Intervention in Colombia (from 2000)

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Drug war an excuse for counterinsurgency: Edited from a recent Associated Press release by Ranlph McGhee, 17 February 2000. About three-fourths of the U.S. aid package pays for the 63 helicopters and training for two new army counter-drug battalions. The units will retake rebel-held southern jungles. Leftist rebel units are legitimate objectives of U.S. assisted Colombian troops.
America Says It’s Intensifying The War On Drugs. The Truth Is Sinister: By Isabel Hilton, The Manchester Guardian Wednesday 21 June 2000. Officials from the EU, the US and Japan discuss support for President Andres Pastrana’s Plan Colombia. Conceived as a socio-economic development program to reduce the cause of conflict, it ends a U.S. military aid program that intensifies it, and the drug war seems forgotten.
Critics of Plan Colombia denounce Washington’s ‘secret war’ in South America: By Alejandro Bustos, Canadian Press, 17 June 2001. The U.S. government is hiring private American firms to fight its drug war in South America, a move critics say amounts to hiring mercenaries. The companies fly eradication missions over coca fields, provide surveillance planes that spot left-wing guerrillas and offer military advice to Colombia's army and police.
US lawmakers fail to tie Colombia’s civil war to terrorism: Radio Havana Cuba—News Update—, 25 April 2002. US lawmakers seeking to boost military aid for the Colombian governmentᡄs battle against leftist rebels have at least temporarily failed to tie the civil war in Colombia to the war on terrorism, so that restrictions on aid remain in place.
U.S. forces expanding role in Colombia: Beyond drug mission, troops now working to protect oil pipeline: By Joseph L Galloway, Knight Ridder, Charlotte Observer, 21 January 2003. American Army Special Forces will begin training Colombian soldiers to protect the oil pipeline that runs along the Venezuelan border. The arrival of the Green Berets signaled a more aggressive U.S. effort to help Colombian forces fight the guerrillas of the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), and newcomers to this region from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
First it was Reds, then drugs, then terror. So who have the US really been fighting in Colombia?: By George Monbiot, Guardian, Tuesday 4 February 2003. As the government in effect legalizes death sqads, evidence of their collaboration with the army in human rights abuses. The U.S. has long been involved in this war on the poor. Because they kill trades unionists, peasant and indigenous leaders, human rights workers, land reform activists, leftwing politicians, it is the world’s third largest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt.
After capture of Pentagon contractors: Wider US war threatened in Colombia: By Bill Vann, VSWS News, 21 February 2003. The threat of a wider US war in Colombia has escalated sharply following the killing of a Pentagon contractor and the abduction of three others by FARC. The circumstances surrounding the downing of the Cessna aircraft, as well as the identity and mission of its American passengers, remain secret.