ON COLOMBIA, GORE & BUSH ARE STILL MIA

There is something unsettling about the press coverage of the
presidential race. Last week, President Clinton signed a waiver of the
human rights provisions imposed by Congress on the $1.3 billion drug
war package to Colombia, and not a single reporter bothered to ask the
candidates -- one of whom, after all, will have to deal with the
consequences -- what they thought of it.

Do George W. Bush and Al Gore support our becoming embroiled in a three-
way civil war? We know their stand on family (they're for it), but not
whether they are in favor of more than $1 billion being spent to fight
the drug war abroad while 3.5 million addicts at home can't get the
treatment they need. Or whether they endorse the cavalier abandonment
of congressionally mandated human rights benchmarks.

So while the President spends five hours in Colombia today to
symbolically hand a gigantic check to President Andres Pastrana, it
would be useful for Gore and Bush to tell us how their drug war
policies would differ from this administration's.

How much of his own man is Gore? How much will Bush be influenced by
Enron, his 10th-biggest backer, which has major oil interests in
Colombia? It's time for the candidates to stop pontificating on
military preparedness in general and start addressing their own
preparedness to engage our military in the Colombian Army's
counterinsurgency campaign.

The evidence amassed by human rights groups overwhelmingly shows that
the Colombian military continues to allow its paramilitary allies to
massacre hundreds of unarmed civilians each year. Only two weeks ago,
the army itself was responsible for an attack that killed six
elementary school children on a hiking trip.

Of course, administration officials deny any intention of involving
U.S. troops in the fighting. "There is no plan, and there is no
proposal, and there is no idea of committing American forces in
Colombia to do anything but ... provide training," said Thomas
Pickering, undersecretary of state for political affairs.

There may be no "plan," but there are already five American casualties.
Last month, U.S. Army pilot Jennifer Odom, co-pilot Capt. Jose Santiago
and crew members Thomas Moore, Bruce Cluff and Ray Krueger were killed
when their plane crashed -- or, as Odom's family believes, was shot down
- -- while on a top-secret reconnaissance mission in southern Colombia.

If you haven't heard about these casualties of our drug war in
Colombia, that was the intention. The flag-draped coffins arrived in
the dead of night, in a ceremony that was closed to the press and
unattended by any senior White House officials.

But if we can't get a true picture of what the future holds from our
own leaders, we can at least look to the leader of the Colombian armed
forces, Gen. Fernando Tapias. "There will be peace," he said in a
recent interview, "but first there will be war."

Meaning, things will get worse. I would like to know if our next
President has given it a thought.