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Edited on Sun May-15-11 11:28 AM by gbscar
Which doesn't mean that the laptops and everything in them is accurate or true, not at all, but it does mean rational and reasonable individuals shouldn't exactly accept everything Mr. Lendman says at face value when there are far too many questionable statements involved. And, curiously enough, some of them don't even have to do with the laptop controversy per se.
First of all, he casually says that U.S. Special Forces were involved in the operation. To date, nobody has posted any concrete evidence supporting this statement, other than citing equally unsupported opinions from talking heads, none of which have directly investigated the incident.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as Mr. Lendman says, but neither is said absence proof of the opposite. It is certainly possible to speculate about that possibility but it is far from honest to present such a thing as a self-evident or proven fact.
Then there's the question of the bombing itself. From a purely moral perspective, all violence is disgusting and, as a human being, I certainly don't like the idea of killing people. But this isn't a purely moral discussion. Violence is a part of war and war is a part of reality. One that isn't prohibited but merely regulated. Nocturnal bombing is not prohibited by international law and, by definition, such operations are most likely going to kill people in their sleep.
Mr. Lendman is obviously trying to appeal to emotion here by creating sympathy for the dead guerrillas and nothing more. If he really found the idea of killing people in their sleep to be morally reprehensible all across the board...perhaps it would be relevant to point out the historical fact that FARC has also carried out night attacks against towns and villages, where both sleeping police and soldiers have been killed or wounded? To say nothing of any collateral damage to civilians or any other abuses during those same nocturnal guerrilla operations.
Which brings us to the next point. Mr. Lendman shamelessly describes, both through quotes and his own words, FARC-EP as a group of "legitimate resistance fighters" and "regional democrats" who are "valiantly struggling to liberate Colombia" and thus implicitly deserve to be respected or supported. I imagine there are people in this forum who will sympathize with that point of view and with FARC in general, which is their own personal prerogative, but there are more than enough objections available from those of us -including human rights organizations who have also criticized the Colombian government at length for its abuses and repression- who do not share this line of thought.
The idea that any and all violent resistance to U.S.-supported oppression must be praised without a single condemnation or consideration is, by far, the most questionable position defended by Mr. Lendman. After more than 40 years, FARC-EP has not brought about a positive change in Colombia. What's more, the war itself has made them resemble their opponents in the worst of ways. Not because of what the Colombian government says but, on the contrary, according to what many of the government's critics admit.
FARC are now a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Their existence certainly represents the underlying historical injustice that is an evident part of the Colombian status quo, no doubt, but have they actually contributed to making things better or does it look like they will ever do so? Only if you believe, like Mr. Lendman implies, that letting their struggle continue -perhaps for another 40 years- must forever remain the alternative.
Of course, it doesn't matter how many bodies pile up in the meanwhile...as long as the other party is worse you're apparently given a free hand to increase your own body count in the name of "liberation" and so on. Well, who cares? Only those poor folks who have the misfortune of being affected by the guerrillas, not by U.S. or Colombian crimes. They obviously did something "wrong" if they stood in the way of the People's Army or happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: Either you're with us (Long live the Revolution!) or against us (Die, imperalist scum!).
But I believe it doesn't have to be that way. Mr. Lendman says nothing about the efforts of those brave unarmed progressives, humanitarians and common people who, among other things, want to end the conflict as a whole instead of patiently supporting either of the parties until they "win" what will only be a Pyrrhic victory. From a moral perspective, it doesn't matter who comes out on top of 40-year war: Colombia has lost and it will keep losing as long as the war continues. All those who are victimized in the meanwhile are suffering and future promises of revolutionary miracles are as worthless as Monopoly money.
As a result, if Mr. Lendman wants to object about a lack of context, then he certainly could do better in that regard as well. If he wants to suggest that Raul Reyes was exclusively dedicated to negotiations and peace -which is something that can be debated, since he also had other responsibilities as a top commander and didn't rise through the ranks of FARC through sheer good will- then you'd think he would find it in him to defend the cause of a negotiated end to the war instead of asking us to "praise" what is a tragicomically stagnant revolutionary struggle.
And then we come to the computers themselves. Mr. Lendman does a very selective quoting and description of the Interpol report and, in doing so, he happens to be a little sloppy.
One of his arguments is:
(Interpol's) experts didn't "evaluate the accuracy or the source of the exhibits' content." How could they? The volume was enormous, the equivalent of "39.5 million pages in Microsoft Word...." At the rate of 100 pages a day, "it would take more than 1,000 years to read" it
That alone begs the question. In a few days or even weeks, how were Colombian authorities able to analyze and discover provocative information, a consideration ignored in major media reports, as well as the entire truth.
Unfortunately, this is a rather misleading conclusion. Interpol was never tasked with verifying the accuracy of any contents in the first place. Not because of the amount of information but simply because that wasn't the point.
What's more, to quote the report:
The data contained in the eight seized FARC computer exhibits amounted to approximately 609.6
gigabytes, which if converted to full-page text documents would equal 39.5 million pages.
That incredible figure includes every single bit of data in each of the hard drives, not just actual documents or readable information. Needless to say, you certainly don't need to read all of the data in any computer. My own laptop has over 320 gigabytes of occupied space. Finding useful data in it, running an automatic search or looking at My Documents certainly isn't going to take me hundreds of years nor do I literally need to look through roughly 15 million pages.
There is no such thing as any difficulty involved in finding such information within days or weeks.
Mr. Lendman's other objections aren't exactly flawless either, but they do arrive at a valid conclusion: these computers aren't trustworthy because of how they were handled by Colombian authorities and it's likely that, at best, they may have tampered some of the materials. But that hardly excuses all the questionable positions in this article and thus I've gone ahead and presented several of my own dissenting opinions.
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