BODIES EQUAL RESULTS IN COLOMBIA WAR

SAN JOSE DEL GUAVIARE, Colombia (AP) -- Sheets covering the rebel bodies
were supposed to lend decency to an otherwise grisly scene, but a sour
stench filled the tropical air, flies buzzed hungrily and bloodstains had
seeped through the cloth.

A foot, gray and twisted at an odd angle, jutted from under one of the aqua
green hospital sheets.

A general's aide bounded out to meet a group of journalists, who had been
flown out from the capital to witness the corpses.

"Would you like me to take off the covers," he asked. "Some of them are
just children, with faces like babies."

Showing rebel bodies is an ugly ritual of Colombia's decades-old war.

Battling Latin America's most powerful leftist insurgency, Colombia's
U.S.-backed military is struggling to convince the public that it is
winning the war, now in its 37th year. But in a hit-and-run guerrilla
conflict with no set battle lines in the jungle, victory is not so easy to
judge.

Military pronouncements about heavy rebel casualties are taken with a grain
of salt, since only a few years ago it was the guerrillas doing the damage.
So when it can, the military shows corpses.

Last Friday, the army packed two dozen reporters and cameramen -- most from
local TV stations -- into an executive style Cessna and whisked them into
the war zone. They were back in Bogota before noon, just in time to get the
images of the 24 dead rebels on the midday news.

Colombia's armed forces have had more to show in recent months. Due partly
to growing U.S. military aid, they have been hitting back at the leftist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

San Jose del Guaviare -- a remote town in Colombia's eastern lowlands --
epitomizes the turnaround.

Three years ago, a huge rebel column overran a nearby anti-narcotics base.
Today, an army base in San Jose del Guaviare is again the nerve center for
military and counter-drug operations in cocaine-producing Guaviare state.

U.S.-provided aircraft used to fumigate coca crops were parked Friday on an
airfield here -- along with a U.S. State Department cargo plane that had
made an emergency landing after losing one of its engines.

On a rise above the field where rebel bodies lay beside their weapons and
neatly-folded uniforms, U.S.-contract technicians man a sophisticated radar
station used to detect drug traffickers' planes .

The Colombian military offensive here began in mid-August, when the
military intercepted a 1,200-member FARC column moving through the area
with plans to seize strategic jungle towns to the east.

A massive air and ground counterattack foiled those plans, splintered the
rebel force and probably killed hundreds of guerrillas, army commanders
said. They pledged to hunt down the rest of the rebel force, which had
launched its assault from within a guerrilla safe haven to the west.

But a month later, relatively few guerrilla bodies had been plucked from
the jungle -- only 30 in total before Friday's presentation of two dozen
more guerrillas, all killed the day before. About 40 FARC fighters had also
previously surrendered and a dozen more deserted.

The offensive has also turned up guns, ammunition and intelligence, plus
the remains of a rebel "uniform factory" discovered in one camp. Displayed
next to the bodies were a half dozen sewing machines, piles of green cloth
and measuring tape.

Officials also handed around a color morgue shot taken of one of the
guerrillas killed earlier in the operation. The rebel, identified as Urias
Salamanca, was allegedly one of the most important field commanders in the
FARC.

With reporters huddled around him, Gen. Carlos Fracica, the scowling
commander of Colombia's Rapid Deployment Forces, said he believes three
times as many rebel cadavers are out there in the bush. But victory is not
measured solely by the body count, he was quick to point out.

"I see success mainly from the strategic point of view," Fracica said. "The
FARC was dealt a huge defeat. The number of dead bandits is not the most
important thing."