Trying To Replicate Iraq Prognostication

The New York Times, having found that it fundamentally got the war in Iraq wrong (the editorial page counseled that the US lost the war, that the surge wouldn't work, genocide was preferred, and that it was pointless to stay), is trying to replicate that success in prognostication.

It's reporting that the US and Colombia are losing the war against FARC because FARC and other terrorists continue to get financing from cocaine sales.

The Times spin is that because problems remain that the war is futile and lost.

Curious position.

How about declaring that the "war on poverty" is lost since there's a poor person somewhere in the great United States and therefore devote all the tens of billions spent circling the drain on that issue annually to something more important like infrastructure? Or perhaps that the "war on drugs" in the US is a failure and use that money for something else, like tax relief or alternative energy research?

Maybe the Times would like to explain how and why NGOs are busy supporting FARC (HT: Instapundit).

No, the reason the Times pushes this story is because they can't stand to see Colombia succeed. It flies in the face of their wishful thinking.

Colombia Reveals Video of Hostage Rescue

Colombia has released video showing portions of the hostage rescue operation that freed Ingrid Betancourt, three American contractors, and 11 Colombian soldiers.



It's curious that Colombia is being criticized by some quarters for relying on American and possibly Israeli intel to help plan and/or carry out the rescue operation.

At a news conference here with dozens of journalists, the government also defended the rescue as a Colombian effort after reports that American and Israeli advisers had taken part.

“Not a single foreigner participated,” Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said. But he acknowledged that the American military had provided a surveillance plane to monitor the operation, as well as tracking technology placed on the helicopter used to spirit the hostages away that could emit distress signals.

He also said Israel had helped Colombia reorganize its intelligence services in the past.

While Colombia receives more than $600 million a year in security and antinarcotics aid from the United States, any perception of a more in-depth American role in the rescue would be likely to inflame emotions in neighboring countries like Venezuela, where political supporters of President Hugo Chávez openly support the FARC.

Mr. Santos added that the Colombian intelligence agents sent into the jungle, who numbered more than a dozen and included at least one woman, fooled the guerrillas into believing that they were part of a polyglot humanitarian mission intended to transfer the captives elsewhere in the country at the request of a senior FARC commander.

The rescuers included an agent pretending to be Italian, another supposed to be from the Middle East and a third who performed his role as an Australian so convincingly, according to Mr. Santos, that he invoked the spirit of Crocodile Dundee.

Even the video itself was part of the ruse, shot by two agents pretending to be television journalists. The Colombians’ three-minute video captured some of the despair, trickery and euphoria involved in the operation.

It seems that the anti-Americanism runs deep among the journalists, who pestered the Colombian officials over foreign assistance despite the fact that it's clear that Hugo Chavez and Venezuela have been busy supporting FARC for years.

Venezuela has been supporting that terrorist group and Chavez has been intent upon expanding his influence in Latin America, so the fact that the Colombians have effectively carried out this operation is a big black eye for Chavez's designs. That follows nothing but a series of setbacks for Chavez relating to Colombia and FARC since the Colombians killed a major FARC leader and captured all manner of intel, including a laptop containing links between FARC, Venezuela, and even a meeting between FARC terrorists and a so-far unnamed Democratic party operative possibly linked with the Obama campaign.

15 Hostages Rescued From FARC Clutches in Colombia

This is a developing story, but the Colombian military has rescued 15 hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt and three US military contractors from their FARC captors.

UPDATE:
FARC terrorists have been turning themselves in rather than face the Colombian military.

The FARC still holds an estimated 700 hostages as bargaining chips, including three U.S. military contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt. And it is fearful of disarming, given that when its movement tried to enter politics in the 1980s, far-right death squads killed some 4,000 activists.

As the FARC hunkers down, rebels are increasingly inflicting casualties with land mines and sniper attacks. Nearly half of the 471 soldiers and police it killed last year were land mine victims, the military says.

The FARC's biggest units and top commanders, meanwhile, are believed to be hiding out in barely accessible mountains and jungles in southern and eastern Colombia from which it is very hard to dislodge them, the U.S. military analyst said.

Meanwhile, the Colombian military's onslaught has cut FARC income from the cocaine trade to an estimated $200-$300 million a year - about half what it earned a decade ago, according to Bruce Bagley, a drug war expert at the University of Miami in Florida.

Canizares says his disillusionment began three years ago when a new front commander, alias "Rodrigo," alienated the locals by shortchanging coca farmers and enriching himself with skimmed cocaine profits.

FARC has also received support from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, which has complicated matters further.

UPDATE:
Reuters reports that the freed hostages are in fairly good health. As Jammie reminds me, it's quite possible that today's rescue came about in part because of the capture of key intel - namely a FARC laptop, in operations at the beginning of March. Interpol verified that the laptop and its contents were legitimate, including links between FARC and Venezuela and Ecuador.

UPDATE:
The military operation began when Colombian commandos captured terrorists manning a security cordon around the hostages, and convinced the remaining terrorists to give up, which they did without a loss of life.

UPDATE:
Hot Air notes that the lunatic fringe is questioning the timing over the hostage rescue operation as John McCain was in Colombia promoting a free trade agreement between the US and Colombia that has been held up by Congressional Democrats.

UPDATE:
And there's plenty more hostages too - several hundred in fact. It's curious to look back at some of the reporting and punditry surrounding the March cross border raid and the opining of pundits that it put the lives of those hostages in jeopardy. It now looks like the raid helped gather intel to crush the terror group and rescue hostages. Far from putting lives in jeopardy, it appears to have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

UPDATE:
It took good intel to make this operation happen:

Colombia freed Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors from leftist guerrillas on Wednesday after military spies tricked rebels into giving them up without a single injury, the defense minister said. In all, the operation freed 15 hostages including Colombian soldiers and police, Juan Manuel Santos said.

(snip)

Santos said the military intelligence agents infiltrated the guerrilla ranks and led the local commander in charge of the hostages, alias Cesar, to believe they were going to take them by helicopter to Alfonso Cano, the guerrillas' supreme leader.

Surrounded by military commandos, Cesar and the other guerrillas gave up without a fight as they helicopters took the hostages to a military base in Guaviare.

FARC has been compromised by the Colombian anti-terrorism operations, and I can only hope that they are able to secure the release of the hundreds of other hostages in short order.

Did the Los Angeles Times FARC Up?

It appears that my suspicions were right that something was fishy about the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the recent news on the surrender of a major FARC leader.

Patterico has the followup and notes that the evidence keeps rolling in suggesting that the materials that the LAT claims was unconfirmed, was in fact, confirmed.

The question remains why would the LAT make such an egregious error in their reporting on FARC.

FARC's Collapsing?

Hot Air notes that one of the leaders of the terrorist group FARC has surrendered to Colombian officials and urged the remaining FARC members to surrender. That's not good news for [T]hugo Chavez and Venezuela, whose largesse found its way into FARC's coffers and computers.

The commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s Force 47 told reporters in Bogota Monday — a day after surrendering — that “the solution is not through war. There must be dialogue.”

Nelly Avila Moreno, 45, whose nom de guerre was Karina, said she and her longtime male companion made the decision jointly to abandon the FARC group, based in the jungle, at 5 a.m. Sunday.

She said pressure from Colombian soldiers had been key to their decision, and she called on her fellow rebels to follow her example.

“I invite them to change the sensibility that is among the guerrillas,” she said, seated by her companion, who said nothing during the news conference.

Colombia has not only taken the fight to FARC, but has taken the fight from FARC - killing, capturing, and forcing the surrender of terrorist group leaders has a way of doing that. Even more importantly, the capture of intel, such as those computer files, provides even more intel to be used to capture still more terrorist cells and shut down FARC operations. Each success breeds even more success.

No wonder Chavez is braying loudly that the computers don't show anything and is trying to make hay over the claim that a US aircraft entered Venezuelan airspace without permission. He's trying to take the heat off his regime.

Meanwhile, the LA Times reports that Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) wants to hold hearings on the computer files. The LAT curiously claims that the computer files have not been independently confirmed. That's curious given that Interpol has certified the more than 37,000 records as being authentic.

Last week, Interpol -- the world's top police agency -- issued a report certifying the authenticity of 37,872 computer files from Colombia's FARC guerrillas containing hundreds of references to Venezuela's and Ecuador's active support for the armed rebel group. Chávez and Correa reacted as they always do, with insults and accusations against the United States. As he did a few months ago when a Venezuelan delegation was caught trying to smuggle $800,000 in cash into Argentina for his political allies there, Chávez claimed the Interpol investigation into the three laptops and two external drives seized by Colombia's armed forces in a March 1 raid into a FARC camp in Ecuador was "a circus." He called Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble a "mafioso" and a "vagabond."

Why would the LAT make that claim or are they simply playing semantics over confirmation and authenticity, unless they were shilling for Chavez?

[T]hugo's Latest Trouble

Well, [T]hugo Chavez is going to have a hard time trying to repudiate this.

The onus is now on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to explain evidence of his apparently intimate ties to Colombia's main guerrilla army.

Interpol on Thursday endorsed the authenticity of computer files seized in a rebel camp, announcing that Colombia did not tamper with documents indicating Chavez sought to finance and arm the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Venezuelan officials set up contacts with Australian arms dealers and arranged for missile training in the Middle East, according to the documents, which were on computer hard drives seized by Colombia and obtained by the Washington Post.

Yet Chavez responded sarcastically to Interpol's conclusions.

"Do you think we should waste time here on something so ridiculous?" he told reporters in Caracas.

Yes, let Chavez try to laugh it off. He's been in cahoots with FARC terrorists who are trying to undermine the Colombian government and the terrorists now appear to be little more than a proxy for Venezuela's top thug. His fingerprints are all over this, and the linkages between the terrorists and Venezuela's policies are not mere coincidences. They are tightly bound and the computer records are damning.

A FARC'in' Mess

[T]hugo Chavez may have complained bitterly about the fact that Colombia took out a bunch of FARC terrorists and captured a treasure trove of intel along the way, and then stated that any information provided by Colombia was invented, but Interpol sees things a wee bit differently.

Interpol confirms what Colombia has been saying all along.

The information found in the computers of the deceased leader of the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Raúl Reyes, was not manipulated by Colombian authorities, according to an Interpol's report to be released next May 15, as disclosed by Bogota El Tiempo daily newspaper.

The report stated that a committee comprising computer science experts from Korea, Australia, and Singapore working for the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) completed last May 2 the investigation into the three computers found in Reyes' camp in Ecuador, Efe reported.

"The first finding was that Reyes' files were not manipulated and that security agencies and citizens who had the computer in their hands kept them safe," the Colombian newspaper stated.

Colombia has been blaming Venezuela for supporting the FARC terrorists, and the intel gleaned from those computers backed up their assertions.

It remains to be seen what Chavez will do in light of this. I expect him to complain that Interpol is out to get him and is simply another tool of the imperialist Americans to subjugate Venezuela or other such blathering.

UPDATE:
Gateway Pundit runs down a partial list of items found on those laptop computer files, and it's pretty damning:

-- FARC connections with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa
-- Records of $300 million offerings from Hugo Chavez
-- Thank you notes from Hugo Chavez dating back to 1992
-- Uranium purchasing records
-- Admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria
-- Admit to planting a 2003 car bomb killing 36 at a Bogota upper crust club
-- Directions on how to make a Dirty Bomb
-- Information that led to the discovery of 60 pounds of uranium
-- Letter to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi asking for cash to buy surface-to-air missiles
-- Meetings with "gringos" about Barack Obama
-- Information on Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout who was later captured
-- FARC funding Correa's campaign
-- Cuban links to FARC
-- Links to US Democrats
-- $480,000 of FARC cash in Costa Rican safe house
-- $100,000 to President Correa's campaign for election

Still, we'd love to know who they purchased the uranium from; which US Democrats were involved, and who those gringos were with whom FARC discussed Barack Obama.

Colombia Reveals Venezuela's Terror Ties

I'm not surprised in the slightest that Venezuelan leader [T]hugo Chavez is supporting the terrorist group FARC. It furthers his regional ambitions to do so. The Times is somewhat skeptical of the veracity of the files, especially because it would bolster the American case that the Venezuelans are supporting terrorists.

Officials taking part in Colombia’s investigation of the computers provided The New York Times with copies of more than 20 files, some of which also showed contributions from the rebels to the 2006 campaign of Ecuador’s leftist president, Rafael Correa.

If verified, the files would offer rare insight into the cloak-and-dagger nature of Latin America’s longest-running guerrilla conflict, including what appeared to be the killing of a Colombian government spy with microchips implanted in her body, a crime apparently carried out by the rebels in their jungle redoubt.

The files would also potentially link the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador to the leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the United States says is a terrorist group and has fought to overthrow Colombia’s government for four decades.

Though it was impossible to authenticate the files independently, the Colombian officials said their government had invited Interpol to verify the files. The officials did not want to be identified while any Interpol inquiry was under way.

Both the United States and Colombia, Washington’s staunchest ally in the region, have a strong interest in undercutting President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who has sought to counter United States influence by forming his own leftist bloc in the region. But the Colombian officials who provided the computer files adamantly vouched for them.

The files contained touches that suggested authenticity: they were filled with revolutionary jargon, passages in numerical code, missives about American policy in Latin America and even brief personal reflections like one by a senior rebel commander on the joy of becoming a grandfather.

Other senior Colombian officials said the files made public so far only scratched the surface of the captured archives, risking new friction with Venezuela and Ecuador, both of whom have dismissed the files as fakes.

Given that Venezuela has cozied up with Ahmadinejad and Iran, it isn't surprising that Chavez is pushing insurgencies against his neighbors. Birds of a feather.

What Else Was On That Captured FARC Laptop

While the media is thus far focused on the captured FARC laptop and how Colombian authorities are showing that it links FARC with Venezuela and [T]hugo Chavez, other information on the laptop might be a harbinger of things to come should Barack Obama win the Presidency.

Why do I say that? Well, because apparently the terrorists hold Obama in high regard and that they think Obama wont help out our current allies in Colombia. The key graf (original and translation):

"6. Los gringos pedirán cita con el ministro para solicitarle nos comunicara su interés en conversar estos temas. Dicen que el nuevo presidente de su país será Obama y que ellos están interesados en sus compatriotas. Obama no apoyara Plan Colombia ni firma de TLC. Aquí respondimos que nos interesan las relaciones con todos los gobiernos en igualdad de condiciones y que en el caso de Estados Unidos se requiere in pronunciamiento público expresando su interés en conversar con las Farc dada su eterna guerra con nosotros.

Es todo, Abrazos, Raúl."

(translated)
6. The gringos will ask for an appointment with the minister to solicit him to communicate to us his interest in discussing these topics. They say that the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support "Plan Colombia" nor will he sign the TLC (Colombian Free Trade agreement). Here we responded that we are interested in relations with all governments in equality of conditions and that in the case of the US it is required a public pronouncement expressing their interest in talking with the FARC given their eternal war against us.

The terrorists have Obama pegged correctly. He's against free trade (as he has repeatedly stated he'd renegotiate or exit NAFTA - much to the chagrin of the Canadians, which caused the kerfuffle over the weekend).

Obama also has no problem dealing with former terrorists including Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. I can't help but think that the leftists (and revolutionaries) with whom Obama has surrounded himself with hasn't rubbed off on him.

Meanwhile, the situation remains tense along the border between Venezuela and Colombia. The laptop suggests that Chavez and FARC have been courting each other for years, and that [T]hugo may have thought the timing was right to push forward with his agenda for the region. He might also have been motivated to act because Colombia is on the verge of taking out FARC once and for all, and he feels dedicated to backing the terrorists against a rival nation. Austin Bay has more on this development.

Fausta has a rundown of the military capabilities for the nations involved thus far, and notes the farcical headline claiming that Venezuela has shut the border. It's as porous as ever, considering that FARC has been able to cross back and forth at will, despite Colombian pressure.

Standoff

The situation between Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador is approaching a boiling point, and it stems from Venezuela's and Ecuador's support for the terrorist group FARC, which has caused countless deaths and untold misery for the people of Colombia.

FARC may have gotten more than $300 million from Chavez's Venezuela over the years, and Colombia may pursue criminal charges against [T]hugo in the International Criminal Court as a result.

Colombia also says that FARC was pursuing dirty bombs, which is par for the course, and makes you wonder what Iran and Venezuela have been sharing all these years since [T]hugo came to power.

“Just yesterday (Monday) our national police submitted an initial report regarding the content of two computers found with Raul Reyes, second in command of FARC, who was killed last Saturday,” Santos said.

They contained “information from one commander to another indicating that FARC was apparently negotiating for radioactive material, the primary basis for generating dirty weapons of mass destruction and terrorism,” he added.

Initial information verified with international support showed “terrorist groups, based on the economic power of drug trafficking, constitute a serious threat not to just our country but to the entire Andean and Latin American region,” he said.

Things are definitely approaching a boiling point, and Chavez is behind it.

UPDATE:
The Counterterrorism Blog has much more background on the situation, and notes a thus far unconfirmed report that the US Treasury Department has found that the Chavez regime has found billions in laundered funds involving senior Venezuelan officials and their associates hidden overseas, which may have been used in terrorism related activities.

Pulling Strings

Venezuelan strongman [T]hugo Chavez continues to beat the drums of war with his neighbors and his latest actions to support the terrorist group FARC, which operates in neighboring Colombia, threatens to break into a wider war. Chavez is sending troops to the border in support of FARC, which would be a very strong sign that Chavez is clearly lining up with terrorist groups and seeking to destabilize his neighbors for his own benefit.

Colombia had gone after FARC troops that went into Ecuador, which happens to be led by a Chavez sympathizer. Chavez is trying to claim that he's simply protecting the international order and preventing further harm against a sovereign nation, all the while Colombia gets screwed for trying to protect itself against ongoing narco-terrorism by FARC.

The crisis erupted after Colombia bombed and sent troops inside Ecuador in a weekend raid that killed a Colombian rebel leader in his jungle camp in a major blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency.

Governments from France to Brazil sought to defuse the crisis in the Andes, where Washington ally Colombian President Alvaro Uribe faces left-wing leaders fiercely opposed to U.S. free-market proposals for the region.

Traffic was normal in San Antonio at the main border crossing point between Venezuela and Colombia and while Venezuela and Ecuador said they had reinforced their borders, there was no immediate sign of any mobilization.

Venezuela state TV offered blanket coverage of the crisis but it showed no images of tanks, planes or troops moving and no other media reported military movements in the border area.

Colombia said it would not send extra troops to its frontiers with Venezuela and Ecuador.

Bogota justified its operation on Monday by saying international law allows such actions against "terrorists" and accused Ecuador of permitting the Marxist FARC rebels to take refuge in its territory.

"We have never been a country for ventures either in politics or in military matters," Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos told a U.N. human rights commission in Geneva. "We have always been respectful of the principal of non-interference."

But Ecuador, a close ally of the larger, richer Venezuela, said Colombia deliberately violated its sovereignty and urged Latin American governments to pressure Bogota so that it does not repeat its "aggression."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is struggling to fix chronic food shortages in the OPEC nation, sent tanks to the border and threatened to counterattack with Russian-made jets should Colombia unleash a similar raid in Venezuela.

Chavez, who urged governments to side against Colombia, also closed his embassy in Bogota and fellow leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa expelled Colombia's ambassador from Quito. Chavez and Correa both called conservative Uribe a liar.

With Chavez warning war could break out, there was immediate impact on the economies of the three Andean nations which share active trade ties.

UPDATE:
Colombia, for its part, has filed a complaint with the UN against those nations harboring FARC, especially Ecuador. Colombia also claims to have uncovered documents in a raid against a FARC camp in Ecuador that shows there to be ties between FARC and the Ecuadorian government.

Colombia, after bombing a rebel camp in Ecuador last weekend, filed a complaint with the United Nations asking neighboring countries to stop harboring terrorist organizations.

Documents found by Colombian troops at the destroyed camp show ties between the rebels and the government of Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, Colombian police Chief Oscar Naranjo said late last night.

The links, if proven, would violate a UN Security Council resolution which calls on countries to ``deny refuge to those that finance, plan or commit acts of terrorism,'' and to prevent such elements from ``using their respective territories for that end,'' Colombia's Vice President Francisco Santos told UN members at a meeting in Geneva.

``On our continent there are those who intentionally violate this obligatory mandate,'' Santos said, without naming any countries.

The documents that outlined the ties belonged to Raul Reyes, reputedly the second in command of Colombia's biggest guerrilla group, who was killed March 1 in by the Colombian attack in Ecuadorean territory, Naranjo said.

UPDATE:
It gets better than that. Columbia is claiming that Chavez sent $300 million to the FARC terrorists.

Colombia’s police chief, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, said documents recovered from a slain rebel leader’s computer indicate Chavez recently sent $300 million to Colombian guerrillas. He said another document indicates the rebels sent money to Chavez when he was a jailed coup leader more than a decade ago.

Naranjo said the files were recovered from a laptop owned by the rebel known as Raul Reyes, who was killed Saturday in a Colombian commando raid on a camp just across the border in Ecuador.

“A note recovered from Raul Reyes speaks of how grateful Chavez was for the 100 million pesos (about $150,000 at the time) that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, delivered to Chavez when he was in prison,” Naranjo told a news conference in Bogota.