Posted on 03/04/2008 3:56:54 AM PST by maquiladora
Colombia's FARC guerrilla movement was trying to get hold of radioactive material to make a "dirty bomb," Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos said on Tuesday.
Santos told the United Nations Conference on Disarmament that materials found on computers of Raul Reyes, the deputy commander of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), showed the group was in negotiations to get hold of radioactive matter for a bomb. (Reuters)
Is FARC funded by Chavez?
Uh yup....
OPINION
Well now, this sure isn’t nice and neighborly.
Hugo Chavez, the Che worshipper and really good friend of Ahmadinejad.
Hmmm... interesting times we live in.
#
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&um=1&tab=wn&q=Hugo+Chavez+%2B+farc&btnG=Search+News
This would pretty much sink it for me, if I was the Prez. I’d be on the phone to the SEALs about now. Chavez needs to be removed from the equation.
Yes, well, I’m just a housewife watching the internet.
However, I agree with you 100%.
FARC and Chavez go together like bread and butter.
News Flashback: Jan 11, 08
Chavez: Take FARC off terror list
CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Friday for Europe to remove from its list of terrorist organizations two Colombian groups — including FARC, the group that freed two hostages Thursday in a mission Chavez organized.
During his televised State of the Union speech, Chavez — an outspoken enemy of the Bush administration — insisted Europe includes the two groups on its terror list only because of “pressure” from the United States, which also names them on its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
“I request from the governments of the continent that they will remove the FARC and the ELN,” Chavez said.
FARC, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, has been blamed for numerous attacks and holds about 750 hostages, according to Colombian government estimates.
Chávez’s ‘War’ Drums
March 4,
Colombia’s military scored a major antiterror victory this weekend by killing the second in command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and 16 other FARC guerrillas. Venezuelan President and FARC ally Hugo Chávez has reacted by threatening war against Bogotá. But the real news is that the raid produced a laptop computer belonging to the expired comandante that reveals some of Mr. Chávez’s secrets.
The raid that killed FARC big Raúl Reyes shocked the terrorists because it happened in Ecuador — about a mile across the border from Colombia. The guerrillas are used to operating inside Colombia, only to escape to safe havens in Ecuador and Venezuela when Colombia’s military is in hot pursuit. This time Colombian officers kept going, and for legitimate reasons of self-defense. (We doubt the U.S. would stop its troops at the border if terrorists were bombing sites in Texas from havens in Mexico.)
AP
Mr. Chávez rushed to insist that Ecuador’s sovereignty had been violated, even before Ecuador did. On his weekly television show on Sunday, the Venezuelan bully called the death of Reyes a “cowardly assassination” and observed a moment of silence. He closed the Venezuelan embassy in Bogotá, ordered 10 battalions with tanks to the Colombian border, and warned of war if the Colombian army staged a similar raid inside Venezuela.
Such a conventional war isn’t likely. Colombia today has a superior military force, thanks in part to Mr. Chávez’s purge of his own officer corp as a way to minimize risks of a coup d’etat against him. The war bluster is especially phony because Mr. Chavez is already waging his own guerrilla campaign against Colombia through his support for the FARC. The FARC’s “foreign minister,” Rodrigo Granda, was nabbed three years ago by bounty hunters in Caracas, where he was living comfortably, and a former Venezuelan military officer told us years ago that the army was instructed not to pursue the FARC in the Venezuelan jungle.
What may really have upset Mr. Chávez is the capture of Reyes’s laptop. According to Colombia’s top police official, General Oscar Naranjo, the computer contains evidence supporting the claim that the FARC is working with Mr. Chávez. General Naranjo said Monday that Reyes’s laptop records showed that Venezuela may have paid $300 million to the FARC in exchange for its recent release of six civilian hostages. Mr. Chávez had spun those releases as a triumph of his personal mediation.
General Naranjo said the laptop also contains documents showing that the FARC was seeking to buy 50 kilos of uranium, and the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo has reported that the records revealed the sale of 700 kilograms of cocaine valued at $1.5 million. The general added that the military found a thank-you note from Mr. Chávez to the FARC for some $150,000 that the rebels had sent him when he was in prison for his attempted coup d’etat in 1992.
Ecuador, an ally of Mr. Chávez, was slow to express outrage at the Colombian raid but eventually came around. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that the rebels were “bombed and massacred as they slept, using precision technology.” He is right about that — which is why the FARC’s friends are so angry.
The media will treat this as a “yellowcake” fiction.
I agree but think a cruise missile would do best!
I’m a bit less cynical about this. Colombia has been fighting the FARC for over 40 years. Clearly, they hit the motherlode of insider info when they got Reye’s laptop. Uribe is a decent, sensible man and an attorney, not some populist nutcase given to histrionics a la Chavez. I think they got the goods on Chavez and FARC.
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