The New Colombian Gold and What the FARC Is Up With Weapons Dealers?
As you may recall, there is a lot of spooky intrigue raising it’s ugly head lately in South America. It is hard to tell if the Bushies are just trying to screw up every continent before they leave office, or if there is some type of master plan, especially between South America and the Middle East. As a quick recap, early in March we saw Soviet Russian arms dealer extraordinaire Viktor Bout arrested in Thailand on what appears to have been a US warrant stemming from information "obtained" in a Colombian execution raid into Ecuador to kill Raul Reyes, the FARC Number 2, based upon US suggestion and intelligence. The upstart of all that seemed to be that FARC was trying to either obtain and/or sell uranium. Oh and by the way, the rumor was nicely planted that FARC had been given $300 million to get involved in this uranium terrorism by Hugo Chavez our new arch-enemy from Venezuela. Then, of course, there is our old friend Chiquita Bananas who, as opposed to Chavez/Venezuela, we do know has supported FARC terrorism. Jeebus.
The latest piece of this convoluted puzzle comes today with the announcement that the FARC uranium has been "found".
The seizure of up to 66 pounds of low-grade uranium linked to the FARC rebels adds weight to the evidence found in a captured rebel laptop that the guerrillas were interested in buying and selling the material, according to the Colombian Defense Ministry.
But the 30 kilos of uranium found Wednesday in plastic bags dug up about three feet from a road in southern Bogotá was "impoverished," the ministry said, and in that state could not have been used to make a radioactive bomb.
Uranium is the new "Colombian Gold"! The bit about the uranium being found 3 feet from the road to the FARC camp is almost hilarious. Almost. Um, let’s see, Chavez, terrorists, uranium and a fortuitously discovered laptop computer. That doesn’t sound at all like any Fourth Branch government we all know and love does it? Especially not on the heels of the recent visit the Saudis received from Cheney.
The other half of this two headed post involves a different arms merchant freakshow, this one being underwritten by the US government. In a long expose just published in the New York Times, the story is told of a couple of skateboard punk looking ammunition suppliers in their early 20’s, from Miami, that have been given US contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to supply ammunition and ordnance to our Afghani partners.
Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.
Fast Times At Ridgemant High The Pentagon I guess. The NYT story is long, but stunning in it’s depiction of incompetence; and I am talking about our government and the Pentagon, not the skateboard punk arms merchants (although they are rich in that detail too).
What in the world is our government doing?
UPDATED to correct spelling error on "Colombian" per suggestion of BrendanX.
The new word is, “SO!”
Please understand, that the new word was adopted from Fearless Leader Cheney, and is meant to show our contempt for him. It will reinvoke his arrogance every time we use it. It is now the approved replacement for either your name as the poster, or Fitz. Or whatever you would prefer the new word to be. Do you have a preference, bmaz?
I will now read your post, which I can’t wait to read if it’s also referring to the situation I saw briefly at TPM.
bmaz,
When you read through many of my links at the earlier post (Feith Based), it puts much of these arms deals in a bad light, of course. When you read about the “process” in which the contracting is “suppose” to be carried out and then read stories like this…The bigger picture is clear. Safeguards be damned…
The “safe guards” for this NOT to happen are “built in”…But it happens… SO, tracing the trail on this MO should be easy in many respects.
I just finished writing up for my scandals list the story of the bad ammo for Afghanis sold by 20 somethings in Miami. As I wrote to selise when I sent the entry to her, this one episode explains how every disaster that has happened to us in the last 7 years because of the Bush Administration could have happened: 9/11, Katrina, Iraq, the economy. All you have to do is put idiots in charge and it all kind of naturally unfolds disaster by disaster by disaster.
Yeah, Brownie is looking more competent every day isn’t he?
Okay. I would swear I have seen a report in the last few days on how the Saudis are suddenly implementing radioactivity drills and procedures after Cheney’s recent visit there. Anybody have a link or clue on this?
Yes, these two young arms dealers are the stuff that movies are made of. They seem to be following the pattern that Nicholas Cage portrayed in “Lord of War”. Of course, the real “Lord of War”, Viktor Bout, was at least 24 years old when he graduated from Moscow’s Military Institute in 1991, and retired from the military in 1993 at the ripe old age of 26, according to Wiki. My guess is that the GWB Administration just wanted to make their own rerun.
bmaz
Here’s one link to the Saudi radiation story
The shura council discussion on radioactive hazards is mentioned here:
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=96940
Thanks Seamus and Hugh; i knew I had seen that somewhere, but couldn’t remember where or find it easily on Google.
Google “saudi fallout”
“Colombian”
Thanks! Correction has been made.
You don’t like cheese and sour cream on your “Chile”? Thanks.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, arguably the main front in the war on al-Qaida…
“Low grade uranium” is an extremely unrevealing description. It could mean “LEU”, meaning low-enriched uranium, it could possibly mean natural uranium, or it could even mean depleted uranium.
Obtaining LEU would be very slightly worrisome in that it could signal a breach of security protocols somewhere. However, in itself LEU is not dirty-bomb (or exploding bomb) material. For natural uranium it is just very difficult to imagine any reason to become exercised over 66 pounds of it. Depleted uranium is even less of a radiation hazard and can be obtained by the ton on Iraqi battlefields, where the US military uses it for munitions.
U238, which is the main isotopic component of all three materials, is pretty much the least radioactive of all radioactive atoms. If you were going to make a dirty bomb, it is (by at least a factor of ten) the least bang for your buck you can get. 66 pounds of natural uranium would not be a whole lot more radioactive than a cargo shipment of bananas. A banana-based dirty-bomb would be much cheaper and easier to obtain the materials for.
So maybe it’s not surprising the guerillas couldn’t find anyone to sell it to so they just decided it was easier to bury it.
Yeah, or maybe it was a plant by someone who knew it would cause the requisite stir but not be usable for anything dastardly. If you saw the quote deep in the article from the FARC guy, even they know that all kinds of processing would be needed that they are not even close to being capable of. This whole deal reeks if you ask me…
You mean the stuff they found wouldn’t fuel that time-machine DeLorean?
This government-issued report could be a scam? Or a too hastily reported story, founded on fear, not fact? Like the DOJ treating as credible threats to demolish the Brooklyn Bridge with a flashlight? Or taking out a major airport with a few cans of lighter fluid?
Mr. Ashcroft and his successors seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between real threats and PR opportunities needed to manage the news cycle. Well, wag my dog.
If the stuff is what the professor and I both think it is, you could pretty much put it in your lunch box and cart it around with few worries. Okay, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but maybe not much of one….
One would think. Otherwise, there ought to be a B-movie-like trail of dead and dying around that little spot on the road. Which means that what was found may have been stupid, or aspirational, but not deadly. Nor, apparently, could these “Worst of the Worst” [(c) dick cheney enterprises, llc] get near equipment that would process it into something deadly enough to use without needing a deuce and a half truck to transport it.
So what news ought we to pay attention to besides this red herring?
The fact that, to at least some extent, the US government is a cog in the middle of this stuff ginning it up. Like him or not, Chavez was duly and fairly elected and, other than yammer back at the vitriol and bullshit that our government constantly pitches at him, has done nothing to the US. The rhetoric of respect for democracy that the current administration babbles is so hollow it is shocking it doesn’t collapse from the inner vacuum.
I have handled natural uranium myself, with a lot less precaution than a lunchbox.
Is that why you write such glowing prose in your comments?
Hmm, this story can;t be right, unless FARC is an Al Quaeda brach…
Synoia–I think the attempt is to make FARC into a PDVSA branch…
Henry is getting on top of this one, too. (Does he know what ’sleep’ means, if it isn’t referring to a computer or a yo-yo?)
Speaking of inept things to do with radioactive materials, last week some US reprocessors of nuclear products were anxious to get the government to quit contemplating a deal to import EU nuclear materials for such disposition, favoring instead a tariff or outright anticompetition declaration to keep the waste from arriving on these shores. This controversial trade agreement application is different from the kinds of things done in for example, in KY, with US nuclear waste, or TN.
Hey I once had a massage license. Massage school is fun, I gotta tell you. Working as a masseur, not so much. People would ask me to spend extra time on their arms, but I can’t recall anyone ever asking me to sell them arms…ah well. I’m sure it pays better.
OMG. Sometimes I think the looting of our Treasury is on purpose. Other times, for example, after reading something like the NYTimes article, I think it’s a combination of utter ineptitude and fraud.
How long before Cheney and “friends” convolute the crappy 66lb bag of uranium into yellowcake…straight from Iran’s nuclear program, to Chavez, to FARC? Tie them all together with one big yellowcake bow!
And that, my fine feathered friend, is exactly what I was thinking/trying to fend off from thinking as I wrote this. This really does smack of their well worn, trusty and reliable “power sweep play” that they run every time doesn’t it?
“a couple of skateboard punk looking”
Now there you go again…
“Let them eat yellowcake…”
After reading this article and going through as many side articles I could find, I felt compelled to explain what may be something most important to many following this topic and others.
While in a family for more than 26 years who became shortly after marrying a “CIA Asset”, many things were openly discussed. Although during that time, I was more focused on my family and job. Hearing what family members talked about seemed strange and weird and grew to a point where it was completely unbelievable, or at least that was what I thought back then! Admitting they were a CIA Asset came later when family members, like myself, questioned them for getting involved in what appeared to be most extreme criminal system. They always appeared to be careful “street smart” people who wouldn’t do something if it were to jeopardize their futures. Boy was I wrong. So when replying, their answers were to explain why they felt comfortable with going forward.
However looking back, it’s clear they joined something that is directly involved with CIA operations within the US. Since their business is Property Development and earlier, their involvement was laundering Drug and Gun Running money straight into property using big Banks with Mortgage Fraud schemes to hide ownership, what now is alarming is what they really were part of! From what I know, their involvement at first back in the late 70’s was with laundering involvement for Argentina’s “Dirty War”. I read through many articles recently about this war and some issues were openly discussed in the family and at family gatherings. An example is the two companies, in the US that were setup for laundering – Silver Dollar and a dance company (I forgot the name sorry). Many of the scary stories of how people were being murdered were also discussed.
There’s a lot more but I want to really get to another important point that hasn’t been focused on – ever! What I see is the involvement of the owner ownership is part of what the family is involved in. To me, it’s a given 100%. In other words, if it looks like a Duck and walks like a Duck, it’s a Duck!
But the real question that needs to be asked is where did the money go?
The family’s specialty is laundering into property with Big Banks. What I personally know is there is a huge system setup here just to service the laundering system that includes so many people it’s unbelievable. I know there is a large group of people involved in securing their laundering system that includes a wide assortment of criminal activities including murder that’s made to look like an accident.
Included are the Newspapers. The family talked often about the Tribune AND Sun-Times being involved but how I wondered. That was until I made attempts to talk to reporters and tracked existing Investigations that seemed to end when it should have continued. By the way, Chiquita is/was owned by the Sun-Times! Chiquita is known for Gun Running but many don’t know they have also been involved in World Wide Drug Distribution. The shipments of Cocaine for example are protected from their point of origin all the way to each destination. The shipments are in TON’s of Cocaine.
The family is also involved in air shipping Ton’s of cocaine. Recent articles surface a fleet of 50 planes linked along with the CIA to ship drugs and prisoners. The family is part of this system with “Clyde O’Conner” being busted late last year in Mexico. He’s still at large and the family and his family live in the Chicago area.
There’s a lot more but clearly to me, this is part of a huge CIA effort. But what’s missing is the effort to surface the laundering system that supports it, because my efforts thus far have been BLOCKED!
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
I may have more tomorrow….
Marty Didier