Congress (DEMS) pulled the funding because of concern about union members in Colombia being mistreated. President Uribe’s successful military strategy has resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of FARC/drug cartel related deaths. And his country’s economy has grown commensurately. He is a popular conservative politician in South America. Bush Derangement Syndrome, Southern Strain.
Congress is covertly on the side of FARC, I suspect. They’ve been trying to do in Uribe since the day he took office. They’re annoyed that the policy of their golden boy, Bill Clinton, was rejected and Bush’s was put in place, implemented, and is succeeding. Bill basically gave away the entire center of the country to ELN/FARC. Bush and Uribe took it back, and now Colombia is a functioning country again. Can’t have that, can we?
The amazing thing is, and you don’t see this in the media, only three union officials have been killed in Colombia this year, down from some two hundred a decade ago. There is some question as to what the motives in the killings were, too, some say the three killed were aligned with the FARC or killed for personal reasons. For practical purposes, union violence in Colombia is virtually nonexistent. Unions, by the way, are very unpopular in Colombia. Nobody wants to belong to one.