GOOD MORNING, COLOMBIA

For more than a year, critics of our government's drug war aid package to
Colombia (now hovering at $2 billion) have been warning of the mission
creep that threatens to embed us ever deeper in that country's 4-decade-old
civil war.

Well, the slippery slope just got greased.

The House of Representatives is about to vote on the $15.2 billion Foreign
Operations Spending Bill. Buried amidst the appropriations for many
worthwhile projects such as the Peace Corps and international HIV/AIDS
relief is a legislative land mine. The booby trap comes in the form of a
couple of innocuous-sounding lines that could lead to a massive escalation
of American involvement in Colombia's unwinnable war.

Contained in the section of the bill earmarking $676 million for
"counterdrug activities" in the region are the following eye-glazing
provisions: "These funds are in addition to amounts otherwise available for
such purposes and are available without regard to section 3204(b)(1)(B) of
Public Law 106-246: Provided further, that section 482(b) of the Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961 shall not apply to funds appropriated under this
heading."

Got that? I didn't think so. Legislative gobbledygook doesn't get any
gookier. But once the meaningless numbers and letters are decoded, and the
statutory dots connected, the ominous significance of those provisions
becomes all-too-clear. If approved, they make possible the unlimited
buildup of "mercenaries" and the removal of any constraints on the kinds of
weapons they can use.

Under current law, the number of U.S. military personnel that can be
deployed in Colombia is limited to 500, and they are prohibited from
engaging in combat. But as politicians discovered long ago, there are two
parts to every law: the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.

As regards Colombia, our government chose the latter, carrying out a
classic end run around the prohibition by funding a war conducted by
mercenaries -- hundreds of American citizens working for private military
contractors like DynCorp, Airscan and Military Professional Resources Inc.

At the moment, the number of these mercenaries is capped at 300. But the
first new provision, if it becomes law, does away with this restriction.
The other provision removes language that says "weapons or ammunition" can
only be provided for "defensive purposes" while engaged in
narcotics-related activities. It's a deadly cocktail: unlimited private
forces armed with unlimited weapons.

Congress has always zealously guarded its rights under the War Powers Act.
But unless its members catch on, they could approve a privatized Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution without even realizing it's hidden in the giant Foreign
Operations Bill. And once the dogs of war are unleashed, they're awfully
hard to round up again -- just ask Bob McNamara.

This ongoing and furtive escalation directly contradicts the government's
assurances that, as assistant secretary of state Rand Beers put it last
week, "Plan Colombia is a plan for peace."

"From the beginning," he wrote in an op-ed, "we have stated that there is
no military solution to Colombia's problems." Then why, pray, the need for
offensive weaponry and unrestricted numbers of mercenaries?

To make matters worse, a new investigation by the Center for Public
Integrity reveals that U.S. anti-drug money spent on Latin America is being
"funneled through corrupt military, paramilitary and intelligence
organizations and ends up violating basic human rights."

Those who scoff at the idea that our drug-fighting efforts in Colombia
could lead to America becoming embroiled in a massive counter- insurgency
war should take a look at a new study by the RAND Corporation, which was
commissioned by the U.S. Air Force.

The study calls on the United States to drop the phony "counter- narcotics
only" pretense and directly assist the Colombian government in its battle
against leftist rebels: "The United States is the only realistic source of
military assistance on the scale needed to redress the currently
unfavorable balance of power."

There is still the chance that Congress will refuse to go along with the
statutory trickery that will make such large-scale "military assistance"
all too likely. Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.,
are considering an amendment to eliminate the new provisions before the
Foreign Operations Bill comes to a vote.

Turning an army of heavily armed mercenaries loose in the middle of a
bloody civil war is more than a misguided policy -- it's utter insanity.
It's imperative that our lawmakers defuse these provisions in the bill
before they blow up in our faces, and the cliche of "another Vietnam"
becomes a sorry Colombian reality.