DEMS BALK AT SUPPORT FOR COLOMBIA'S DRUG WAR

MARIQUITA, Colombia -- At the Colombian National Police base here
last Wednesday morning, a small air fleet took off. Hours earlier, a
Fairchild Metroliner intelligence plane scouted poppy fields in the
jungles 40 miles northward. Now several well-armed Huey helicopters
embarked. They were followed by three Turbo fixed-wing aircraft
spraying the fields to eradicate plants producing narcotics destined
for U.S. and European users. Taking off last to complete the day's
operation was a Blackhawk helicopter, fulfilling "search and rescue"
requirements.

Such hazardous operations -- subject to ground fire from
narco-guerrillas -- take place in the Colombian Andes every day, amid
disapproval from Western European government officials, Democrats in
the U.S. Congress and critics inside Colombia. In contrast, CNP
officers asked for more eradication aircraft paid for by U.S.
taxpayers. While that would be small change compared with massive
outlays in Iraq, the extra money is not forthcoming.

Colombia provides 50 percent of the American market's heroin and 90
percent of its cocaine. It is the only South American country that
permits aerial eradication of its poppy fields. Yet, U.S. spending
here is frozen, in size and shape. The CNP hears nothing positive
when it pleads to launch a maximum assault on the drug fields by
expanding the air fleets from three to five.

That abandoned opportunity is frustrating to Gen. Jose Serrano, the
former CNP commander who is now Colombia's ambassador to Austria (and
was in Bogota last week).

"It is the campaign, all over the world, of the drug traffickers to
claim there is environmental damage [resulting from aerial
eradication]," Serrano told me. He credits the narco-terrorists
influencing the European Union's refusal to participate in aerial
eradication even though close to half of Europe's heroin supply comes
from Colombia.

Figures by both the United Nations and the U.S. State Department show
poppy production slightly increasing, but American officials admit
privately that is largely a statistical aberration based on an
original acreage underestimate.

But enough additional aircraft are needed to hit coca crops
throughout the country in all of the year's four growing cycles to
finally root out the plants. Col. Henry Gamboa, chief eradication
officer at the CNP, told me 15 more planes would meet this goal.

In the absence of additional planes, the CNP sends out teams of
jungle fighters for manual eradication -- a slow and bloody business.
An operation requires 300 men cutting coca plants, protected by 1,400
armed police. Their defoliation of five acres in a day, suffering
ambushes by narco-guerrillas and heavy casualties, compares with 200
acres sprayed in the same time by an aerial eradication team.

Brig. Gen. Jorge Baron, director of the CNP's anti-narcotics
division, told me he would entirely depend on aerial eradication if
he only had the planes.

The casualties taken by ground eradication operations are inflicted
by the FARC leftist militia and new, supposedly right-wing
paramilitary units that now operate side by side in the area hit by
Wednesday's aerial eradication. Antonio Costa, Vienna-based head of
the U.N.'s anti-narcotics office, told me in Colombia last week, that
he considers both groups criminal organizations without political content.

The FARC's Marxist-Leninist orientation has been eclipsed by its role
as a narcotics kingpin. Colombians I saw here, including critics of
President Alvaro Uribe's regime, are outraged that Rep. Jim McGovern
of Massachusetts called FARC's murderous, hated attacks a "civil war."

During the June 9 House debate, floor manager McGovern and other
left-wing Democrats harped on the May 10 drug-related slaughter of 10
crack national anti-drug policemen by the army's High Mountain
Battalion. The unit's commander, Col. Bayron Carvajal, has been
imprisoned and removed from jurisdiction of military court-martial
(which has a conviction rate of 4 percent). Carvajal is being
prosecuted by Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguaran, who has
evidence of the colonel's ties to drug trafficking.

In response to this evidence of Colombia's escape from degradation as
a narco-terrorist state, Democrats in the House voted 161- 28 for
McGovern's disastrous cut in U.S. aid. The House Republicans saved
Colombia, but ardent young officers of the national police are
anxious to win this war. They need more help from Washington, and
they deserve it.