Uribe presses Chávez on Colombia rebels

A really cute little story, almost pure spin.
We do seem to be getting a renewal of rhetoric about
Latin America and Chavez, perhaps partly because Iraq
and the Middle East are no longer pleasant to discuss.
Short, so only one paragraph here.


Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, yesterday said he had asked
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela to contact Colombian rebels over
possible peace talks - the most overt signal to date that Bogotá
suspectsthe Venezuelan government of close ties with Colombian
guerrillas.

FT

before they won control. They are not a proletarian group of agarian reformers, they are hard core killers.

Oh yes, we did! When Vietnam invaded Cambodia because it could no longer tolerate the atrocities across their border by the psychotic Pol Pot, the United States backed the Pol Pot regime!

I guess our leaders were still sore that those funny little guys in their black pajamas kicked our asses out of Vietnam. So sore they were that they decided to support the murderous Pol Pot regime against Vietnam.

Vietnam toppled Pol Pot and pulled its troops out, letting the progressive Cambodians get their house in order.

In 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to oust the dictatorship of Pol Pot. The invasion was a response to two years of border incursions by Pol Pot's forces.

These incursions, which began on May 1, 1975, the very day after the American evacuation, had resulted in the deaths of 30,000 civilians, the destruction of border villages and the abandonment of vast tracts of agricultural land.

Within a fortnight of the invasion, the Khmer Rouge had been driven out into Thailand. In its place, the Vietnamese installed a government led by Cambodian communists who had opposed Pol Pot.

The liberation of Cambodia set off a chain of events which led to the isolation of Vietnam. Pol Pot had been China's protege. By the late seventies, China and the US had virtually become allies in international affairs.

Together they ensured that Thailand gave sanctuary to the remains of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was rearmed and rebuilt into a guerrilla army, an ever-present threat to the population.

Despite the proven massacre of more than a million Cambodians, the international community continued to recognise the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia, keeping its seat at the UN.

http://pilger.carlton.com/vietnam/war_invasion

despite the "CIA is plotting against us" plank, the Polpotist platform was every bit as xenophobic and reactionary as any dozen of the US-backed regimes over large sections of the world, such a partnership there is not really that surprising. Vietnamese intervention there may be one of the few "regime change" operations I DO support, and they suffered greatly for it.

The KR was as radical as any communist group ever. They completely reordered society, in a few days!!
Xenphobic yes, reactionary no.

the US supported a coalition with several other anti-vietnamese groups that had formed in response to the Vietnamese invasion. the Khmer rouge was the most powerful of the factions, but there was also Sihanouk's Army and several non-aligned nationalist factions in the coalition.
I am not excusing siding with the Khmers, but many people do not seem
to know the whole story. The Vietnamese regime change was probably for the best in Cambodia, but like ours in Iraq, the 'winning the
peace part' was not easy, as the majority of cambodians resented their
presence.
The US did refuse to recognize the Vietnamese puppet government in Phnom penh. They also helped the Cambodian coalition retain a seat at the UN
But no weapons from the US were ever sent to the Cambodian insurgents. None. The US and UN did send quite a bit of
humanitarian aid to the border regions though, and some of this went to the Khmer Rouge

That article ignores the brutality of the Vietnamese, who drove tens of thousands into the border regions and thailand.
There was a huge humanitarian refugee crisis, people starving--possibly the worst in SE Asia since 1945, at least in starvation categories.

The Vietnamese set up a puppet government in Phnom penh and occupied the country for 12 years, and they ruled like tyrants. Although not on the scale of the Khmer Rouge, they were still an authoritarian regime. they were not very well liked.

You forget that during the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese government built up the Khmer Rouge, trained and armed them. they didn't create them, but before the Vietnamese propped them up, the Khmer Rouge were a tiny, useless faction of political extremists. The Vietnamese continued to arm them until 1975, even though there was a substantial hostility between the Khmers toward the Vietnamese after 1973--The Khmer Rouge believed that Vietnam wanted to use them as puppets in a 'Communist IndoChina League' with the Vietnamese as the leaders.
So the Vietnamese faced a situation similar to the one we have with Osama Bin laden--we armed and supported him and we got a blowback, just like the Vietnamese did with their own extremists.

and I have read a LOT about foreign affairs and 20th century World history. In fact I majored in History, with an emphasis on 20th century history.
The thing is though, I go beyond Chomsky because he doesn't tell most of the story, and frequently distorts facts.

And they sell Norte Amercano coke users a lot of coke,
which funds their $900 million military budget, and they
are not above a little kidnapping or extortion,
but who in Colombia is above a little "free enterprise"?

I don't see that they resemble the Khmer Rouge at all.

Uribe is just the latest in a long line of US puppets.
Not a very good one either, from what I've seen so far.
I don't give him much longer.

He was elected by a landslide and has high approval ratings

The Iraqi people UNANIMOUSLY voted for him!

Saddam was in control of the state machinery during that election.
Uribe was not the President and was running on a hard line platform. He won by a landslide. There is a huge difference. In Iraq, they did not even have another name on the ticket!!

I was seriously wondering how legitimate the election was.

Contast with Mr. Chavez next door, who has had the
temerity to attempt to operate outside the perimeter
of the "Washington Consensus".

Mr. Uribe is supported by his consitutency, which is a small
portion of the population of the nation he purports to govern.

because i read he was pretty popular down there--a heck of a lot more popular than Chavez--who is the South American Grey Davis, who has had millions of people against him for months.

I guess, if it's written down, it must be so.