Subject:
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Christian Missionaries victims of the US drug war?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 1 May 2001 04:54:36 GMT
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Viewed:
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162 times
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From an LP party "polemic"...
(Steve Dasbach is US LP chair)
- begin cite
Over the past week, politicians have been pointing fingers about who is
to blame for the incident in South America last Friday, in which the
Peruvian air force shot down a small plane carrying a family of Baptist
missionaries and a pilot.
The Cessna was strafed and forced to crash land in the Amazon after a
CIA-operated surveillance plane mistook the missionaries for drug
smugglers.
Killed in the crash were Veronica Bowers -- who friends said "died in
pursuit of her life's calling" -- and her 7-month-old daughter,
Charity. Her husband, son, and the pilot survived.
In response, the U.S. government may send officials to Lima for talks
with Peruvian officials about "what went wrong," and Secretary of
State Colin Powell suggested on Thursday that the blame lay with
American celebrities like Robert Downey, Jr. who use drugs.
But Robert Downey, Jr. didn't vote to start funding a program to
encourage foreign governments to shoot down planes -- or publicly
describe that missionary-killing program as a "very successful
policy," countered Dasbach.
"We don't need a detective to figure out who's to blame for this
senseless murder," he said. "All we need to do is look at U.S. House
and Senate voting records." Consider:
* U.S. politicians created the air surveillance and interdiction
program in 1992 -- and since then the U.S. government has helped the
Peruvian military shoot down or strafe more than 100 airplanes.
* The U.S. government now spends $731 million a year providing military
and other aid to South American countries for anti-drug operations.
* It was a U.S. Air Force jet -- operated by CIA employees -- that
spotted the missionaries' plane and called it to the attention of the
Peruvian military.
* On Tuesday, Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), chair of a Foreign
Relations panel, bragged about the "shoot-first, ask-questions-later
policy" that murdered the American missionaries. Chafee said giving
Peruvian military officials the power to blast civilian planes out of
the sky is "a very successful policy."
Such comments amount to a frank confession of guilt, said Dasbach.
"What could be more chilling -- or more revealing -- than to hear a
U.S. Senator publicly applaud a policy that caused the deaths of two
innocent Americans?" he asked. "Could a South American drug lord have
a less wanton disregard for human life?
"Unfortunately, shooting down civilian airplanes in South America
isn't a U.S. foreign policy mistake -- it is U.S. foreign policy. And
Veronica Bowers and her baby have become nothing more than collateral
damage of that policy, and of their own government's savage and
senseless War on Drugs.
- end cite
I am surprised no one commented on this yet. Must be every single poster
here already knows the Drug War is an abysmal failure. Blaming this shooting
on Robert Downey Jr.??? That one takes the cake.
++Lar
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