Reprinted from CSN-L newsgroup listserve

Where does Washington stand?
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        By Dennis Grammenos


Over the past week, Ernesto Samper, the president of Colombia, finally
admitted that the Colombian military has indeed been responsible for
massacres and gross violations of human rights and international
humanitarian law.

During the same week, the offices of Colombia's federal prosecutor and
attorney general embarked on an investigation of ten military personnel
that have been linked, by a presidential "truth commission," to the
mid-May massacre of 11 people in Barrancabermeja and the abduction,
slaughter and incineration by a paramilitary death-squad of another 25
people.

Over the past few weeks, Colombia's two major guerrilla armies --the ELN
and the FARC-- have been pursuing "peace-talks" with the Colombian
government and with incoming president Andres Pastrana's transition team.
Although such gestures have failed in the past, not least of all because
the demobilization of guerrillas in the 1980s led to the wholesale
slaughter of 4,000 leftists and former rebels by the country's security
forces and paramilitary death squads-- many Colombians are willing to rest
their hopes on this effort.

And where does Washington stand on all this?

Judging by a story in Saturday's Orlando Sentinel (by the way, where is
the rest of the media?), the United States is further arming the Colombian
military, with equipment --including night vision goggles, communications
equipment, river boats and aircraft-- that will doubtlessly be used
against the guerrillas and, if the week's revelations are any indication,
against the civilian population.

Way to go Washington!