AUT: Next Vietnam/Kosovo:U.S. Forces in Colombia Civil War Top 300

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 12:50:43 -0700
From: Non Peer Competitor Intelligence Associates <npcia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: chiapas-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: Multiple recipients of list <chiapas-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: U.S. Forces in Colombia Civil War Top 300


U.S. Forces in Colombia Civil War Top 300 with Training of Anti-Narcotics
Troops and Attack Helicopter Deliveries

PRNewswire
01-AUG-99

NEW YORK, Aug. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 300 American personnel are in
Colombia as part of the U.S.'s expanding role in the civil war, Newsweek
has learned, including 200 soldiers and more than 100 Drug Enforcement
Administration and CIA operatives. The U.S.'s involvement surfaced after
the recent crash of a U.S. RC-7 plane in which five American soldiers --
including a woman pilot -- were killed. "This had to do with surveillance,"
said one source familiar with the flight's mission. "We're not supposed to
be monitoring guerrillas, but that's what they were doing."

In addition to the personnel, the U.S. will be soon be sending to the
Colombia national police six Black Hawk attack helicopters, high-altitude
flyers that can provide protection to planes defoliating mountainside poppy
fields, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Los Angeles
Bureau Chief Joshua Hammer in the August 9 issue (on newsstands Monday,
August 2). By December, the U.S. Special Forces will have finished training
a special anti-narcotics battalion of the Colombian Army, a 980-man,
rapid-reaction force capable of taking on the Marxist Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) on its own turf.

Already the U.S. is pouring $250 million into Colombia, making it the
third-biggest recipient of U.S. aid, after Egypt and Israel, Newsweek
reports. White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey visited Colombia last week
and proposed doubling that amount. But the guerrillas (FARC), have earned
an estimated $600 million by the drug trade and have built up their armory.
"There are armed organizations [like FARC] with more automatic weapons than
the Colombian army," McCaffrey told Newsweek.

And the Colombian police lack the arms and the training to battle an
increasingly aggressive guerrilla force. "The police are getting their
a---s kicked," says a top-ranking U.S. military source in Colombia. "They
go in with two helicopters, they run into a hundred FARC on the ground and
they get chewed up."

 American officials say that taking no action against the FARC will invite
a widening of the civil war, and a flood of cocaine and heroin onto
American streets. "There is no desire in the United States to send troops
to Colombia to fight a guerrilla war that the Colombians themselves have --
until recently -- not committed themselves to fighting," says one U.S.
government source. He insisted only military hardware -- not men -- will be
dispatched to Colombia.

 SOURCE
 Newsweek



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