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Who are the No. 1 War Criminals? (2001)

Who are the No. 1 War Criminals?

(2001)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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Colombia

In October 2000 Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Rob Wyden sounded a warning. They issued a Report on Secrecy in International and Domestic Policy Making. ‘As we enter the 21st century, the great fear we have for our Democracy is the enveloping culture of government secrecy and the corresponding distrust of Government that follows.’ The senators echoed what David Wise and Thomas Ross had warned for in 1964, followed by Colonel Prouty in 1973. Wise and Prouty personally opened my eyes to what was really going on in Washington mostly out of sight of both lawmakers and public. Let alone, lawmakers and public in nations that trusted the us and called themselves allies of America.

James Bamford, investigative reporter for abc Television ‘World News Tonight with Peter Jennings’ and a writer for The New York Times and other serious media, published in 2001 a 721 page study Body Secrets.76 He carefully analysed the National Security Agency in Washington. The headquarters of this mysterious arm of ‘the government within the government’ is located near Annapolis Junction in Maryland. Bamford describes this hornets' nest of ruthless killers as ‘a labyrinth of barbed-wired fences, motion detectors, hydraulic antitruck devices. And thick cement barriers.’ This government pirates den is guarded by commandos in black paramilitary uniforms, wearing special headgear, and brandishing an assortment of weapons including Colt 9mm submachine guns, like in a Hollywood movie scene. The complex is called Crypto City and consists of some sixty building. Tens of thousands of people are employed here in absolute secrecy. According to Bamford most employees do not tell their wives what they do. It is also home to the largest collection of hyperpowerful computers on the planet and a laboratory for advanced mathematicians and language experts.

Bamford, too, starts off by remembering Wild Bill Donovan as the father of all us spies. He painted a fascinating portrait of how during the years of Cold War Washington glided towards an unchallenged position of turning into the intelligence capital of the world. The Donovan Boys in Crypto City are in detail informed how a certain factory in Chili in Pinochet times produced cluster bombs for the armed forces of Saddam Hussein.77

Body Secrets shows how the National Security Agency and the cia are often at loggerheads, because the nsa became a super-star. A ‘war’ constantly rages between these two spy organisations over who will get how many billions from Congress to carry on the work. At one time the nsa was led by Admiral Bob Inman, nicknamed ‘the dark prince of intelligence.’ cia boss those days was Admiral Stansfield Turner. The two were fighting over the billions needed to finance their gargantuan satellite pro-

gram. Washington referred to the affair as ‘the battle of the Admirals.’

For Europeans, whose nations are closely allied to Mafia Incorporated in Washington, books like the Bamford report are sickening to read, because it demonstrates, what happens if a gigantic military industrial complex like the United States runs amok and demonstrates a creeping tendency to copy Hitlerite thinking of having become the sole nation capable of saving the world. In order to achieve this noble goal the military power of the us became equal to none. Foreign leaders that entertain different views will be assassinated, overthrown or chased away from their home countries at the pleasure of the Donovan boys. Washington seems to prefer a kind of law of the jungle, what the Bush II Administration openly calls, ‘a la carte multilateralism.’ The Director of the State Department Planning Group, Richard Haass elaborated to The New York Times, that this meant that the Government would have a close reading of all signed treaties, and that the Bushites were going to determine which ones were no longer in line with present us national interests and therefore had to be scrapped. The world is in for some further big surprises.

Loch Johnson of the University of Georgia listed in Secret Agencies the options by which the us feels free to intervene when it fits its own interests:

‘Use of chemical-biological and other deadly agents; secret wars; assassination plots; small-scale coup d'états; major economic dislocations, like crop, livestock destruction; environmental alterations; pinpointed retaliation against non-combatants; torture; hostage taking; sophisticated arms supplies; training of foreign military forces for war; limited arms supplies for offensive purposes; massive funding of autocracies; sharing of sensitive intelligence; embassy break-ins; high-level intrusive political surveillance; high level recruitment and penetrations; disinformation against democratic regimes; disinformation against autocratic regimes,’ etcetera. Johnson named additional options and added: ‘These activities represent little or no infringement of a nation's sovereignty and the widely held view that nations should not intervene blatantly in one another's internal affairs. They are widely practiced with minimal international repercussions.’ In the view of this observer, the conclusion by Loch Johnson is dangerous nonsense. If all nations in the world would scrap all treaties like Bush II is doing, the global village would sink into anarchy.

Another large-scale illegal us operation is currently taking place in Colombia, where Washington unilaterally declared war on local drug lords. Colombia, with 41 million people is the third largest country in Latin America and the second most important in biodiversity. It is the world's number one cocaine supplier. The drug lords are financing three irregular armies, two on the left and one on the right, all para-military vigilantes. Smack in the

middle of this combat area Washington has placed its own hired killers to advise the Colombians how to cut each others throats more effectively. In this reportage it was shown in what detail the cia Manuals advise Latino rightists as how to increase terror and bloodshed to kill off leftists.

William Blum reported in Rogue state, ‘The us has aided (Colombian) Government raids and other military activists by providing helicopters, intelligence information about guerilla movements, satellite images and communication intercepts. At times, us planes fly overhead during combat operations. A report by Amnesty International pinpoints the real us war aims in Columbia. It said that tens of thousands of people were killed, not as a result of drug wars but for political reasons. While us bad boys pretend they oppose the cocaine trade, in reality, us advisors are out there to murder trade unionists, human rights activists and leaders of legal left-wing movements.’ History repeats itself. For the Americans it is fine to kill on the left and one is a war criminal when the killing is done on the right. Amnesty warned: ‘us supplied military equipment, ostensibly delivered for use against narcotics traffickers, is being used by the Colombian military to commit these human rights abuses in the name of ‘counter-insurgency’. A hundred million dollars was sent by Washington to finance mercenaries for the purpose of stoking new guerrilla fires and kill possible future leftist leaders in Columbia by the thousands. Here, too, the us is carrying out substantial mischief and causing bloodletting and infinite suffering for thousands of people under the aegis of noble fight against drug lords. In reality, the sick minds in Crypto City, Maryland and at cia headquarters in Langley, Virginia - and if not there, for certain at the White House itself - are hunting down Latin leftists and communists and using the Columbian drug trade as an excuse. It happened in Panama, it is repeated here. Bush massacres leftist latinos, in exactly the same fashion as Milosevic asked general Mladic to get rid of uck terrorists who were invading Kosovo at the behest of the cia and the Secret Team..

Noam Chomsky quotes in The New Military Humanisme78 Human Rights Watch data and concludes that the us has ‘blood on his hands’ in Colombia. Washington turned Colombia into the leading recipient of us arms and training, resulting in a sharp rise of violence, turning that Latin nation into experiencing ‘the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere since the us ran slaughter and terror during the 60s, 70s and 80s in Central America.’ In 1999 there were 2-3000 people killed in Colombia and 300.000 became refugees.

Chomsky: ‘The state terror operations follow guidelines provided by the Kennedy Administration which advised the Colombia military ‘to select civilian and military personnel (...) as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known Communist

proponents. It should be backed by the United States.’ Professor Chomsky discovered, that the sole independent political party in Colombia ‘was virtually eliminated by assassination of thousands of its elected officials, candidates and activists. The primary victims have been peasants, particulary those who dared to raise their heads in a regime of brutal repression and enormous poverty in the midst of highly-praised economic succes’.79 Colombia is another repeat performance of what us rogue elements wrought for instance Indonesia where hundreds of thousands of peasants and workers butchered with the assistance of us criminal minds, weapons and money.

It was disconcerting reading, when Chomsky reported that the Clinton Administration was particulary enthusiastic in its praise of President Gavira, whose tenure in office was responsible for appalling levels of violence, as reported by Human Rights organisations. ‘Atrocities run the gamut’, observed the mit professor, ‘while currently us military aid to Colombia continues to be used in indiscriminate bombing and other atrocities, and is slated to increase sharply for 1999, probably taking the first place internationally apart from, Israel and Egypt, which belong to a separate category.’80

Drug gangs of unemployed urban youths were turned into ‘sicarios’, or hired killers. The drug business finances three irregular Colombian armies. ‘On the left,’ reported the Economist on April 21st, 2001, ‘fight guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc) and the smaller National Liberation Front (fln). On the right, bands of military vigilantes, most of whom are organised in the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (auc). The conflict between the guerrillas and the security forces, which enjoy the unofficial (and increasingly unwelcome) support of the paramilitaries, began decades ago. The governement's writ runs over only about half of this vast country - though that includes the cities, where most Colombians live.’

Naturally, Washington felt obliged in the name of freedom and democracy to step into this incredibly confusing mess, which in essence remained a struggle between rich and poor, between basic social justice and the lifting of the masses to a better life. Washington, and the computer playing assholes at Crypto City, automatically associate left with Communist and seem incapable of understanding that if there is ever a semblance of fair play for all in the world to be reached, the wave is to the left, not to the right. Economic warfare against Cuba with a Helms Burton Act fail in the end, as history will show. That's why Fidel Castro told the students at Rio de Janeiro University, June 30, 1999, ‘Forty years have passed and they (us) keep trying. But the more time passes, the more puzzled they are. They undoubtedly think we are a special kind of bug. But, no we are exactly the same as all the other bugs. It is just, that we have become bugs with a consciousness.’ No doubt the farc fighters, and others in Colum-

bia, share these words by the Cuban leader to the Brasilian students, ‘That is the only evolution that has taken place in Cuba. It is with this consciousness that we have defended ourselves throughout all this time, and even more so when we were left completely alone in terms of our economic relations with our basic markets and sources of credits and supplies, and without access to any of the international financial institutions.’

In 2000 there were, according to the Columbian Government 1.777 death. The Columbia Commission of Jurists said there were 6.067 dead victims of the ‘socio-political violence’. The Commission says that the us supported paramilitaries were responsible for 49 per cent of the hunted, while the guerrillas killed 11 per cent. Both groups kill ‘collaborators’ that work with ‘the enemy’. There were an additional, 3.707 kidnappings, which makes Colombia the world's leader in this business.

Washington injects 440 million dollars solely for training three so-called anti-drugs Army battalions, totalling 2.500 men. They are equipped with 16 Blackhawk guerrilla warfare helicopters. In Putumayo province 29.000 hectares of coca farms have been sprayed, recalling the worst days of the Vietnam war. Farmers fear that glyphosate is harming their health. Millions of gallons of chemicals have already rained down on Colombian jungles and farmlands. And while this all goes on The Economist reports, that the paramilitaries, in 1993 numbering 1.200, in 1998 4.500 are the fastest growing force now totalling 8.000: ‘They are responsible for many of the worst atrocities against civilians.’ And who are the financiers, weapons dealers, and chemical warfare producers of the criminals in Colombia? The Latin paramilitaries are simply a stand-in for us Marines like the uck is in Albania.

The London Observer reported, that Bush junior was engineering a back door military escalation by raising a private army in the Latin drugs war. Foreign Affairs editor Peter Beaumont wrote July 22, 2001: ‘A new 676 million dollar program - the Andean Counterdrug Initiative - would allow the Bush administration to deploy as many former servicemen as it wanted.’ The suspicion is justified, that since Bush son entered the White House, the nature of the Latin American war against drugs is handled entirely by the invisibles in Washington. And, as is standard procedure with the Secret Team and the cia, they are secretly changing the character of the anti-drugs war into covert us military assistance to the fascist regime in Colombia, which is entangled with various guerrilla movements. In the past, the Security Council of the un would have been convened to discuss the bloody conflict in Colombia. No-one seems to care anymore what happens to rural campesinos, who die by the thousands each year, caught in the crossfire between us and Colombian rangers and a majority of guerrillas, who consider Fidel Castro their teacher. Now the junior Bush is set on expanding the bloodbath.

To my Dutch readers I am obliged to add: my friends, this is the behaviour of our beloved allies in Washington. These are the rogues who tell our government in The Hague, we had to join them in a war against Irak, or Yugoslavia, and god knows where tomorrow, or else. The time has come for Western Europe to let the Atlantic Alliance go. Perhaps nato was following World War II a rational solution to meet the realities in the second half of the 20th century. George Bush(son) is right when he says, the Cold War days are over, we now have to revise the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. It is even more urgent to scrap the nato Alliance of 1947 now. The future of Europe lies in the East of Europe and Russia and not in North America. And, the East will never fully trust its Western peninsula as long as we remain entangled in a pact with the vigilantes of Wild Bill Donovan.


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