U.S. MONEY WILL FUND COLOMBIAN CIVIL WAR

U.S. taxpayers are being asked to fund a war in Colombia. The $1.5 billion
in aid to Colombia approved three years ago dramatically failed. It focused
on killing coca plants with aerial defoliants -- according to the White
House Office of National Drug Policy, the coca crop increased by 25 percent
last year.

Now the Bush administration is requesting another $700 million in aid to
Colombia and the Andean region, most of which is military aid. It would be
used to support the 40-year civil war in Colombia.

Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, has proposed that a million
Colombians become informants for government security armed with radios and
possibly guns. Who could control 1 million armed civilians?

When Uribe was governor of Antioquia, a similar program strengthened the
illegal paramilitary groups in the region. This led to a growth in cases of
torture, disappearances and massacres.

Sectors of the Colombian military continue to work closely with brutal
paramilitary groups that commit the majority of politically motivated
killings in Colombia each year, according to the State Department Human
Rights Report.

Urge your senators and representatives to vote no on further military aid
to Colombia. Do not support mission creep -- changing the focus of U.S. aid
from counter-narcotics to counter-terrorism. It is time for the United
States to support a negotiated end to the war in Colombia, aid for
alternative development programs, judicial reform and support for drug
treatment on demand here in this country.

Noreen Ordronneau, Carrboro