Holy Guacamole! 900 American military personnel were deployed to Colombia for hostage rescues

[magbana]

Well, well, well. Methinks there are other little tasks that the Americans are going to be helping with. beyond the hostage thing.

U.S. Aid Was a Key to the Hostage Rescue


By SIMON ROMERO
Published: July 13, 2008

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The United States played a more elaborate role in the events leading up to this month's rescue operation of 15 hostages in the Colombian jungle than had been previously acknowledged, including the deployment of more than 900 American military personnel members to Colombia earlier this year in efforts to locate the hostages, according to an official briefed on these efforts.

At one point in the first three months of 2008, the number of American military personnel members in Colombia passed the limit of 800 established by law, but a legal loophole in the United States allowed the authorities to go above that level since the service members, including more than 40 members of the Special Operations forces, were involved in search and rescue operations of American citizens.

The official who provided this detailed account spoke to The New York Times and several other news organizations, asking not to be identified because of the political sensitivity surrounding the involvement of American forces in Colombia. (Normally only about 400 to 500 American military personnel members are believed to operate in Colombia in noncombat roles.) A spokesman at the United States Embassy here declined to comment on the account.

Some of the details provided by the official have been confirmed by Colombian officials. But other details could not immediately be corroborated Saturday with other sources.

According to the official's account, the United States pared down its military presence in Colombia in early March after problems arose in attempts to track a unit of the rebels, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guarding three American defense contractors. Alexander Farfán, commander of the rebel unit holding the three men, discovered an American surveillance device planted in a remote area of southern Colombia, prompting the rebels to change location quickly.

At that point, Colombian military officials began devising their own plan to free the hostages by infiltrating the rebels' radio communications system and convincing a regional guerrilla commander that he needed to transfer the hostages aboard the helicopter of a fictitious aid group. The Colombians delayed formally informing the American authorities here of their plan until June 25, just a week before it was carried out on July 2.

In the earlier search-and-rescue effort with heavier American involvement, personnel included F.B.I. hostage negotiators embedded with Colombian counterparts at a location in San José del Guaviare, a provincial capital 200 miles southeast of Bogotá, and members of American Special Operations forces inserted into small Colombian reconnaissance teams tracking the rebels on foot through the jungle.

Hundreds of American support personnel members on the ground in Colombia complemented these elite forces, in addition to a frenzied intelligence-gathering operation located in the United States Embassy here, drawing on intercepts of the rebel group's radio systems, human intelligence, satellite imaging and "air breathers," as piloted surveillance aircraft are called in military jargon.

The idea then was for Colombian forces to surround rebel units in the jungle and encourage them to negotiate the release of their captives, emphasizing that no attack on them was imminent. Given the rebel group's execution of captives in previous military rescue efforts, the chances of such a plan succeeding were believed to be dim by both Colombian and American officials.

The plan later devised by Colombian military intelligence officials first came into focus for the Americans in early June when they began intercepting communications pointing to three rebel units shifting in the jungle to converge near the village of Tomachipan, a location near where Venezuelan envoys picked up two hostages freed by the rebels in January.

Soon after American officials asked Colombia's government about the movements, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos invited William R. Brownfield, the American ambassador to Colombia, to a meeting at his home here to go over the details of the plan, called Operation Check, as in "checkmate." After that meeting, the United States placed military and intelligence personnel members alongside Colombian officials planning the operation.

While the Colombians devised and carried out the operation with a team of more than a dozen elite Colombian commandos disguised as aid workers, television journalists and rebels, they did so with some important assistance from the United States, which provides Colombia with $600 million of aid a year as part of a counterinsurgency and antinarcotics project that has made Colombia the top American military ally in Latin America.

For instance, the Americans provided emergency signaling technology on the two Russian-built Mi-17 helicopters used in the operation, only one of which landed, in addition to tiny beaconing systems placed with all the commandos. An American audio system to transmit the operation live to personnel in Bogotá was also put on the helicopters, but it did not work well when the sounds were drowned out by the noise the rotor blades generated.

While the Colombians and Americans generally agreed on the details of the operation as it was put into motion, some differences emerged, like when American officials resisted a plan to place two former rebels among the commandos aboard the helicopter, apparently in an attempt to assuage any concerns the guerrillas might have in handing over their captives.

In the end, just one former rebel member took part in the mission aboard the helicopter. On July 2, a small number of diplomats, military officers and intelligence officials gathered in a safe room at the American Embassy to monitor the operation.

The mission, originally intended to last 8 minutes on the ground as the hostages boarded the aircraft, ended up taking more than 25 minutes. The delays intensified the anxiety in the safe room in Bogotá, which was relieved only when an American military official in direct contact with a colleague in San José del Guaviare proclaimed, "Helos with pax," military slang for helicopters with passengers.

"Fifteen pax, all airborne, all good to go," he continued, and embassy officials quickly scrambled to push ahead with a plan to get the three rescued Americans on an Air Force C-17 bound for Texas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/world/americas/13colombia.html?ref=world

http://snipurl.com/2xkzf

[Bacchus39]

1. excellent, a job well done n/t

n

[AlphaCentauri]

9. We think colombians are so stupid that they can't take care of their business

so lets do their duties

[Zorro]

2. Helping your allies is good

Glad to read they had something to contribute.

[AlphaCentauri]

10. specially when we assume they are stupid

[Zorro]

14. "We" don't assume them to be stupid

However, I assume that pro-FARC loudmouths are resolutely ignorant.

[AlphaCentauri]

15. What would it be if colombian did not have los llaneros, vallenato and el Orinoco

Colombians are treated as kids by us, we like them to pretend to be like us but poor.

Uribes comic heroes are bright enough to educate the population about Colombia by supporting Uribes killings

pwheeeezz..

[magbana]

3. Since Simon Takes Dictation from the US Gov't. and Writes His Stories Around It . . .

at least this time it is interesting! What we have here is what the US wants us to know about their involvement. It can be summarized as follows:

-yeah, we got lotsa American military in Colombia, whaddya gonna do about it?


-yeah, we have been in Colombia since early this year but we never could figure out a good way to get the hostages out until the brilliant Colombian military cooked up the Operation Check plan -- ALL BY THEMSELVES -- and they shared it with us on June 25 just one week before the operation.

What's not discussed is what are all those American military REALLY doing in Colombia? As time progresses, we shall see.

[Bacchus39]

5. "all by themselves"

yeah, hard to believe a nation of campesinos (that means peasants) could cook up such an operation "all by themselves".

[EFerrari]

6. Isn't little Bush supposed to notify Congress before he deploys

the military on foreign soil?

Sonuvabitch. This is not good.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Simon Romero blesses us once again with impeccably honest writing.

God bless that fine man.

The thought of William Brownfield visiting Juan Manuel Santos at his home is astounding. I hope they remembered to cover all the mirrors.


Could be very painful for sighted people.

As for the writer, he's been misinforming people for years. Most people have his number by now! What a joke.

One quick dip into a search provides a short look:

U.S. Media Wages Propaganda War in South America
by Randy Shaw‚ Sep. 19‚ 2007


Thanks to the Iraq War, George W. Bush has not focused on overthrowing progressive governments in South America. In fact, the Bush Administration has paid so little attention to the region that democracy and progressive economic policies have been allowed to flourish. But the United States media has not given up its historic role as spokespersons for the area’s elites. Led by Simon Romero of the New York Times, the traditional media portrays Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as a left-wing caricature, almost spoofing his efforts to help the poor. Bolivia’s Evo Morales is another frequent target, and Romero’s September 18 Times story offers the perfect opportunity to dissect media bias against politicians whose greatest sin is actually fulfilling their promises to help the poor.

From the 1950’s through the 1970’s, the CIA retained reporters like Romero to write stories undermining U.S. support for democratic governments in South and Central America. Today, Romero and others need no outside compensation to write such stories, as editors allow them to produce articles that fail the most basic tests of journalistic fairness.

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4925

More on Romero:

~snip~
Times Venezuelan reporter Simon Romero is little better than Lowenstein or others sending back agitprop disguised as real journalism in his Venezuelan coverage, including RCTV closure street protests. He made events on Caracas streets sound almost like a one-sided uprising of protesters against Chavez with "images of policemen with guns drawn" intimidating them. He highlighted Chavez's critics claiming "the move to allow RCTV's license to expire amounts to a stifling of dissent in the news media." He quoted Elisa Parejo, one of RCTV's first soap opera stars, saying "What we're living in Venezuela is a monstrosity. It is a dictatorship."

He quoted right wing daily newspaper El Nacional as well portraying the RCTV decision as "the end of pluralism" in the country. Gonzalo Marroquin, president of the corporate media-controlled Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), was also cited saying Chavez wants to "standardize the right to information (indicating) a very bleak outlook for the whole hemisphere." He invented corporate-cooked polling numbers showing "most Venezuelans oppose Mr. Chavez's decision not to renew RCTV's license." In fact, the opposite is true and street demonstrators for and against RCTV's shuttering proved it. Venezuelans supporting Chavez dwarfed the opposition many times over. But you won't find Romero or any other Times correspondent reporting that. If any try doing it, they'll end up doing obits as their future beat.

Back in February, Romero was at it earlier. Then, he hyped Venezuela's arms spending making it sound like Chavez threatened regional stability and was preparing to bomb or invade Miami. Romero's incendiary headline read "Venezuela Spending on Arms Soars to World's Top Ranks." It began saying "Venezuela's arms spending has climbed to more than $4 billion in the past two years, transforming the nation into Latin America's largest weapons buyer" with suggestive comparisons to Iran. The report revealed this information came from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) making that unreliable source alone reason to question its accuracy and what's behind it.

The figure quoted refers only to what Venezuela spends on arms, not its total military spending. Unmentioned was that the country's total military spending is half of Agentina's, less than one-third of Colombia's, and one-twelfth of Brazil's according to Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation figures ranking Venezuela 63rd in the world in military spending. The Center also reported Venezuela's 2004 military budget at $1.1 billion making Romero's $4 billion DIA figure phony and a spurious attempt to portray Chavez as a regional threat needing to be counteracted. At that level, he's also outspent by the Pentagon 500 to one, or lots more depending on how US military spending and homeland security readiness are calculated, including all their unreported or hidden costs.

~snip~
Nowhere in his article did Romero explain this although he did acknowledge prior to 2002, "an estimated 5 per cent of the population owned 80 per cent of the country's private land." By omitting what was most important to include, Romero's report distorted the truth enough to assure his readers never get it from him. Nor do they from any other Times correspondent when facts conflict with imperial interests. That's what we've come to expect from the "newspaper of record" never letting truth interfere with serving wealth and power interests that includes lying for them. Shameless reporting on Venezuela under Hugo Chavez is one of many dozens of examples of Times duplicity and disservice to its readers going back decades.

Former Times journalist John Hess denounced it his way: I "never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare....rent....or utility increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don't get me started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?" And why should anyone think its so-called news and information is anything more than propaganda for the imperial interests it serves?

http://dailyscare.com/comment/reply/1576

[Peace Patriot]

7. Well, ain't this interesting! What were US troops doing in Colombia? Killing Raul Reyes

and the other 24 sleeping people in his camp just inside Ecuador's border--all orchestrated from the U.S. Embassy's war room in Bogota! The Bush Junta thus brought to a murderous halt the long, difficult, painstaking efforts of the presidents of France, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and the others, the French, Swiss and Spanish envoys in Ecuador, the Red Cross and other human rights groups, and Reyes himself, to release Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages back at the end of February.

I just caught up with this post, and it fills in a big black hole, not in the story that Simon Romero (NYT) is transcribing from the U.S.-Bush State Dept., but rather it illuminates aspects of part #1 of the hostage release story: the attempt to hand Chavez a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages, that goes way back to August 2007. At that time, Alvaro Uribe asked Chavez to negotiate with the FARC for hostage releases. Chavez proceeded to do so. Then, on the eve of the release of the first two hostages negotiated by Chavez, Uribe abruptly withdrew his permission, and the Colombian military bombed the hostages' location as they were in route to their freedom, driving them back on 20 mile hike into the jungle. The hostages families, the president of France (who was hoping Chavez could get Betancourt released), other world leaders, and human rights groups begged Chavez to keep trying, and put pressure on Uribe to stop the treachery. Chavez got those two hostages out some time later, by a different route, and got a total of six hostages released during the Dec 07-Feb 08 period.

On the very day that the first two hostages were to be released (Uribe's treachery*), Dec 1, 2007, Donald Rumsfeld published an op-ed in the Washington Post, entitled "How To Defeat Tyrants Like Chavez." In the first paragraph, he stated that Chavez's hostage release efforts were "not welcome in Colombia." He did not mention that they had been welcome days before, and that Uribe had asked Chavez to do this.

So, around this time, I began to smell U.S. military and/or Bushite involvement in what was a set up of Chavez. Why did Uribe so abruptly try to call off the hostage releases negotiated by Chavez--pulling the rug out from under Chavez, and putting the hostages lives in danger, by bombing their location? Did he get a call from Rumsfeld? Was Rumsfeld pulling his strings? Was Uribe sincere in his initial request to Chavez, but then the Bushites stepped in, to prevent it from being a successful Chavez diplomatic effort? Or was Uribe in on this treachery from the beginning--that is, issued the request knowing that it was a trap?

In that op-ed, Rumsfeld urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. What could he mean--"swift action"? --I wondered.

The notion was forming in my mind that what looked like a Uribe action (his request to Chavez), and Colombian military action (bombing of the first two hostages, and other treachery, for instance, their apprehension of two FARC curriers who were delivering "proof of life" documents to Chavez), were actually being orchestrated from Washington DC. What I didn't know was that the "war room"--complete with high tech military surveillance equipment--was right there at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, where they watch the action.

And this would explain what happened next: If you see Uribe's initial request to Chavez as the beginning of a set up, and the Colombian military bombing of the first two hostages as the proposed "final act" (i.e., 'the leftist president of Venezuela, friend of Fidel Castro, tries to get hostages out, and gets them killed in crossfire - ha, ha, Hu-u-ugo!'), then, from the point of view of the guys in the Embassy "war room," they are looking at failure, when the FARC acts fast and saves the hostages (the 20 mile hike back into the jungle), re-contacts Chavez, and releases them elsewhere a bit later, and they are looking at fucking disaster, when Chavez then negotiates four more hostages releases. He is going to get positive headlines, to counter all their lying propaganda about him. And he clearly wants the hostage releases to be the start of peace process in Colombia's 40+ year civil war--a major disaster, from any Bushite's point of view.

Meanwhile, to add to this disaster, Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, the president of France, the French, Swiss and Spanish envoys, etc., were arranging for high-profile hostage Ingrid Betancourt's release in Ecuador (likely because the Colombian/Venezuelan border was becoming too dangerous for moving hostages). Raul Reyes, FARC's chief hostage negotiator, established a camp just inside Ecuador's border, thinking it was safe. He even invited Mexican students to participate in this humanitarian mission. A total of 25 people gathered at this camp. This was all being closely watched with the high tech military equipment in the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. And the next event was likely orchestrated from there, using high tech surveillance, ten U.S. "smart bombs," and, likely, U.S. aircraft and personnel (from the U.S. air base in Manta, Ecuador?), plus U.S. Special Forces and other troops, gathered in illegal numbers inside Colombia.

The French, Swiss and Spanish envoys in Ecuador notified the Colombian government that they were in Ecuador for the release of Ingrid Betancourt by the FARC. They were going to Reyes' camp the next day, to receive her. Uribe then told the U.S. Embassy. They probably already knew, because they were surveiling Reyes phone calls. Someone in the Colombian military warned the French, Swiss and Spanish envoys to stay away from Reyes' camp, because "everybody there is being killed." The U.S. drops the ten "smart bombs" on Reyes camp, basically blowing it away. Then somebody--reported as Colombian soldiers (I don't remember where that report came from)--crosses the border to shoot any survivors. The Ecuadoran military later reports that they found dead bodies in their pajamas or underwear, shot in the back. The camp had been asleep, and was caught completely unawares. These somebodies who shot survivors in the back, as they were running around in their underwear trying to escape death, also did 'black ops' cleanup. They took Reyes' and other bodies back to Colombia, and they retrieved (or later claimed that they had retrieved) Raul Reyes' laptop computer (later, computerS) from the bombed out campsite. (The laptopS would shortly become major psyops weapons--for trying to tarnish Chavez and Correa as "terrorist lovers.")

Were these U.S. Special Forces, and not the Colombian military, who raided the bombed out camp and tried to make sure that every single person in the camp was dead? No one to tell tales. No to be charged with something and put on trial. No arrests. ALL dead--even the Mexican students (although one survived, God knows how--a young woman, whom I think is the only survivor; last I heard she was in a hospital in Ecuador.) TWENTY-FIVE people systematically murdered, without benefit of trial.

This occurred on March 1 of this year. It abruptly brought all of the efforts of Chavez, Correa, Sarkovy, Fernandez (Argentina), the hostages' families, all the envoys, and the all the humanitarian groups, to a halt. No more hostages would be released at that time. Betancourt would not be released. And all talk of a peace process in Colombia's civil war was dead as well. In fact, they very nearly started a war between Colombia and Ecuador. All to prevent the leftist presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador from receiving any credit for getting hostages released.

Directed from our Embassy. That's what I think. It still has a Rumsfeld "Office of Special Plans" smell to it. And his op-ed was no coincidence, in my opinion. I thought he might be working on a private basis (he 'retired' from Pentagon Disasters in Dec 06). But he may well be working directly with the U.S. military in South America.

We need to look at the entire arc of this situation--not just the mysterious infusion of U.S. troops circa March of this year--and this strange State Dept. fantasy (via Simon Romero) of how the U.S. knew nothing about the rescue stunt, but just happened to have all this high tech surveillance equipment in a "war room" in the Embassy, for a play-by-play on TV. I think we are looking at a plot that may go back about a year and half, to a mysterious incident in which unknown shooters stalked a FARC hostage group, and open-fired on them, targeting and killing all of the hostages (12-15 hostages). The Colombian military said these hostages were "caught in crossfire," but FARC said, "why would we kill our own hostages?," and logic is on FARC's side. It was a systematic killing. FARC might have messed up, in some kind of situation, and killed one or two hostages, accidentally, or three or four. When you get above that number, it is absurd. FARC furthermore turned the bodies over to Colombian authorities for autopsies--something we never heard of again. I suspect that the mystery shooters may have been Blackwater (which is active in Colombia), but Colombia is so rife with mercenaries and rightwing paramilitary death squads, it's just a guess, based on how this incident might have served the later events (which I now think were orchestrated from the U.S. Embassy).

That incident may have been a rehearsal for Dec 1, 2007, when the Colombian military (or somebody) open fired on the first two hostages that Chavez had arranged to be released. The story was going to be: 'confused crossfire' and they were going to hand Chavez his ass, by making all his effort result in death. Dec 1, 2007--date of Rumsfeld's op-ed, and his assurance to his readers that Chavez's help "was not welcome in Colombia."

So, friends, we have a U.S. Embassy "war room" in Bogota. And is it just for black ops like these--i.e., playing murderous dirty tricks on the leftist presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, and other countries? Dec 07 was around the time we began hearing of the reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet (a nuclear fleet) in the waters off of Venezuela's coast--and specifically off of the state of Zulia, Venezuela, where all the oil is, and where there is a fascist secessionist movement, the leaders of which have already met with Colombian leaders (including Uribe). Is the U.S. Embassy in Bogota planning a war? Is this what Rumsfeld meant by "swift U.S. action" in support of "friends and allies" in South America? Support for the "independence" of the Venezuelan fascists in Zulia, as they start a civil war with the Chavez government, and declare that Venezuela's oil belongs only to their 'autonomous' state, and not to Venezuela? (Note: The state of Zulia is adjacent to Colombia, and Colombia could be a staging area for U.S. troops--troops that are already there, or more troops.)

That's how it looks to me. Simon Romero might be serving the function of inoculating the American people to the presence of significant U.S. forces in Colombia. Why tell this story otherwise? It's not a particularly flattering story. In fact, it makes the Embassy and the U.S. military look rather foolish. It may have the intention of trying to paint Uribe & co. as acting independently (which is likely the opposite of the truth). But I don't think that is its only or main intent. The main intent may be to inure us to this news--to attach the presence of significant U.S. forces in Colombia to a 'positive' story about Colombia (to push the U.S./Colombia 'free trade' deal), and to make it seem like a sidelight. (Why would this rescue stunt have needed hundreds of U.S. troops anyway?) Neither the NYT nor Romero ever prints an agenda-less story about an oil target. And they don't print planted material like this for a legitimate news purpose.

This is a very worrisome story.

----

*(It's possible that the treachery (such as the Colombian military's bombing of the first two hostages--if that was the Colombian military, and not the U.S. military--was the doing of Defense Minister Santos, a rival to Uribe. Chavez recently had another forgiveness/brotherly love meeting with Uribe--which would point to Santos being the malefactor.)

[Judi Lynn]

8. While reading your comments I became determined to find more on the 11 dead hostages. We read over &

over claims by Uribe that the FARC had killed the hostages, then a period of demands the FARC hand over the bodies, if they thought their claims of the hostages being killed in the crossfire with government people could be supported.

The taunts from Uribe went on for a while until we suddenly learned the FARC had taken the bodies to an area, left them there, telling the International Red Cross where they could be found.

I'm not sure there's anyone deluded enough to imagine the Uribe government would do the autopsies and reveal the information that, indeed, the hostages HAD been killed when government forces attacked the FARC.

What we all got was TOTAL SILENCE, as if they had never even heard of this event! Not one PEEP. They didn't even go to the trouble to lie about it, saying "We did the autopsies, and they reveal the FARC killed them."

I have to post this here, something I just found, published 6-19-08, and I must admit I can't quite focus well enough to penetrate it all immediately, having read it superficially. I think it may be helpful, but then again, I can't quite get the overview, yet:

COLOMBIA: Hostages’ Deaths Still a Mystery, One Year On
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Jun 19 (IPS)

~snip~
"I don't know who is worse, the kidnappers or those who have forgotten about us," Juan Carlos Narváez, the former head of the Valle del Cauca regional assembly, who was one of the hostages killed last year, said in the last video provided by the FARC to prove that the lawmakers were still alive.

Narváez and the others were buried on Sept. 11, after a lengthy delay in handing over their bodies to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

One year later, the circumstances in which the 11 hostages were killed have not been clarified. According to an investigation by an Organisation of American States (OAS) international forensic commission, the hostages died from multiple gunshot wounds, with bullets fired from different directions and several kinds of guns.

Their bodies were preserved in good condition by the guerrillas, who handed them over far from the spot where they were killed.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe refused to accept the services of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission established by the first supplementary protocol to the 1949 Geneva Convention on International Humanitarian Law.

In an email message sent to IPS on Sept. 2, 2007, Colombia’s High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo stated that "information gathered by intelligence bodies and handed over to the Attorney General’s Office points to a confrontation between two guerrilla structures, Front 60 that was guarding the deputies and Front 29 that operates in that area."

"The deputies were apparently killed on the order of alias ‘El Grillo’, who believed that a military rescue attempt was taking place. After the deputies were killed, their bodies were manipulated and transferred to the spot where they were later handed over," said the official.

Restrepo wrote IPS to express his disagreement with the report published by this agency in August 2007, according to which the hostages were killed in heavy fighting between an elite military unit and the insurgent group that was moving the hostages after a "suspicious desertion" by 17 to 19 guerrillas, according to a source close to the FARC.

The rebel group had reported that the hostages were killed on Jun. 18 in the midst of crossfire "with an unidentified military group."

In addition, the laptops that the Colombian government claims to have seized at the rebel camp of FARC negotiator "Raúl Reyes", which was bombed in Ecuador on Mar. 1 by Colombian forces, contained two different versions of the incident.

One email was supposedly written by "Alfonso Cano", who is now the group’s top leader, to then FARC chief "Manuel Marulanda", who died of a heart attack in March.

In the message, which coincides with Restrepo’s version, Cano said that a FARC unit mistook the rebels guarding the hostages for members of the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN -- known as "elenos"), and launched an attack.

"Good afternoon comrade. Because of a disastrous confusion with another FARC unit, who mistook them for elenos and attacked, the deputies’ guards executed 11 of the 12 hostages because they thought they were being attacked by the army. A grave mistake that will cause us many problems," says the email message, according to the Defence Ministry.

In news reports, however, the quote appeared with different wording.

The Ministry reported that Cano proposed "drawing" the security forces to the spot where the legislators were killed, to implicate them in the killing.

But in another message, Marulanda allegedly gives instructions to "report that the prisoners’ guards deserted along with the hostages, and that in the persecution, all of them were killed in the midst of combat, and we are prepared to hand over the bodies."

Yet another version that has recently emerged refers to "a kind of alliance between the FARC and drug traffickers, which led to the murder of the hostages by a group of ‘narcos’ to generate the problem with the guerrillas and push them out of the Valle del Cauca," journalist Carlos Lozano, who the government appointed as a negotiator for talks on the hostages’ release, told IPS.

Lozano, editor of Voz, the Communist Party weekly paper, wrote that the firefight was between the FARC unit guarding the hostages and "Los Magníficos, an elite police unit trained by Israelis and the British for precisely this kind of surprise attack."

But the rightwing Uribe administration staunchly denies that any military rescue attempt was launched.

"At any rate, at this point all of these versions are merely speculation, all of them. And none of them can be ruled out," said Lozano.

Voz also published, on Feb. 13, an interview with a former insurgent who deserted the FARC in 1994 and turned himself in to the Luciano D'Elhuyar army battalion in the northeastern province of Santander.

The former rebel said an operation had been planned for June 2007, in which a group of FARC deserters recruited to work with the security forces was to play a key role.

He said the military made contact in the Valle del Cauca with "several mid-level commanders of Front 30 (of the FARC), who provided them with information on the deputies’ location."

"The intention was for a special forces group, which would go into action without wearing army insignia, to launch a sudden attack to rescue the hostages, but it would not be presented as a military operation," he said.

The deputies were to be handed over to a group of FARC deserters who, "with the camouflaged special forces among them, would immediately proceed to ‘contact’ the peace commissioner’s office and turn themselves in, so that when the surrender occurred, it would look like we FARC fighters had gotten tired of the war and decided to reinsert ourselves in society, turning over the hostages as well," he said.

But "what was supposed to happen on Jun. 7 -- the rescue and our posing as dissident members of FARC -- didn't occur," he added.

"When the operation was aborted, the main sponsors of the project disappeared, failing to pay us what we were promised, and some deserters died in strange conditions," he said.

Lozano, who had been contacted by the source, said that "unfortunately, we have lost track of this demobilised insurgent. We wanted to continue talking with him to obtain further information."

"The demobilised fighter knew where to find us, and he gave us this version. I was the first to talk to him, and in that initial conversation he told me he had quite a lot of information on what happened to the deputies," said the journalist.

In the subsequent interview, the source focused on the "recruitment" of FARC deserters. "We had agreed with him to first delve into that part and then continue with the question of the deputies," but the interview had to be cut off, "and we arranged a second meeting with him, which never took place."

"The Attorney General’s Office did not want to include him in the witness protection programme," said Lozano, who believes the man fled the country, as he had intended to do. Even the FARC was after him.

"But it would be really good to talk to him again. I believe that man has privileged information on (what happened to) the deputies," he added. (END/2008)

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42893

[Judi Lynn]

11. While looking for more on the 11 hostage bodies, found reference to your remarks, in confirmation.

Your lock on this story is substantial, as this BBC article would support!

Last Updated: Monday, 10 September 2007, 01:07 GMT 02:07 UK

'Farc hostage' bodies recovered

~snip~
The Farc announced in June that the hostages had been killed when an unidentified military group attacked the jungle base where they were being held.

The government denied attempting a rescue and initially accused the rebels of executing the hostages.

It later said they died in a mistaken clash between two guerrilla groups.

It is hoped that the forensic examination will not only identify the bodies, but also confirm whether the 11 did indeed die in a shoot-out or were executed.

The Farc are still holding a number of other hostages, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who holds dual Colombian-French citizenship.

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez was recently asked to mediate between the Farc and the government of President Alvaro Uribe.

The BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Medellin says the Farc have never hidden their admiration for the controversial Venezuelan leader and if anyone can prompt them to make concessions, it's him - but it comes too late for the murdered politicians.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6986017.stm

Two "guerrilla groups?" Not according to the evidence!

[Peace Patriot]

13. Thanks for finding all of this. I think Lozano's info is probably the most important,

and I hadn't seen it before (this report from a mercenary that he was hired to do something, re a hostage rescue, then it all went awry/was called off--points to a black op with a very devious purpose). It's highly suspicious, also, that the "miracle laptopS" have so many versions of the story.

In such confusion, it's good to focus on "who benefits" and on how something might fit into larger schemes of very powerful evildoers like the Bushites. Of course random things can happen, events can be a mere coincidence, etc. To sort that out--the random from the purposeful-- you look for evidence of a cover-up, and evidence of psyops intended to blur the details, and hide the true purpose of the event. And there is plenty of that, in this incident.

One possibility--a Colombian/U.S. black op aimed at confusing the FARC and getting them to feel threatened and either kill hostages (on purpose or accidentally), or fail to protect them in crossfire. But the number of dead argues against that. Like the March 1 bombing/raid on Reyes camp, this looks systematic. And the strangest part of it is that it was systematic against the hostages. In the case of Reyes' camp, they were shooting dead every last person who was present, but supposedly the targets were "the enemy" (members of FARC) and the shooting of the Mexican students, for instance, was incidental (they were not specifically the target, but they were witnesses).

However, in the case of these 11 hostages, it appears that the goal was to kill hostages. Who would benefit from that? Certainly not the FARC. Nor would another guerrilla group. Nor would some drug lord. The FARC's purpose would be to save hostages. The others' purpose would likely be to save some hostages. (Hostages are valuable.) None of these would likely target and kill all the hostages.

How does it benefit the U.S./Colombia? On the surface--their lying, hypocritical words--they are out to rescue hostages. Even if they were to go in shooting--presuming the motive of rescue--they wouldn't kill every last one of a group of unarmed people (the hostages). And neither would the FARC in that situation. Some hostages might get wounded. Some might die. Some might escape harm altogether. That is a much more likely outcome. The FARC cannot know how such a firefight will come out. They might prevail and escape with some hostages. And if they are losing the fight, they really don't have time to think of systematically shooting all the hostages. It gains them nothing. It has no purpose. (I don't buy any revenge killing of hostages, by the FARC--in a last ditch effort to deny them their freedom, or to keep them out of the hands of another group. They are too practical for that. It doesn't fit FARC behavior.)

Almost any scenario you could think of simply doesn't result in all hostages dead. They are unarmed. There is no (obvious) reason for anyone to target them. A few might die in a crossfire situation. Not all.

So, who would have a motive to stalk this FARC/hostages group, attack them and shoot every last hostage? The U.S./Colombia. Possible motives: a) To kill the hostages and blame the FARC (which they initially tried to do, saying the FARC just shot them all; later revised to "crossfire")--to score corporate press P.R. points; or, b) knowing what they were going to do later (set Chavez up for diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages)--they had to rehearse various scenarios on how to get hostages killed in "crossfire" confusing enough to make the U.S./Colombian shooters blameless, or their actions understandable--and this was a live test of one of those scenarios. Various systems had to be tested: infiltrating the FARC, tracking the FARC, getting the FARC to react in certain ways, and cover-up systems needed testing (autopsy/investigation systems, corporate 'news' dump systems, etc.)

What they found out was that it was feasible to kill hostages and confuse the circumstances. This was useful when they open-fired on the first two hostages (release negotiated by Chavez). But they failed to kill those two hostages. (Perhaps FARC learned some things from the rehearsal, too.) The hostages were freed, and were able to tell their story--that they came under intense fire from the Colombian military (or who they thought was the Colombian military). The perps were able to control the newsstream on this. It barely got out. But the other players--hostages' families, president of France, etc., knew enough about it, to pressure Uribe to back off--which message possibly he curriered to the U.S. Embassy? --and they switched to other tactics--grabbing the FARC members carrying "proof of life" docs; trying to say Chavez was lying about that child, Emmanuel, getting the "miracle laptopS" prepared, etc. Chavez got four more hostages released, while they prepared other ways to grievously slander him.

We can see that the U.S./Colombia motive is primarily writing corporate 'news' narratives. Rumsfeld's assertion that Chavez's hostage release effort "was not welcome in Colombia" was one of these. The rest of the world really didn't care if Uribe had withdrawn his request of Chavez. The release of hostages was like a wildfire. FARC holds hundreds of hostages, and their families suddenly felt hope, and they and others begged Chavez to keep trying. And with people like Sarkovy involved, that little sub-narrative wasn't working. So Rumsfeld felt compelled to repeat it (to make it 'news' himself). (It probably bothered him a lot that his phone call to Uribe, to get him to publicly renige--if that's how it was done--had been rendered irrelevant by their failure to kill the first two hostages.)

The question for the plotters in the "war room" in the U.S. Embassy in Bogota then became : How to end the disaster of successful Chavez hostage releases (and how to recoup their losses--i.e., Chavez finally getting some credit in the press for being a peacemaker (which Lula da Silva called him))?, and, also, How to prevent the developing disaster in Ecuador, of Ingrid Betancourt's release to French, Swiss and Spanish envoys (who had told Uribe, who likely relayed it to the Embassy "war room," that that is what they were in Ecuador to do)?

The rehearsal had been successful--a bunch of dead hostages, killed in "confusing circumstances" (i.e.,"crossfire"). But the stage show wasn't successful. Chavez got two, and then four more, hostages out safely. He was still getting positive headlines (even though his efforts were "not welcome in Colombia"). Thence to the "shock and awe" bombing of Reyes' camp in Ecuador (and, once again, killing every last person present--likely to eliminate any eyewitness testimony to what happened and who did it--and also first person accounts of the purpose of this camp--to release Betancourt).

This analysis answers the question: Who would benefit from killing all 11 hostages in that earlier incident? The U.S./Colombia are the most likely beneficiaries. Why would they do it? As a rehearsal--a test-out of systems--for these later, more important schemes. What did they do when those schemes began to fail? Exactly what they had done in the rehearsal--killing everybody (their 25 cold-blooded murders in Reyes' camp). The symmetry of it is compelling. And it bears the signature of Donald Rumsfeld, who blithely slaughtered one million innocent Iraqis, a couple of years ago, to get their oil--the signature of coldness that would freeze the Devil in his lair.

They had no reason, and no occasion, to bomb Reyes' camp to smithereens--and even less to go in shooting people in the back afterwards. Tear gas would have done, in either case. The camp was asleep. This was utterly unnecessary and horrendous violence--much like the slaughter of the Iraqis, which wasn't necessary for WMDs or any purpose of defense. It was wanton killing. So was this. And the ultimate goal in both cases was/is OIL. They wanted to harm, slander and topple Chavez, to get Venezuela's oil. They had no interest--zero, zilch--in the lives and freedom of FARC hostages.

Then they planned how to recoup all the P.R. losses of the last year--by their recent, staged rescue of Betancourt (likely greased with a $20 million ransom)--orchestrated from the U.S. Embassy "war room." Again, they have no interest in the hundreds of other hostages. Just that one (and the three U.S. contractors). And they certainly have no interest in peace in Colombia, since Colombia is such a convenient staging area for further nefarious schemes against Venezuela and Ecuador, and Colombia's civil war provides such good camouflage for increasing the numbers of U.S. troops and other U.S. military capabilities (like that "war room" in the U.S. Embassy) in Colombia.

[Judi Lynn]

16. The appearance of a continuing struggle MUST persist if US forces are going to be a presence

in Colombia: they need a reason for being there, as you've pointed out: camouflage.

We know they just kill people, people in small towns, both military and paramilitary have been recorded doing this for ages, and "throw down" weapons which can be claimed as FARC weapons, and/or add pieces of clothing to their corpses to further identify them as guerrillas. They carry "kits" with them, as noted in the Juan Forero article (another puzzling article from the Washington Post, considering it actually admits true evil deeds by the Colombian military (and gives reference to similar behavior by the death squads) which have become commonplace) from which they produce "evidence" to identify their murder victims as "the enemy."

So there's a clear cut example, ennacted over and over and over again of people being slaughtered in Colombia at the hands of both government soldiers and mercenaries, people who are unarmed, people who are literally no threat whatsoever, just killed outright, and counted as more dead enemy.

Why? To produce the effect of many enemies, and create the illusion Colombia is beset by villains and need continued US presence (a need of the _Bush administration, growing steadily since the other countries want them out of their bases like Manta, in Ecuador, and Mariscal Estigarribia, in Paraguay) and need U.S. foreign aid, the more the better for the world's THIRD LARGEST FOREIGN AID RECIPIENT.

As for the hostages, why would the FARC have gone to all the trouble to take them with them for five years, keeping them alive, if, suddenly they'd turn and blow them up? How preposterous. Only a fool would buy that. They've always expected to turn them over in return for their own people who are in prison, from the first.

Uribe was taunting, challenging these guys to produce the corpses of the hostages to prove they didn't kill them, implying they were afraid to show the world the actual causes of their deaths. He knew that if they made arrangements to drop them off somewhere they ran the risk of being captured or killed themselves.

When they actually contacted the Red Cross and told them where they had already put them so they could go there and pick them up, suddenly NO MORE NOISE FROM URIBE about this! Not one word claiming the autopsies proved the FARCs killed them. Well, well, well. Maybe they did it all so fast there was no time to set the trap.

Your reference to the "compelling symmetry" was excellent. There were 11 dead hostages, followed by an attempt to kill two more which was thwarted, then followed by 25 more dead ones in the camp where the hostages were expected. You bet, there's an amazing symmatry. Too close to be coincidental.

Thanks for taking your time to share these ideas with DU'ers. It's hard to explain adequately but it's very important to those of us who wouldn't miss your comments.

[EFerrari]

12. Congressional leaders and heads of committees have to be briefed

by law.

If we have "law" any more.

[Judi Lynn]

17. Laws seem to be designed to keep order among non-Republicans.

Wingers see themselves as "the good guys" and if they ever appear to break the law, there was a national defense reason for it!