The Vietnam-like U.S. intervention in Colombia is all about oil, not drugs, reports the Resource Center of the Americas.
The U.S. is committing $1.3 billion to “Plan Colombia,” assistance package to Colombia’s notoriously abusive military.
The plan was supposedly to fight Colombia’s drug barons.
Less-known is that Colombia’s petroleum production today rivals Kuwait’s on the eve of the 1990 Gulf War.
The U.S. imports more oil from Colombia and neighbouring Venezuela and Ecuador than from all Persian Gulf countries combined. And last June, Colombia announced its largest oil discovery since the 1980s.
The find is in an indigenous area.
Stan Goff, a former U.S. Special Forces intelligence sergeant, retired in 1996 from the unit that trains Colombian anti-narcotics battalions.
Last October, Goff told the Bogotá daily El Espectador that the purpose of Plan Colombia is to defend the operations of oil companies like Occidental, British Petroleum and Texas Petroleum and secure control of future oil fields.
