THE DRUG WAR MILITARY ESCALATION IN COLOMBIA HAS CIVILIANS WORRIED.

Ready or not, among the Bush administration's first jobs will be to
oversee an escalation of the cocaine war in Colombia.

With the blessings of Congress and a $1.3 billion contribution from
U.S. taxpayers, Colombia will take delivery this month of a first
installment of new U.S.-made helicopter gunships.

Two U.S.-trained Colombian army battalions will use the heavily armed
gunships to attack cocoa fields and drug labs deep inside Colombia's
mountainous no man's land.

There Marxist rebels, right-wing deaths squads and drug dealers all
pose deadly threats to one another, and the civilians caught in the
middle.

For months civilians have rightly worried that they will be caught in
the crossfire when the drug war escalates.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chief of the U.S. Southern Command, has
issued assurances that the Colombians' new anti-drug units will not
terrorize civilian populations.

He cannot, however, assure they will not suffer at the hands of
rebels and the death squads who may well take out their anger at the
government on the civilian population.

Already in two instances in the last week, more than 30 civilians
were massacred by right-wingers accusing them of consorting with the
rebels. It was a warning.

In truth civilians have no more choices than they do luck. Because
they are poor and Colombia is broke, many grow cocoa to survive.
Those who refuse are told by the rebels and the competing
right-wingers who also profit from drugs to grow the cocoa plants, or
die.

Either way civilians pay the price of Colombia's social breakdown.

The danger for the U.S. is that enraged drug dealers will retaliate
even harder against the civilian population for increased military
attacks on their source of income.

To a watching world, that will leave Colombia and the U.S. looking
like the bad guys.

It could force both governments to decide how many dead civilians the
world will tolerate on TV news before the policy of escalation must
be rethought.