GOOD MORNING, COLOMBIA

Turning loose a force of heavily armed mercenaries in the middle of a
bloody civil war in the name of America's war on drugs is more than a
misguided policy -- it's utter insanity.

July 16, 2001 - For more than a year, critics of our government's drug
war aid package to Colombia (which now hovers at $2 billion) have been
warning of the mission creep that threatens to embed us ever deeper in
that country's four-decades-old civil war.

Well, the slippery slope just got greased, and a dreadful situation is
about to get worse.

The House is about to vote on the $15.2 billion foreign operations
spending bill. Buried amid the appropriations for many worthy and
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 would 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 who can be
deployed in Colombia has been limited to 500, and these personnel are
prohibited from engaging in combat. But as politicians discovered long
ago, there are two sides 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 such mercenaries is capped at 300. But
the bill's first new provision, if it becomes law, would do away with
this restriction. The other provision would remove language that says
"weapons or ammunition" can be provided only 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 have been
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 piece, "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 in 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 America's drug-fighting efforts in
Colombia could lead to our becoming embroiled in a massive
counterinsurgency war should take a look at a new study by the Rand
Corp. that was commissioned by the Air Force. The study calls on the
United States to drop the phony "counternarcotics 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 would make such large-scale "military
assistance" all too likely. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep.
Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill., are considering an amendment to eliminate
the new provisions before the foreign operations bill comes to a vote.

Turning loose a force of heavily armed mercenaries 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.