WHICH HELICOPTER WILL WIN DRUG WAR?

A full three months after the House approved a $1.7 billion drug-war aid
package for Colombia, the Senate finally passed its own scaled-down $934
million version. You might assume that the world's greatest deliberative
body took so long because of a heated debate over the merits of further
involving ourselves in a country in the midst of a 40-year-old civil war
or, indeed, over the merits of fighting the drug war through interdiction
rather than treatment. But you'd be wrong.

The delay actually had a lot to do with a Blackhawks vs. Hueys Beltway
battle. Call it Chopper Wars -- a behind-the-scenes dogfight as absurd as
it is revealing about what drives public policy.

The prize was a huge contract to manufacture Colombia's copter of choice.
On one side were lobbyists for United Technologies, whose Sikorsky Aircraft
produces the Blackhawks. On the other were lobbyists for Bell Helicopter
Textron, which produces the Hueys.

The House had split the difference and approved a package that included
roughly 30 of each aircraft, at a total cost of nearly $450 million. But
despite the fact that the Colombian military, the Pentagon and the State
Department made it abundantly clear that they preferred the high-tech
Blackhawk to the smaller, slower, far less expensive Huey, bargain-hunting
senators on the Appropriations Committee shot down the Blackhawks and
settled for 60 refurbished Hueys -- a steal at the priced-to-move cost of
$188 million. "There's no reason for anybody to be ashamed to fly a Huey
into combat," harrumphed Appropriations chair Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., begged to differ. Usually a stickler on
human rights and a hands-off approach in Latin America, he has lately taken
the lead on pumping millions in military aid to the Colombian army, one of
the worst human-rights abusers in the world. Why? Well, it's probably just
a coincidence, but Sikorsky just happens to be headquartered in his state,
and through its parent company has -- also coincidentally, no doubt --
given Dodd more than $38,000 worth of combat aid (in the form of campaign
donations) in the last election cycle.

Anyway, Dodd wasn't about to let his hometown helicopter go down without a
fight. He took to the Senate floor and offered an amendment that would
leave the choice of choppers to the "experts" in the Pentagon and the
Colombian military -- a smooth move that would have guaranteed the
Blackhawks would prevail.

In the end, the Hueys won the Senate dogfight, but the Blackhawks will
clearly live to fight another day. As the House-Senate Conference Committee
tries to reconcile the two bills, Colombia's ambassador to Washington has
warned that his country will insist on the state-of-the-art Blackhawk.

As absurd as the Chopper Wars are, they are in keeping with the overblown
rhetoric of the Colombian coke issue. Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., announced
that "Colombia is the heart of the drug war, and we'd better get on with
it. If we lose Colombia, then we lose everywhere." It's the domino theory
all over again, with coke instead of Communists.

Dodd was equally overwrought: "When we step up and offer the Colombian
democracy a chance to fight for themselves, we're not only doing it for
them, we're doing it for ourselves." Translation: "When we step up and
offer a major campaign contributor a chance to make an enormous profit,
we're not only doing it for them, we're doing it for ourselves."

But the crowning absurdity was the ongoing pretense that the Colombian aid
package is about winning the drug war at home. If that were really the
goal, you'd think all those senators looking to get more bang for their
bucks would have relished the chance to vote for Sen. Paul Wellstone's,
D-Minn., amendment that, had it passed, would have transferred $225 million
from military aid in Colombia to drug-treatment programs in the United
States. Treatment, after all, has proved to be 10 times more cost-effective
than interdiction.

As if to underscore the futility of the drug-war package, Colombia's
national police chief, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, who has been hailed on The
Hill as "the best cop in the world," stepped down last Friday. "We'd rather
see drug consumption drop than get any of this aid," he told the Associated
Press.

If everyone knows that's how to win the drug war, then why are we spending
more than a billion dollars in Colombia? And if everyone doesn't know it,
why aren't we debating that instead of bickering over Blackhawks and Hueys?

Huffington can be reached via e-mail at arianna@ariannaonline.com