A new war in an old (cover) story.

With no media attention or public scrutiny, the Bush Administration has not only embraced but expanded Clinton's Plan Colombia, beyond that war-torn nation's borders. Given a boost as the Andean Regional Initiative (a.k.a. the Andean Initiative), the program aims to beef up military and police capabilities from Bolivia to Panama, in the name of drug eradication and interdiction.

While ostensibly focused on drugs, the $750 million of military hardware deployed via Plan Colombia is used entirely against leftist insurgencies and the farmers that live in the territories they control.

Plan Colombia comes at a delicate time in Colombia's decades-old civil war. The guerrillas and the government are shuffling awkwardly toward peace. Europe and Japan are encouraging dialogue between the government and the leftist FARC rebels. Initially called upon to support Plan Colombia, these nations repudiated it once its insistence on a military solution became clear.

The State Department, of course, denies this: "[Are we] undercutting the peace process? We obviously would argue no. In fact, what we would argue is that Plan Colombia and the spray operations in particular are providing an additional card to President Pastrana and the Colombian government to use in the peace process."

A State Dept. spokesperson describes its program as merely historically prudent. "If there is one thing that history has perhaps taught us over the last 500 to 5,000 years, is [sic] that peace negotiations work better when there is a carrot-and-a-stick approach; which is to say, it is more than just give, give, give, there is a potential risk, or at least an element, a potentially negative element that is offered if, in fact, progress is not made in the peace process."

Beyond pointing out that Plan Colombia is simply the natural continuation of 500 years of conquest, the statement readily admits that the program is a military one, against an insurgent force. Using drugs as a ruse to undercut the internationally endorsed peace process.

Drugs, being a ready source of clandestine money, are in fact a source of income less for FARC and other rebel groups than for the right-wing paramilitaries currently terrorizing Colombia with military (and suspected US) support. In the DEA's own testimony before Congress, "Since the 1970s, drug traffickers based in Colombia have made temporary alliances of convenience with leftist guerrillas, or with right-wing groups."

By the DEA's own account, the guerrillas basically tax drug production in their territory and are not directly involved in drug trafficking at all. The right-wing paramilitaries and their allies in the regular military engage in similar arrangements with traffickers. But not only are they outside the scope of Plan Colombia's sanctions, they are its operatives on the ground.

"The U.S. has a hidden agenda in the war on drugs," says Linda Panetta of School of the Americas Watch, after a visit to Colombia. "It is getting and keeping control of Colombia's resources: gold, silver, copper. Colombia may have the largest oil reserve in the Americas. The US wants to control it."

Oscar Gamboa Zuniga, a representative of Federation of Municipalities on the Pacific Coast of Colombia, puts it this way. "The armed participants in this conflict are fighting for control of strategic places for business."

William Brownfield, deputy assistant secretary of state for western hemispheric affairs, describes the Andean Initiative's three elements of "democracy, development, and drugs" as "a coherent approach that covers all elements of the problems and threats affecting the Andean region and, indirectly, the United States of America today." High on the State Dept.'s list of the Andean Initiative's elements are "trade issues such as the Andean Trade Preference Act which the president has announced he hopes will be extended at the end of this year, and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas."

Multinational corporations control 80% of Columbia's economic activity, including petroleum and other minerals. The Columbian Army provides security for oil drilling sites in return for cash. Meanwhile, The FARC rebels hold the south of Colombia, suspected to contain billions of barrels of oil beneath its farms and forests. Oil giants like BP and Occidental covet that oil.

Plan Colombia is good for US business in the short term, as well. The $750 million in military assistance "to Colombia" is almost entirely spent on contracts with US corporations. According to the State Department, it includes 16 UH-60 Blackhawks, 33 UH-1N helicopters to "provide interim lift to the counternarcotics battalions while the UH-60s were coming on stream," and 34 Huey-2 aircraft helicopters. It's not surprising that helicopter makers like Bell Helicopter and United Technologies Corp. helped Drug Czar Barry McCaffery draft Plan Colombia. The Andean Initiative, of course, means more helicopters for everybody.

Adding the spray planes that spread tons of Monsanto's Roundup (glyphosate) on suspected drug fields (devastating surrounding ecosystems), and the surveillance planes, together with ongoing maintenance, logistics, and training contracts, that $750 million is already spent. Another $250 million earmarked for Andean Initiative contracts is in the works for the next fiscal year.

At least six US military-specialty companies have set up operations in the region, according to US military sources. Two Virginia-based companies, DynCorp Inc. and Military Professional Resources Inc., or MPRI, are completing contracts related to logistical support and training of Colombian police and counterinsurgency forces, under contract.

Congress is presently considering legislation that includes an obscure provision lifting the limits on the number of mercenaries US-based companies in Colombia can hire, and how much weaponry the Pentagon can give them: war by proxy. It reeks of CIA. DynCorp, one of the employers of hired guns, is now famous for its non-Spanish-speaking spies for hire who directed the Peruvian Air Force downing of a plane flown by Baptist missionaries from the US. It also gained recent attention when Peruvian customs seized a shipment of maintenance materials being sent back to Dyncorp headquarters at a Florida Air Force base. Peru says oil samples in the shipment contained freebase heroin (oil-soluble and hence readily extractable). The US government quickly said it wasn't what it looked like--but they have yet to explain what else it might have been.

The traffickers are flourishing, the guerrillas are holding strong. The brunt of Plan Colombia is being born on the backs of farmers.

The spraying is "supposedly killing coca plants, but they spray indiscriminately. In La Hormiga, a small city in the Amazon Territory, the spraying killed medicinal plants and food crops such as yucca. Yet, the adjacent coca fields flourished. Glyphosate seeps into the soil and water. Fish die in contaminated rivers," said the SOA Watch's Panetta. According to the governor of the heavily sprayed Colombian state of Putamayo, fully half of the 30,000 hectares sprayed so far were food crops like corn and potatoes.

A resident of Putamayo put it this way. "We have no birds or butterflies."

Bush's contribution to this catastrophe, the Andean Initiative upgrade, is designed to prevent spillover from Colombia. It appears designed as a prelude to direct US involvement.

Mata, Ecuador, whose airport was recently appropriated by US military forces, is reportedly undergoing a boom in restaurant, bar, and hotel construction in anticipation of the coming American Invasion.

Assistant Secretary Brownfield said Plan Columbia was merely "a starting point in terms of educating and convincing the American people, [and] the United States Congress--as to what the starting point is before we move on to a stage two, which would be a larger, more regional approach."

Sources: the US State Dept. is at www.state.gov; the FARC, The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is at www.farc-ep.org/paginas_ingles; Dyncorp's site is www.dyncorp.com; NarcoNews, at www.narconews.com provides some of the best authentic reporting from the front lines of the drug war. The Seattle Colombia Committee presents an ongoing series of talks and informational events about the situation in Colombia: 206-567-5610.