil war single out journalists or media outlets as ‘military targets,’ using intimidation and violence to ensure they are portrayed favourably by the press.” Moreover, the Bogotá-based watchdog, Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP), registered 140 violations of press freedom in 2006. FLIP states in its 2006 press release that “this represents a 37% increase when compared to 2005 figures.” Out of these 140 records, right-wing paramilitary groups were found to be responsible for 38 cases; government forces for 21; FARC for 18; and public officials for 15.

Yet the CSIS’ “Back from the Brink” report, which is supposed to evaluate progress in Colombia, makes no mention whatsoever of the country’s aberrant de facto free press situation.
(snip/...)

http://www.coha.org/2008/01/24/the-blitz-is-on/

[ShaneGR]

1. I'm scared to read part 2....

So much writing about one quackjob conservative groups papers. My head hurts just looking at it.