. John Wensink: Like all of SA's opinions, this is dictated by the fact that it makes Hugo Chavez look good and Uribe and the US look bad. ******* July 8, 2008 SouthAmerica: You are giving too much credit to me. The Bush administration is doing a tremendous job in that area of making the United States look bad for the rest of the world. These guys are experts on that department and they donât need any help from me. Besides American incompetence regarding foreign policy is not related only to Hugo Chavez and his government â I donât know if the US government has any foreign policy goals other than mess up everything around the world from Venezuela to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Iran, to Colombia, to Pakistan, and probably many other places that is not even worth to mention. .
. July 8, 2008 SouthAmerica: I am just laughing of you guys because you canât connect the dots even to be able to save your own life. Why I am laughing? Because the Colombian government with all kind of help from the United States, and from France, and so forth could not secure the release of the hostages in the last 6 years. And that is a fact!!!!!!!!!!! The mainstream media started reporting a few weeks ago that Hugo Chavez had been talking with Farc regarding the 15 hostages release â and suddenly the hostages are finally released after all this time and after the proper payments are made for their release. And now if the name of Hugo Chavez is mentioned regarding the 15 hostages release it is because someone is trying to make the United States to look bad. Please give me a break. CNN News has not mentioned once on its reports that the 15 hostages were released after Hugo Chavez had been negotiating with Farc for a while regarding the release of these hostages. Americans have been trying very hard to discredit Hugo Chavez from his efforts regarding the release of the 15 hostages. Can anyone on his right mind expect the American mainstream media to give credit to Hugo Chavez about the release of the 15 hostages? We need to keep things in the right perspective â after all Hugo Chavez is on the top of the list of America's Boogeyman. .
. July 8, 2008 SouthAmerica: I have to laugh about how the American mainstream media twist things around and serve as a vehicle of propaganda for the US government â even to cover up their own screw-ups as in the case of these guys from the US Department of Defense. These guys are no heroes and basically these guys were incompetent if anything because they got caught spying and doing their dirty business in Colombia. Quoting from the article: âThe FARC seized Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell in February 2003 while the men were carrying out an anti-drug mission for the US Department of Defense, and held them until their dramatic rescue Wednesday.â The civil war has been raging in Colombia for over 35 years, and 95 percent of Americans probably could not find Colombia on the map to save their own lives. And I would not be surprised if 90 percent of Americans would think that Colombia was located somewhere in Africa. Anyway, Americans could careless about the civil war that has been going on in Colombia all this time â most Americans were not even aware that Colombia was in the middle of a civil war for almost 4 decades. About 6 or 7 years ago Colombia finds oil inside their country and immediately Colombia shows up on the American radar and overnight Colombia becomes the number two recipient of American foreign aid (in the American vocabulary foreign aid means guns, tanks, helicopter, fighter jets, and lots of bombs and ammunition). After over 30 years of civil war now Americans want to call the revolutionaries in Colombia of terrorists. If many of these guys were not putting their noses on other peoples business then they would not be seized by the FARC â in essence these guys were prisoners of war. ******** US ex-hostage calls FARC rebels 'terrorists' AFP News â July 7, 2008 SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AFP) â One of three US nationals rescued from Colombia's FARC rebels said Monday the guerillas were not revolutionaries but "terrorists," using a crusade for the poor as a front for crime. "They are not a revolutionary group. They are terrorists," Marc Gonsalves told a televised press conference from Texas, in his first public comments since the Colombian army rescued him and 14 others from captivity Wednesday. "They say that they want equality. They say that they just want to make Colombia a better place. But that's all a lie. It's a cover story, and they hide behind it," the US defense contractor said. "And they use it to justify their criminal activity ... Their interests lie in drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping. They refuse to acknowledge all human rights. And they reject democracy." The FARC seized Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell in February 2003 while the men were carrying out an anti-drug mission for the US Department of Defense, and held them until their dramatic rescue Wednesday. Colombian commandos posing as rebels tricked the guerillas into handing over the trio as well as French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 11 Colombian soldiers. In their first public appearance since they were flown back to the US military base in San Antonio, Texas, early Thursday, the Americans praised the Colombian government and their own for not giving up on their plight. Howes thanked the Colombian army for "our spectacular rescue," and both he and Gonsalves referred to the commandos as "heroes." "There was a time that when I slept, I would dream that I was free. That time was only a few days ago. It feels so good to be free here now with all of you," Gonsalves said. However, they reminded their audience of the remaining hostages and urged FARC to release them. "Don't tell us that you're not terrorists, show us that you're not terrorists. Let those other hostages come home," Gonsalves said. The hostages were likely being tortured for those that got away, he said, adding that even members of the rebel group hated being part of it so much that many chose suicide as the only way out. The majority of FARC's forces "are children and young adults" with little or no education who were "tricked into joining the FARC and they're brainwashed into believing that their cause is a just cause," he said. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) began in 1964 as a bedraggled group of 48 armed farmers led by Manuel Marulanda Velez, a peasant who believed to be the oldest Communist guerilla in the world until he died in March. It began its campaign of kidnappings in the mid-1980s and army hostages served as bargaining chips for FARC prisoners held by the government. By the late 1990s more civilians and political leaders were being snatched. The group is still believed to hold more than 700 hostages, actions which have heavily eroded public support for the organization, and continues to run a vast drug-trafficking network to fund its operations. Former Cuban president Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have both called on the group to free their remaining hostages, with Castro saying that kidnapping and holding prisoners was "objectively cruel." Chavez, who has been accused of backing the FARC -- which he denies -- has questioned its very existence, saying June 9 that today in Latin America "an armed guerrilla movement is out of step." The president warned that the rebel insurgency was being used by the United States to back allegations of terrorism on the continent. "The FARC should know this: you have become an excuse, a justification for the Empire to threaten all of us," Chavez charged, referring to the United States. "You are the perfect excuse." Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hwZPFTehpPWtHLgM2_KbCkZvqWaA .
Brilliant or a sham? Questions asked over Ingrid Betancourt rescue http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4270908.ece
. July 8, 2008 SouthAmerica: reply to ASAP Thanks for your posting regarding the rescue story published by The Sunday Times of London â UK. You guys can read the entire story as published by the Times â I am quoting only the first 3 paragraphs of that article as follows: ****** Brilliant or a sham? Questions asked over Ingrid Betancourt rescue Sunday Times â UK July 4, 2008 The bloodless and apparently brilliant operation to free 15 hostages from the Colombian jungle today became mired in confusion, with some reports even claiming that the entire episode was nothing but a sham to disguise the payment of a ransom. Swiss public radio cited an unidentified source âclose to the events, reliable and tested many times in recent years" as saying the operation had in fact been staged to cover up the fact that the US and Colombians had paid $20 million for their freedom. The hostages released on Wednesday, including Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician, "were in reality ransomed for a high price, and the whole operation afterwards was a set-up," the public broadcaster saidâ¦. ************** It will take time but eventually even the people in the United States government will realize that in the age of the internet they canât get away anymore with this type of bullshit. Eventually the real story would come out with its full detail and they would look just as a bunch of incompetent idiots â nothing new here and they might be getting used to that by now. We still have a lot of gullible people out there that their mindset is influenced by Hollywood movies, but the reality is that this kind of bullshit is going to be harder and harder to stick in the future as more people stop believing in this kind of Fairy Tales. Americans canât even make up Fairy Tales that are believable anymore and that staged rescuing of the 15 hostages is another example of American incompetence. You have to be an idiot to believe on the official version of that story. .