The same Guatemalan military intelligence chiefs who were responsible for “engineering” what a U.N. Truth Commission later concluded were “acts of genocide,” were later accused by U.S. officials of trafficking cocaine.
Two U.S. soldiers were arrested in Bogotá over arms and ammunition bound for an illegal paramilitary group identified by the State Department of being both a drug-trafficking and terrorist organization.
¿Cómo terminamos con tantos aprietos en Irak? Porque hicimos lo que hemos hecho por largo tiempo: Buscamos no a los extranjeros con quienes todavía necesitamos trabajar, sino a los exiliados que fueran más parecidos a nosotros.
Both the PBS series and the NPR panel also present a number of former American drug war veterans who have since changed their own views who said that U.S. efforts in the “war on drugs” are falling short.
The lesson of El Salvador was that the guerrillas could not be wiped out, and that in the end the United States needed to pressure America’s own allies in the Salvadoran military to reach a peace settlement.
No country so small has ever moved so much cocaine north. Earlier in this decade, about 50 to 75 metric tons of cocaine passed through Guatemala each year, according to the State Department.
Carlos Castano is not a name that comes up much in the debate over whether to escalate U.S. drug-war aid to Colombia. But policy-makers and politicians alike in America should be mindful of the alliances that he and other rightist paramilitaries…
