FEW RESIST FAULTY LOGIC BEHIND AID TO COLOMBIA

Drug trade flourishing despite bio-war

HERE'S a number that offers telling reasons for voting for Ralph Nader in
the fall. Nine Democrats. Not even double digits. Last week, the U.S. Senate
finally voted $934 million to wage war in Colombia. The House voted earlier
this year to provide $1.7 billion in anti-narcotics aid for Colombia over a
two-year period. The Senate bill only covers the first year.

So where does the ``nine Democrats'' number figure in this picture? The sum
total of puissant legislators who voted for Sen. Paul Wellstone's amendment,
which would have taken $225 million from the $934 million and spent it
instead on domestic drug treatment programs, consisted of nine Democrats and
two Republicans. Here they are: Boxer, D-Calif. (co-sponsor); Grams,
R-Minn.; Murray, D-Wash.; Byrd, D-W.Va.; Harkin, D-Iowa; Specter, R-Pa.;
Dorgan, D-N.D.; Leahy, D-Vt.; Wellstone, D-Minn.; Feingold, D-Wis.;
Mikulski, D-Md.

Where were those supposed liberals like Kennedy, Kerry, Bayh, Feinstein,
Schumer, Torricelli, Levin or Sarbanes? If this is how they behave in
opposition, why do we need the Democrats to recapture Congress?

Here's another number: 19 -- being the senators who voted in favor of Slade
Gorton's, R-Wash., amendment slashing the Colombia package from nearly $1
billion down to $200 million in order to pay down the national debt: Allard,
R-Colo.; Gorton, R-Wash.; Kohl, D-Wis.; Boxer, D-Calif.; Gramm, R-Texas;
Leahy, D-Vt.; Collins, R-Maine; Grams, R-Minn.; Mikulski, D-Md.; Craig,
R-Idaho; Gregg, R-N.H.; Murray, D-Wash.; Crapo, R-Idaho; Harkin, D-Iowa;
Specter, R-Pa.; Enzi, R-Wyo.; Hutchinson, R-Ark.; Thomas, R-Wyo.;
46itzgerald, R-Ill.

So, here we have the alliance against folly in Colombia, cemented between
Republican fiscal conservatives and the radical Democratic faction. If you
toss in Feingold and Wellstone, who didn't vote for Gorton's amendment, we
reach a grand total of 21 senators unpersuaded by the administration's
arguments that the way to win the war on drugs here is to throw money into
the bank accounts of Colombian military officers and Pentagon contractors.

The administration is fighting a counterinsurgency war under the pretext of
drug interdiction, as George W. Bush accurately notes.

What of the dreaded ``narco-guerrillas''? As the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs in Washington sensibly pointed out last week, ``The FARC, founded by
Marxist guerrillas decades before the emergence of cocaine production in
Colombia, imposes `taxes' on drug lords and coca farmers to fund their
multimillion-dollar military operations, its militants are rarely involved
in the actual cultivation and trafficking of drugs. In fact, the right-wing
paramilitary, which both the Colombian and U.S. governments acknowledge is
responsible for 78 percent of the nation's human rights violations, is known
to be far more deeply involved in narco-trafficking than their leftist
counterparts. While the U.S. aid package will undoubtedly reduce drug
production, the paramilitary groups' deep ties to the Colombian armed forces
and large-scale dependence on the drug trade will invariably lead to
selective eradication efforts.''

But all this commotion over the Senate vote obscures the fact that the
United States is already waging a major bio-war in Colombia, evoking the
bio-war waged with Agent Orange against Vietnam 35 years ago. The Colombian
national police force is already busy spraying from the air, with the
financial backing of the United States. Colombia is getting $330 million
during this year and the next, irrespective of the new Senate legislation.

As in Vietnam, aerial spraying has indiscriminately doused people, fields
and livestock with poison. International observers say that the toxic
effects of this spraying have destroyed vegetable crops and fruit orchards
and contaminated streams and lakes, killing fish and farm animals. Several
children have reportedly died after being doused by the spraying. Thus far,
the hardy coca plant has been resistant to these poisons, flourishing in
contaminated soil.

McCaffrey's triumph could be to wipe out all agriculture other than
coca-growing. His next stroke is to launch a fungus developed by U.S.
bio-warriors, designed to attack the coca plant and opium poppy. This fungus
will, so to speak, jump the tracks and further devastate Colombian crops.
Meanwhile, if conditions in Colombia prove too arduous, the drug lords will
simply shift operations to Ecuador or Peru, just as they shifted from
Bolivia to Colombia.

So there's the math for you. A bipartisan coalition of a few senators and
representatives can be relied upon to do the right thing on big-ticket items
like wars abroad. Against them are ranged the massed legislators of the
Permanent Government, which is exerting itself mightily to keep Ralph Nader
out of any debating venue for presidential candidates where he might have an
opportunity to lay out these realities.

Alexander Cockburn is a syndicated columnist.