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March
8, 2002
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
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Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
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March 8, 2002
Stop the War on Colombia
By Rep. Ron Paul
As a member of the House International Relations
Committee and the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, I
would like to state my strong objections to the manner in which
H.R. 358 was raised [authorizing expansion of US intervention
in Colombia]. I was only made aware of the existence of this
legislation this morning, just a couple of hours before I was
expected to vote on it. There was no committee markup of the
legislation, nor was there any notice that this legislation
would appear on today's suspension calendar.
This legislation represents a very serious
and significant shift in United States policy toward Colombia.
It sets us on a slippery slope toward unwise military intervention
in a foreign civil war that has nothing to do with the United
States.
Our policy toward Colombia was already
ill-advised when it consisted of an expensive front in our failed
"war on drugs." Plan Colombia, launched nearly 2 years
ago, sent $1.3 billion to Colombia under the guise of this war
on drugs. A majority of that went to the Colombian military;
much was no doubt lost through corruption. Though this massive
assistance program was supposed to put an end to the FARC and
other rebel groups involved in drug trafficking, 2 years later
we are now being told - in this legislation and elsewhere -
that the FARC and rebel groups are stronger than ever. So now
we are being asked to provide even more assistance in an effort
that seems to have had a result the opposite of what was intended.
In effect, we are being asked to redouble failed efforts. That
doesn't make sense.
At the time Plan Colombia was introduced,
President Clinton promised the American people that this action
would in no way drag us into the Colombian civil war. This current
legislation takes a bad policy and makes it much worse. This
legislation calls for the United States "to assist the
Government of Colombia protect its democracy from United States-designated
foreign terrorist organizations . . . " In other words,
this legislation elevates a civil war in Colombia to the level
of the international war on terror, and it will drag us deep
into the conflict.
There is a world of difference between
a rebel group fighting a civil war in a foreign country and
the kind of international terrorist organization that targeted
the United States last September. As ruthless and violent as
the three rebel groups in Colombia no doubt are, their struggle
for power in that country is an internal one. None of the three
appears to have any intention of carrying out terrorist activities
in the United States. Should we become involved in a civil war
against them, however, these organizations may well begin to
view the United States as a legitimate target. What possible
reason could there be for us to take on such a deadly risk?
What possible rewards could there be for the United States support
for one faction or the other in this civil war?
As with much of our interventionism,
if you scratch the surface of the high-sounding calls to "protect
democracy" and "stop drug trafficking," you often
find commercial interests driving US foreign policy. This also
appears to be the case in Colombia. And like Afghanistan, Kosovo,
Iraq, and elsewhere, that commercial interest appears to be
related to oil The U.S. administration request for FY 2003
includes a request for an additional $98 million to help protect
the Cano-Limon Pipeline - jointly owned by the Colombian Government
and Occidental Petroleum. Rebels have been blowing up parts
of the pipeline and the resulting disruption of the flow of
oil is costing Occidental Petroleum and the Colombian Government
more than half a billion dollars per year. Now the administration
wants the American taxpayer to finance the equipping and training
of a security force to protect the pipeline, which much of the
training coming from the US military. Since when is it the
responsibility of the American citizen to subsidize risky investments
made by private companies in foreign countries? And since when
is it the duty of American service men and women to lay their
lives on the line for these commercial interests?
Further intervention in the internal
political and military affairs of Colombia will only increase
the mistrust and anger of the average Colombian citizen toward
the United States, as these citizens will face the prospect
of an ongoing, United States-supported war in their country.
Already Plan Colombia has fueled the deep resentment of Colombian
farmers toward the United States. These farmers have seen their
legitimate crops destroyed, water supply polluted, and families
sprayed as powerful herbicides miss their intended marks. An
escalation of American involvement will only make matters worse.
At this critical time, our precious military
and financial resources must not be diverted to a conflict that
has nothing to do with the United States and poses no threat
to the United States. Trying to designate increased military
involvement in Colombia as a new front on the "war on
terror" makes no sense at all. It will only draw the United
States into a quagmire much like Vietnam. The Colombian civil
war is now in its fourth decade; pretending that the fighting
there is somehow related to our international war on terrorism
is to stretch the imagination to the breaking point. It is unwise
and dangerous.
Ron Paul,
M.D., represents the 14th Congressional District of Texas in
the United States House of Representatives.
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