Note to Ecuador's Correa: Look what happens to you when you flip off the United States

just go ask hugo... they turn loose their attack dogs...

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said Saturday he would step down if there is proof that he had ties with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group in Colombia.

"If I had the most minimal relation with the FARC as candidate or as president I will resign as president," Correa said in his weekly radio address. "We have never received illegal (campaign) contributions."

The president said he handed over proof of his innocence to the Organization of American States amid accusations that he had received money contributions from FARC rebels during his presidential campaign in 2006.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was leading a smear campaign against him, Correa added.

tsk, tsk... correa should have never decided to send the u.s. military packing and reclaim the manta base...

from al jazeera...

The only US air base in South America is expected to shut down soon. Manta in Ecuador is home to a fleet of A-WACS spyplanes. Washington says they crack down on cocaine smugglers but the president of Ecuador is convinced the US helped Colombia carry out a recent [illegal] cross border [incursion].

and correa should never have decided to make nice with hugo chávez...

In August 2006, Correa told the Ecuadorian press that he is not part of the Venezuelan Bolivarian movement, although he considers Hugo Chávez a personal friend.[15] In response to Chávez's comparison of President Bush with Satan, Correa said it was unfair to the devil.

i'd read that quote a long time ago and forgotten about it... what a hoot... comparing george bush with satan gives satan a bad name... what a classic...!

anywayz, as usual, the context is missing... the original claims of a chávez/correa connection to farc continue to be strongly supported by uribe's pals in the bush administration and their running dogs...

from the sock-puppet heritage foundation...

Nonetheless, it is clear that Colombia launched a joint air-land operation against a FARC encampment that crossed into Ecuador. The distance of the incursion remains in dispute. While Colombian President Alvaro Uribe apparently briefed President Rafael Correa of Ecuador on the operation hours after the attack, Correa now claims he was misled and misinformed by his Colombian counterpart and has denounced Reyes' death as "the worst aggression suffered by Ecuador at the hands of Colombia." The details of the operation will be disputed and investigated in the weeks ahead.

On March 2, the Colombian military reported that it had recovered "revealing" information from computers captured in Reyes' effects, including records of contacts with senior security officials in Ecuador who were reportedly interested in "formalizing a relationship with the FARC." Authorities in Quito denied any links between the FARC and officials in Ecuador.

The situation surrounding Reyes' death demands further objective investigation. Furthermore, governments and citizens must recognize that terrorists and insurgents, be they narco-terrorists in the FARC, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, or Kurdish terrorists in Iraq, show no respect for frontiers and national sovereignty.

followed by this more recent broadside directly from the u.s...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez must explain documents found on Colombian rebel computers that Washington and Bogota charge show deep ties between the leftist leader and the guerrillas, a top U.S. official said.

[...]

"President Chavez has a lot of explaining to do," White House drug czar John Walters told Colombian newspaper El Tiempo in a Spanish-language interview published on Sunday.

"They were fluid contacts from both sides. This is a group that wants to violently overthrow a democratic government. This is very serious and requires more than just a simple denial."

and, finally, manta may NOT be the ONLY u.s. air base left in latin america, as i've posted here on this blog repeatedly...


Estigarribia Airbase, Paraguay

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Hey... If we can't go to war with Iran, how about Venezuela...?

if the u.s. can't manage to get a war with iran going, there's always venezuela, and ecuador too if they don't mind their p's and q's...

Venezuela's president has warned Colombia against building a US military base on the countries shared border, saying he would consider such a move an act of "aggression".

Hugo Chávez said on Thursday that he would not allow a US military base to be established in La Guajira, a region spanning northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela.

"We will not allow the Colombian government to give La Guajira to the empire," Chávez said, referring to the US during a speech to a packed auditorium of uniformed soldiers.

"Colombia is launching a threat of war at us."

The Venezuelan leader said that if Colombia built the base, his government would revive a decades-old territorial conflict and stake a claim to the entire region.

The US maintains a military base at the Pacific port of Manta in Ecuador, but Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president and an ally of Chávez, has repeatedly said he will not renew the 10-year leases when it runs out next year.

Chávez said that William Brownfield, the US Ambassador to Colombia, had suggested that the Ecuador base could be moved to La Guajira.

and, of course, the u.s. is still banging the same drum that it's been banging on since the illegal attack by colombia on ecuadorean soil of a couple of months ago...

Diplomatic relations between Caracas and Bogota have come under increasing strain in recent months after Colombia unveiled documents allegedly showing that Chávez sought to arm and finance Farc, an armed anti-government group in Colombia.

Last week the US claimed the documents, contained on a laptop, were "authentic" and showed ties between Chávez and Farc.

Chávez, whose sympathies for Farc are well known, said the files had been faked by the Colombian government.

The computer files were found after Colombian forces mounted a raid inside Ecuador to kill a Farc commander at his camp across the border.

The raid sparked a regional crisis when briefly raised fears of war when Chávez threatened to send troops to the border with Colombia.

"authentic" like the syrian nuclear reactor was "authentic," like the iranian weapons in iraq are "authentic," like saddam's wmd's were "authentic"... horse hockey...

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Latin America shows the rest of us how it's done (as opposed to the way the U.S. would have liked it to turn out)

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe (R)
and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
talk after they agreed to resolve the crisis
set off by an attack on a FARC guerrilla
camp inside Ecuadorian territory by the
Colombian armed forces last week at the
20th Group of Rio Summit in Santo
Domingo March 7, 2008.
REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
(DOMINICAN REPUBLIC)

the u.s. wanted a clear branding of the farc rebels as "terrorists," and for colombia to square off with ecuador and venezuela by insisting that, just like their patron, the united states, colombia would pursue "terrorists" wherever, whenever and however was necessary to annihilate them, even if it meant violating another country's sovereignty to do it... instead, the latin american countries decided to do it THEIR way with the result being that the farc rebels are now labeled as an "insurgency" rather than as "terrorists," colombia apologized to ecuador for violating its border and said it wouldn't follow through on its threat to seek genocide charges against venezuela at the hague, committed all the countries to work together to preserve national stability, and ended with the president of colombia and the president of ecuador shaking hands...

and THAT, folks, is how it's done...

South America moved away from talk of war as the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador agreed to end a bitter dispute triggered by a Colombian cross-border raid with testy handshakes and an apology.

After intense regional diplomacy and emotional debate, Latin American leaders Friday approved a declaration resolving to work for a peaceful end to the crisis, which saw Venezuela and Ecuador send troops to their borders and Colombia accuse its neighbors of backing leftist rebels seeking to topple its government.

The leaders at the summit in the Dominican Republic wasted little time in reversing their steps toward conflict.

Colombia pledged not to follow through on its threat to seek genocide charges against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at an international court for allegedly supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which finances its insurgency through kidnapping and the cocaine trade.

Nicaragua said it would restore diplomatic relations with Colombia, broken off only the day before. Chavez said trade with Colombia should "keep increasing," two days after saying he didn't want even "a grain of rice" from his neighbor.

"We're going to begin to de-escalate," Chavez said. "Hopefully this compromise will be honored so this never happens again."

The statement approved by the presidents notes that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe apologized for the March 1 raid inside Ecuadorean territory that killed 25 people including a senior rebel commander, and that he pledged not to violate another nation's sovereignty again.

But it also commits all the countries to fight threats to national stability from "irregular or criminal groups," a reference to Colombia's accusation that its two neighbors have ties to rebels.

latin american countries have their problems, no doubt about it, lots of them, in fact... but i've always maintained that, if they could just figure out how to work together, they would be an unstoppable global force with a tremendous potential for making a positive difference in the world...

what just took place in la republica dominicana is an event of truly historic proportions that should be held up as a model for what ought to be happening in the rest of the world, most notably in the near and middle east... i've never been prouder of being a part-time resident of latin america than i am today...

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