Bill Howard wrote:
Good post Bill.
Klo
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Richard K. Moore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 10:18 PM
> Subject: cj> US crews involved in Colombian battle
>
> ============================================================================
> Delivered-To: moderator for [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:07:39 -0500
> From: Nurev Ind Research <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [lots of folks]
> Subject: US crews involved in Colombian battle]
>
> US crews involved in Colombian battle
> http://thescotsman.co.uk/world.cfm?id=49768
>
> Jeremy McDermott In Medellín
>
> US PERSONNEL have become involved in fighting in Colombia's
> 37-year civil war for the first time, rescuing the crew of a
> helicopter brought down by left-wing guerrillas, it emerged
> yesterday.
>
> The US is funding the world's largest aerial eradication
> programme in an attempt to destroy drug crops in Colombia.
> In an engagement at the weekend, guerrillas of the
> Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fired on a
> crop dusting aircraft and supporting helicopters.
>
> The pilot of a US-supplied Huey helicopter was hit in the
> barrage of small arms fire, but managed to land his stricken
> craft.
>
> Two other helicopter gunships circled the grounded
> helicopter, firing on the guerrillas, while the crew of a
> third helicopter rescued the crew.
>
> The pilots of some of the choppers in the rescue were
> Americans contracted by the US state department, a US
> Embassy source said.
>
> "The FARC were 100 to 200 yards away," Capt Giancarlo
> Cotrino, the pilot of the downed helicopter, said from his
> hospital bed in Bogotá.
>
> "We fought for seven or eight minutes - one of my crewmen
> had a grenade launcher and I had a pistol - until the SAR
> [search and rescue helicopter] came in behind us, landed and
> picked us up in the middle of a very hot firefight."
>
> The rescue helicopter carried four US citizens and two
> Colombians, all armed with M-16s. Most of the SAR teams in
> Colombia are former members of the US special forces, the US
> source said.
>
> Last year, when the $1.3 billion (£900 million) aid package
> to Colombia was approved by Congress, several rules were
> imposed.
>
> One was that no more than 500 US military personnel could be
> stationed in Colombia at any time. Another was that they
> were not to become directly involved in fighting.
>
> "The department of defence will not step over the line that
> divides counter-narcotics from counter-insurgency," Maria
> Salazar, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for drug
> enforcement policy, told a US congressional subcommittee.
>
> However, private US companies, paid by the state department
> and staffed by former US special forces and pilots, face no
> such restrictions.
>
> US military personnel in Colombia conduct a variety of
> training and monitoring roles. Three US-trained and equipped
> anti-narcotics battalions have been created, while US navy
> specialists train Colombian marines, who patrol the rivers
> that are the only means of transporting much of the nation.
>
> Five radar and listening stations are manned by US
> personnel, and others are liaison officers at the Colombian
> Joint Intelligence Centre (JIC), which the US helped set up.
>
> According to the letter of the law, the rules regarding US
> involvement in the civil conflict have not been broken, as
> serving military personnel have not been caught in active
> combat roles.
>
> However, by providing intelligence on guerrilla movements
> and actions, the US is already taking an active role in the
> counter-insurgency war.
>
> In March 1999 the US government issued new guidelines that
> allow sharing of intelligence about guerrilla activity in
> Colombia's southern drug-producing region, even if the
> information is not directly related to the fight against
> narcotics.
>
> The activities of private companies in the pay of the US are
> not covered under the rules imposed on military personnel.
>
> "This is what we call outsourcing a war," said one
> congressional aide in Washington, who asked not to be named.
>
> The company involved in last weekend's engagement with
> guerrillas is called DynCorp. It has been contracted since
> 1997 by the US state department to provide pilots, trainers
> and maintenance workers for the aerial eradication
> programme.
>
> What had not been known was that they piloted helicopter
> gunships that are used in an offensive capability when crop
> dusting aircraft came under fire. Three DynCorp pilots have
> been killed in operations, but one pilot said that at
> $90,000 a year tax free, the rewards were as high as the
> risks.
>
> Another company, hired by the US defence department on a $6
> million a year contract, is Military Professional Resources
> Inc (MPRI), a Virginia-based military-consultant company run
> by retired US generals. Its 14-man team, holed up in an
> upmarket hotel in Bogotá, refuses to speak to The Scotsman.
>
> Brian Sheridan, the senior Pentagon official who oversees
> the work of MPRI, said in congressional testimony in March
> last year that the firm's role in Colombia was not sinister,
> just "a manpower issue", insisting the US southern command
> did not have the men to spare to give strategic and logistic
> advice to the Colombian army.
>
> "It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the US armed
> forces, obviously," said the former US ambassador to
> Colombia, Myles Frechette. "If somebody gets killed or
> whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed
> forces."
>
> Despite massive military aid to Colombia, the US has
> insisted it is not getting itself into another Vietnam. But
> an MPRI spokesman, Ed Soyster, a retired US army lieutenant
> general and former director of the defence department's
> defence intelligence agency, compared the need for secrecy
> in Colombia with the need for secrecy in Vietnam.
>
> "When I was in Vietnam, I wouldn't want to tell you about my
> operation," he said. "If the enemy knows about it, he can
> counter it."
>
> Human rights groups say the use of private contractors in
> Colombia is a ploy to ensure actions are carried out that US
> troops under congressional restrictions cannot perform. They
> say "deniability" is the name of the game.
>
> "We're outsourcing the war in a way that is not
> accountable," said Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch.
>
> ============================================================================
> Richard K Moore
> Wexford, Ireland
> Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> website: http://cyberjournal.org
>
> A community will evolve only when
> the people control their means of communication.
> - Frantz Fanon
>
> "Find out just what people will quietly submit to , and you
> have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong
> which will be imposed on them,and these will continue till
> they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of
> tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they
> oppress."
> -Frederick Douglass
>
> Permission for non-commercial republishing hereby granted - BUT
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