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News :: Miscellaneous |
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U.S. Ready to Fix Base in Ecuador |
Current rating: 0 |
by JIM WYSS/Special to the Miami Herald
(No verified email address) |
16 Mar 2001
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MANTA, Ecuador -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will shut down the local airport in a few days for a $65.3 million overhaul, deepening an increasingly bitter debate about Ecuador's role in the regional fight against drug trafficking. |
Officially, the government says the strip is little more than a ``filling station'' for the various spy aircraft used by the
Pentagon to monitor clandestine drug flights around the Andes, but many here see it as a threat to national
sovereignty that could drag Ecuador deeper into the region's drug wars.
``The base represents a provocation and involves us in a
problem that's not ours,'' said Vice President Antonio Posso,
the second-ranking congressional official, whose left-leaning
Pachakutik party attacked the Manta operation in court.
``I agree that we need to do our part to control drug
trafficking, but there is the fear that the base will be used
against the [Colombian] guerrillas,'' Posso said. ``We may
already be seeing reprisals.''
Note: US authorities swear that the base will only be used for anti-drug operations. If so, this would be a complete change to how the US (or any other country) typically collects intelligence. The usual method is to collect all sources of intelligence and then analyse it later. Intel about drugs is inseperable from other intelligence and this does not become apparent until the data is analysed. Collection goes on in any case of all sources; it is impossible to seperate it out during collection as that would remove whatever context it is in. There should be no doubt that the US is using this convenient lie to cover up what are operations as usual. If the US was pledging to not turn over to the Colombian government any relevant info on strictly guerilla activities, that would be another case, but that is NOT what they are saying. Combined with the lie that drug tarfficing in the area is a strictly leftist guerilla problem, it only serves to further disguise the drug operations of the right-wing and Colombian military, along with the ever-present operations of the CIA itself which finance its "black ops."
Commandante Lucas
For the full Miami Herald story click on the link below: |
See also:
http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/americas/digdocs/007790.htm
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