Narco News: US Marines Ordered into Colombia

Two battalions of US Marine Jungle Expeditionary Forces have recently received deployment orders for insertion into Colombia this coming February, 2003.

According to reliable sources, the battalions, which with support will total roughly 1,100 men, will rotate in and out of southern Colombia, with orders to eliminate all high officers of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), scattering those who escape to the remote corners of the Amazon. The FARC hierarchy has been the subject of intensive US intelligence scrutiny for several years. The offensive will mean that the US is fighting wars on three fronts simultaneously: Afghanistan, Iraq and Colombia.

The US troops will probably operate out of both the US base at Manta on the coast of Ecuador as well as at a base built deep in the Peruvian jungle near the Putumayo river—Peru’s border with Colombia—in 1998-1999. That secret base was intended for joint use by both Peru and the US in the event of a Colombian military offensive that would push the FARC south to the Putumayo, but on its completion, then-president Alberto Fujimori ordered the US to leave it. That slap in the face of the US by the US-bought-and-paid-for Fujimori led directly to the coup arranged by the US which forced him into exile.

The BBC also reports it is closing it's embassy until the new year due to "specific threat" from the civil war raging in that country.

Other embassies in the capital Bogota are thought to have taken similar action, with the US embassy having already scaled back its operation to provide emergency services only.

Correspondents said the threat involved domestic left-wing terrorism, rather than anything involving organisations such as al-Qaeda.