6 replies to this topic

[aucu]

http://www.cnn.com/2...mbia/index.html"I have no illusions about the FARC, but it looks like they are a peasant army fighting for a decent living," Stone said in an interview with The Associated Press at his hotel bar. "And here, if you fight, you fight to win."This is the most ignorant comment I've seen about the FARC, but what can you really expect from Stone.

[colonel Feathers]

Jusy added him to my death pool.

[Mercury69]

Unless it's some kind of oblique strategy or you're throwing a match, I don't think anybody fights to lose...

[aucu]

Mercury69, on Monday, December 31st, 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

Unless it's some kind of oblique strategy or you're throwing a match, I don't think anybody fights to lose...

They can't win, they have been at it since the 1950's

[aucu]

So it goes, whats the world coming to when you can't trust kidnaping, drug running, murdering Marxists? VILLAVICENCIO, COLOMBIA (CNN) -- A mission to free three hostages held by leftist rebels in Colombia stalled Monday, with the rebels and Colombian authorities trading blame for the delay.The mother of kidnapped politician Clara Rojas speaks with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, right. On Monday night, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who organized the mission, said he remained hopeful that the operation would succeed despite major obstacles that surfaced earlier in the day."There is no deadline," he told reporters Monday night.The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC for its Spanish acronym, had planned to release three hostages as part of a deal Chavez brokered. Yet they reversed course Monday and said that Colombian military operations in the area made a release impractical."Due to the intense military activity in the zone, the FARC is prohibited and unable to give up the hostages due to fear for their safety and the safety of any guerrilla members involved in the operation," the group said in a statement Chavez read to reporters. "As soon as there is certainty of a safe place for the release of the hostages, this one will take place."In a televised news conference from Villavicencio, Colombia, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe denied the group's assertion and said there are no combat operations in the area near the rebels. He blasted the FARC as a terrorist organization with a history of kidnapping and killing."The FARC has always deceived Colombia, and they want to deceive the world," Uribe said.Don't MissMission to get hostages delayed FARC vows to release hostages The sharp exchanges cast doubt on the future of "Operation Emmanuel," a mission to free Clara Rojas, who managed a candidate's bid for the Colombian presidency in 2002; her son, Emmanuel; and Consuelo Gonzalez, a prominent Colombian politician.The FARC kidnapped Rojas and Gonzalez in 2002. Rojas gave birth to Emmanuel in 2004. He is apparently the result of a relationship she had with a rebel, but the nature of that relationship is unclear.On Monday night, Chavez expressed hope that the mission could still succeed. He told reporters that Venezuelan helicopters would continue to wait in central Colombia for further instructions from the FARC as long as the Colombian government allowed them to.Meanwhile, people in Colombia and Venezuela were digesting a stunning suggestion from Uribe that the FARC delayed releasing the hostages because they don't actually have custody of the three-year-old captive.Authorities in Colombia suspect that the FARC duped child-welfare authorities in Colombia by presenting the boy as a child in need of foster care in 2005, he said."The FARC has not dared to move forward on their commitment to liberate the hostages because they do not have in their custody the child, Emmanuel," the president said.Investigators have identified a boy who could be Emmanuel -- he's in a foster home in Bogota, Uribe said -- and authorities have asked the Red Cross to conduct DNA tests on Emmanuel's grandmother. Those tests could confirm or refute their suspicions.During his news conference, the Colombian president blasted the FARC for violating international norms and kidnapping and killing several hostages in the past. The Colombian government had given all necessary assurances for the successful completion of the mission, Uribe said.Two Venezuelan helicopters -- which carried the symbol of the International Committee of the Red Cross -- and their crews waited in vain over the weekend in Villavicencio to receive coordinates from the rebels. A team of international delegates formed by Chavez and charged with overseeing the hostages' release are also in Villavicencio. They include Latin American diplomats and politicians, as well as U.S. movie director Oliver Stone.Uribe had originally asked Chavez to help secure the release of hostages, hundreds of whom are held by the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN). But last month, Uribe effectively fired Chavez, saying he broke protocol by communicating directly with his top general. Chavez has since called Uribe a "liar" and said FARC was ready to release prisoners, but Uribe's interference stalled those plans.FARC's promise to release the three hostages has been seen as an effort to get Chavez back on board as a mediator -- the Venezuelan president is more sympathetic to the rebels than Uribe's government -- and a positive public relations move during the holidays.The FARC has justified hostage-taking as a legitimate military tactic in a long-running and complex civil war that has also involved right-wing paramilitaries, government forces and drug traffickers. Fighting has waned, but not stopped in recent years.The planned release of the three hostages stirred hope that the FARC could free others in captivity.Among the captives are three American contractors who were captured when their plane went down in 2003 during a drug-eradication flight, and Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian independent presidential candidate who was kidnapped in 2002. Rojas was kidnapped in 2002 while she managed Betancourt's campaign.Betancourt herself is perhaps the best-known captive in a country plagued by kidnapping. Her release has become a cause celebre in France. Earlier this month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy appealed to FARC to release Betancourt, saying he had a "dream to see Ingrid among her family this Christmas."Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, FARC is Colombia's oldest, largest, most capable and best-equipped Marxist rebel group, according to the U.S. Department of State. The United States, the European Union and Colombia classify FARC as a terrorist group.

[aucu]

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- The story of a boy born into captivity in the South American jungle has riveted people for more than a year in Colombia, striking a nerve in a country numbed by 40 years of political violence. Clara Rojas appears in a video released by the kidnappers in July 2002. 1 of 2 On Friday, the story took a stunning turn.The top federal prosecutor in Colombia, Mario Iguaran Arana, said the 3-year-old child known simply as Emmanuel may not be a hostage after all.Initial DNA test results, he said, suggest that Emmanuel has been living under an assumed name for more than two years with a foster family in Bogota, hundreds of miles from the jungle camp where he was born into captivity.That revelation capped a week of dizzying developments that produced rare good news for relatives of about 700 hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a leftist insurgent force that has sought to overthrow the Colombian government since the late 1960s.The news, if confirmed, would hurt the credibility of the FARC and could also tarnish the reputation of President Hugo Chavez of neighboring Venezuela. Chavez struck a deal with the FARC that was to have led to freedom for Emmanuel, his mother and another hostage.The boy's plight figured so prominently in the public imagination in South America that Chavez dubbed the mission "Operation Emmanuel."Don't MissColombia: DNA shows foster child is son of hostage Mission's fate uncertain Hostage deal's collapse shows Chavez's limits When the deal collapsed on New Year's Eve, the FARC said that Colombian military operations had thwarted plans for the hostage handoff.The Colombian authorities tell a different story. They say the FARC backed out of the deal because they didn't really have Emmanuel, born in 2004 after a relationship between a rebel and Clara Rojas, a former vice presidential candidate who was taken hostage by the FARC six years ago.Around Emmanuel's first birthday, Colombian authorities say, FARC rebels took him from his mother and delivered him to a peasant named Jose Gomez. The rebels, they say, forced Gomez to pose as the boy's great uncle and place him in foster care by presenting him as an abandoned child.The boy wound up in a two-story hospital of white concrete and red brick in San Jose del Guaviare, a small town near jungle territory controlled by rebels.A doctor who treated him, Alredo Gutierrez, told a reporter this week that the boy arrived with no clothes and so touched the hospital staff that they took up a collection to help him.Authorities soon placed the boy -- identified to them as Juan David Gomez Tapiero -- in the custody of a child-welfare agency. He had a fractured arm, suffered from malnutrition and had leishmaniasis, an ailment common in the jungle, authorities in Colombia said at a press conference.A few weeks ago, with a deal in the works to free three hostages, the FARC demanded that Gomez retrieve the boy by December 30, Colombian authorities told CNN. Yet when Gomez tried to reclaim the child, he aroused suspicion by saying he was the boy's father -- not his great-uncle, as he had claimed to be in 2005, Gutierrez said.That led to an investigation and set into motion a dramatic sequence of events that could culminate with more formal DNA results that confirm the boy's identity.At a press conference in Bogota on Friday, Colombia's top federal prosecutor, Iguaran, said the preliminary results show that "there is a very high probability" that the child Gomez turned over in 2005 is actually Emmanuel. He said the initial results will be checked against tests being done in European labs to verify the child's identity.Authorities compared the child's DNA with samples from Clara Rojas' mother and brothers, who had traveled to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas a few weeks ago in anticipation of the mission to free Emmanuel, Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, a Colombian politician who has been in FARC custody for several years.Emmanuel is among the most well-known of several hundred hostages being held by the FARC, which is Colombia's oldest, largest, most capable and best-equipped Marxist rebel group, according to the U.S. Department of State. The United States, the European Union and Colombia classify it as a terrorist group.The FARC has justified hostage-taking as a legitimate military tactic in a long-running and complex civil war that also has involved right-wing paramilitary units, government forces and drug traffickers.The group's captives include three American contractors who were captured when their plane went down in 2003 during a drug-eradication flight.The group also holds Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian independent presidential candidate. She and Rojas were kidnapped on Feb. 23, 2002, after they ventured into rebel-held territory despite warnings of danger from the Colombian military.On Friday, as people in Colombia devoured news of the latest development, the child remained in a foster home in Bogota. If further DNA tests confirm that he is Emmanuel, Iguaran said, authorities may relinquish custody of the child to Rojas' relatives.As for Gomez -- the peasant who says the FARC compelled him to masquerade as the child's great-uncle -- he is in a witness-protection program, authorities say, living in an undisclosed location for his safety

[Balloon guy]

Mercury69, on Monday, December 31st, 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

Unless it's some kind of oblique strategy or you're throwing a match, I don't think anybody fights to lose...

Democrats?