The blog This Ain’t My First Rodeo recently linked to one of my posts on Chávez’s growing ties with Iran, a story I ran with from Mexico’s largest and most respected newspaper El Universal that reported that at least two of Mexico’s drug cartels were sending some of its personnel to Iran for training. Apparently, I am “poisoning the well” for some future US invasion of Latin America. His post is so full of misinformation that I have decided to lasso him with a rope of facts.
Here is the relevant part of his post entitled appropriately enough World War III DEA Disinformation Chatter Sending Red Flags in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela:
Just this week, my news filters started picking up what increasingly appears to be a disinformation campaign aimed at “poisoning the well” in Latin America:
* “DEA Reports Show That Mexican Cartel ‘Thugs’ Are Receiving Training From Iranian Revolutionary Guard”
* “Mexican Drug Cartels and Islamic Radicals Working Together”
Something is up. They are cranking up the propaganda machine perhaps in preparation for a future deployment of U.S. forces in Mexico, Colombia and/or Paraguay. For now, their intention seems to be to threaten and to terrorize. Imagine that.
Mexico, in stoking up the heat on the drug cartels, has fallen into anarchy within its northern states along the U.S. border. Although the Bush Administration recently announced funding support for the Mexican military in their violent struggle against the Sinaloa Federation and Gulf Cartels, it is possible that more direct support may have been “placed on the table,” even though the cartels have devolved into interior power struggles and internecine wars for territorial control.
Bolivia and Ecuador are lining up with our OPEC “enemy,” Venezuela, who currently supplies 25% of our imported oil. Both are currently experiencing diplomatic conflagrations with the right-wing government of Colombia, which the Bush Administration supports. Issues involve Colombia’s alleged cross-border incursions into Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela in pursuit of left-wing guerrillas whom Colombia claims have been given sanctuary by them. Venezuela has vehemently denied any support.
All the while, the Bush Administration has recommissioned the 4th Fleet and sent it to the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. The Navy has already launched acts of provocation, in the form of “accidental” flyovers of Venezuelan island territories in the Caribbean, drawing protests from Chavez. At the same time, Ecuador demanded that the United States close its airbase in that country, which we did, moving it to Colombia.
Last week, it was revealed that George W. Bush’s man in Bogota, President Álvaro Uribe [right], just happens to be one of the former captains of Colombia’s infamous Madeline cocaine cartel, led by Pablo Escobar [left], who was “reportedly” killed in a joint operation of DEA and Colombian government forces in the 90s. What appears to have occurred is that CIA and Mossad handlers lost control over both Escobar and Daniel Noriega of Panama after Vice President George H. W. Bush, Oliver North and John P. Walters, who is not surprisingly the current “Drug Czar” under George W. Bush-43, spent so much “persuasive” effort in bringing them into the CIA Colombian “plaza” in order to benefit the Contra counter-revolution against Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
This should be fun. Where to begin. Let’s start with the assertion that the United States imports 25% of its oil from Venezuela. It’s actually more like 9%. According to the Energy Information Agency, the United States imported 1,166,000 barrels of oil from Venezuela in May 2008 out of a total import of 12,742,000 barrels. Doing the math, that’s 9.15%. The United States imports more from Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico than it does from Venezuela. Furthermore, not all hydrocarbons are created equal. The ideal is light sweet crude and that comes largely from the Middle East. Venezuela’s oil is a heavy gook which requires special refineries for processing. Those refineries are largely in the United States and the Virgin Islands so Venezuela’s oil of necessity has but few markets. Not to say that if Venezuela were to cut its supplies to the US that wouldn’t hurt the US, it would, but it would also cripple Venezuela, a country that cannot even feed itself. Venezuela is, for now, more dependant on the US than the US is on Venezuela.
The assertion that Mexico is stoking up the heat on the drug cartels belies the fact that what Mexico is experiencing right now is likely the start of a prolonged drug war. The blogger, Bailey Woo, might have learned something if he had read my post on Mexico’s Drug Wars where I review recent developments in Mexico:
Mexico is slipping into chaos, perhaps unnoticed but certainly not quietly. The number of dead are astonishing. Twenty-one people were killed this past weekend in Sinaloa. Two weeks ago, five people were found decapitated in Mexico City. Two weeks before that another seven headless. On June 23, 2008, 21 people were found dead execution style in Chihuahua, 38 deaths nationwide on that day. Five hundred have died in drug-related violence in Ciudad Juarez alone this year. Sixty-five percent of the deaths have been in two states — in Chihuahua and Sinaloa. But the dead are not just members of rival gangs, it includes innocents caught in the crossfire, policemen and the head of the Mexico City Federal Police. In May, a gun battle left seven Mexican Federal Policemen dead, another four wounded. Mexico slips into chaos.
Just two days ago, the Mexican Police Chief for the state of Coahuila was kidnapped and the Mexico authorities detained a submarine off the coast of Oaxaca carrying 5.78 tonnes of cocaine. But all this is a ruse for some future US military involvement in the region. News flash: the world does not revolve around the United States. Your thinking is frankly American-centric. Latin American countries have their own interests and are hardly interested in getting invaded.
Next comes this egregious paragraph:
Bolivia and Ecuador are lining up with our OPEC “enemy,” Venezuela, who currently supplies 25% of our imported oil. Both are currently experiencing diplomatic conflagrations with the right-wing government of Colombia, which the Bush Administration supports. Issues involve Colombia’s alleged cross-border incursions into Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela in pursuit of left-wing guerrillas whom Colombia claims have been given sanctuary by them. Venezuela has vehemently denied any support.
The oil from Venezuela bit I have already corrected. Mr. Woo somehow thinks that Colombia has sent troops into Bolivia (false), Ecuador (true on March 1, 2008 to attack a FARC camp a mile across the border) and Venezuela (false). He might buy an atlas for starters. Colombia does not share a border with Bolivia which lies 800 miles to the south of Colombia across Brazil and Peru. To have attacked Bolivia would have meant that Colombia would have violated Brazilian and Peruvian airspace for starters. Have you heard of such? Venezuela, again false. On the other hand, it is true that Venezuela has provided $300 million in support to the FARC and the Colombian government thanks to that raid in Ecuador that killed Raul Reyes and 27 other terrorists has over 30,000 documents detailing the FARC’s relationships. Some of those directly implicate Daniel Ortega, Rafael Correa and Hugo Chávez. On June 6, 2008, a Venezuelan Army Officer was arrested in Colombia with 100,000 rounds of ammunition destined for the FARC. Read a paper. Then there is the rather perturbing sheltering of FARC commanders such as Ivan Marquez and Timo in Caracas. Venezuela can deny all it wants, the facts are otherwise and Chávez knows it.
As per the US 4th Fleet that now cruises the Caribbean and the assertion that the US has violated Venezuelan airspace, I do not doubt that the US tests Venezuela’s radar defences daily but I doubt that the US would stray into Venezuelan airspace. This is, too, Chávez’s own doing. Estimates vary but anywhere between 70% and 90% of cocaine traffic to Europe, the Middle East and the Eastern seaboard of the US is now through Venezuela. Drug flows, like water, always take the path of least resistance and that either with Chávez’s connivance or by neglect is via Chávez’s Venezuela.
Next, Mr. Woo might want to know that US base in Manta, Ecuador remains operational and is under a US lease until 2010. The Ecuadorean government of Rafael Correa has opted not to renew the lease thus the US will have to close the base. It has not been relocated to Colombia as he asserts. In fact, the US is likely to reposition the base in either Honduras or El Salvador. Colombia does not allow foreign bases on its soil.
The dribble about President Uribe being part of the Madeline cartel, which last I checked Madeline was a French cookie, is nonsense. I can only assume that Mr. Woo means Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city. Try getting proper names right, otherwise you look foolish. His source for this calumny is a British “journalist/film director” named Tom Feiling who writes for a pro-FARC publication in the United Kingdom called the Colombia Journal. Mr. Feiling also writes for the UK Watch which self-describes as “a daily review of radical comment and analysis.” You might want to know something about whom you are quoting before you quote them. Mr. Feiling is a FARC sympathizer, hardly credible. As I a Colombian, I know who supports the FARC and I have a long memory.
Not only that but Mr. Woo is sloppy with dates. He reports that this relevation about Uribe is from last week. The article he references was actually written May 24, 2004. That’s four years ago by my calendar and the article was part of a defamation and slander campaign against the Colombian President. Know your sources before you going around spreading misinformation.
As someone who worked in the Colombian government, I can point blank tell you that Pablo Escobar is not “reportedly” dead, he is dead. And as for your conspiracy theories about World War III, get a life and some new news filters. The world is not some Hollywood movie. It is bloggers like Mr. Woo that give the left a black mark as they espouse lunacies as seeing World War III behind every development.