Date: Sat Sep 30, 2000 1:21pm
Subject: FARC Says US Troops Military Targets
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Ruppert [mailto:mruppert@c...]
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2000 1:39 AM
The Fast Track to War - FARC plays its assigned role. After a couple of
years of poking and prodding, massacres by CIA trained death squads the
dogs of war behave as they have been conditioned.
Mike Ruppert
www.copvcia.com
Friday September 29 7:12 PM ET
Colombia Rebels Set Sights on U.S. Troops
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Marxist rebels issued a warning on Friday to U.S.
soldiers based in Colombia, saying they will be declared a ``military
target'' if they take any front-line combat role in the nation's
long-running war.
``The FARC declares United States soldiers a military target,'' said
the headline of a statement distributed via the Internet by the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The 17,000-strong rebel army, known by its Spanish-language acronym, is
Latin America's largest and oldest guerrilla force. It has a dominant
presence in roughly 40 percent of Colombia, a country a U.S. military
spokesman described on Friday as among the most treacherous places
anywhere around the globe.
``All Colombian or foreign military personnel in combat zones will be a
military target of the FARC,'' said the statement, quoting senior rebel
commander Andres Paris.
``At the moment FARC guerrillas do not wish to reveal if there are
concrete plans to attack United States military bases in the country,''
it said.
But it added that several such bases, where U.S. military personnel are
located, were ``very close to regions where guerrillas recently staged
intense combat that caused government forces important casualties.''
U.S. and Colombian officials have said repeatedly that American troops
will not be involved directly in the Andean nation's escalating war
against the drug trade and the leftist guerrillas they accuse of
protecting and profiting from the trafficking.
In Miami, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command -- which oversees
U.S. military operations across most of Latin America -- reiterated
that American forces were ``limited strictly to counter-drug and
training activities'' in Colombia.
But the spokesman, Steve Lucas, acknowledged U.S. troops were in ``an
inherently dangerous business'' in Colombia and said the FARC threat
would not be ignored.
``We try to take the security and protection of our people very
seriously, try to ensure that they are doing their training activities
and other support activities in only the safe regions,'' Lucas said.
``But the entire nation of Colombia and its border regions have become
the most dangerous places in the Western Hemisphere if not the world,
because of the actions of these extralegal organizations so we're
sharing the risks.''
Train Special Battalions
Under a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package for Colombia approved by the U.S.
Congress in July, lawmakers opened the way for the number of American
advisers in Colombia to be doubled to about 500 at any one time, to
train special battalions in fighting drugs, and indirectly, guerrillas.
But the package contains a clause that would allow the U.S. president to
wave the cap for 90 days in the event of an ''imminent involvement'' of
U.S. forces in hostilities.
The FARC has branded the aid package, consisting of mostly military
aid, as counterinsurgency assistance thinly disguised as anti-drug aid,
and warned repeatedly of Washington's slide into a military quagmire.
The latest FARC statement was similar to several others the group has
issued over the past year, warning U.S. military advisers against a
deeper, Vietnam-style involvement in an internal conflict that has
taken 35,000 lives over the past decade.
America's involvement in Vietnam began with the dispatch of military
advisers and led to the deaths of about 58,000 U.S. troops.
A Gallup poll published last month in a leading Colombian weekly news
magazine, Semana, said 56 percent of Colombians favored U.S. military
intervention to resolve the country's armed conflict.
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