U.S. Debating Wider Assault on Colombia Rebels
Latin America: Officials point to link between guerrillas and Libya. Military role would test Congress' support for campaign against terror.

Alarmed by signs of weapons traffic between Colombian rebels and the Middle East, the Bush administration is weighing a proposal to declare the destruction of leftist guerrillas in the South American country an explicit goal of U.S. policy.

Some senior officials are also pushing for the administration to assert, for the first time, that the Colombian rebels are a specific target of the worldwide U.S. war on terrorism, administration officials said.

Such declarations would mark a significant toughening of U.S. policy and pose an important test of how much leeway Congress will grant President Bush to expand military operations around the world in the post-Sept. 11 era. For six years, Congress has strictly limited the U.S. military mission in Colombia, fearing that if the anti-drug campaign escalated to a broader fight against insurgents, the United States could sink into a costly quagmire with echoes of Vietnam.
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The Bush Oil-igarchy's Pipeline Protection Package
by Arianna Huffington

In a shameless handout to a poor-little-me corporate mendicant, the president wants to spend close to $100 million to help Occidental Petroleum protect an oil pipeline unwisely built in war-torn Colombia.
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And now the oil-igarchy in the White House has chosen to reward this shining example of the idiocy of capitalism with a no-strings- attached corporate welfare check. Testifying before Congress last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell summed up the administration's position: "We thought a $98 million investment in Colombian brigades to help protect this pipeline is a wise one and a prudent one. What makes this pipeline unique is that it is such a major source of income." Income for whom? It's the new, improved Powell Doctrine: "U.S. military might should never be used -- unless it helps Corporate America turn a profit."

The question is: where do we draw the bottom line in the sand? According to Ambassador Patterson, there are more than 300 additional sites with infrastructure of strategic importance to the United States in Colombia. Are we going to pay to protect all of these, too? And what about the other pipelines around the world that are "a major source of income?" Will "investing" our military to keep them up and running prove "wise and prudent" or a foreign policy nightmare?
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