The U.S.-funded counterinsurgency campaign against a Marxist rebel group in Colombia was viewed as so successful that it has become a model for strategy in Afghanistan. But things were not what they seemed: the Washington Post reports that U.S. ally and former president Alvaro Uribe has been implicated in "egregious abuses of power and illegal actions," involving U.S. aid an "possibly U.S. officials" -- all under the cover of fighting drug trafficking. American cash, equipment, and training were sent to Colombia to help break up cocaine-smugglers, but were actually used "to carry out spying operations and smear campaigns against Supreme Court justices, Uribe’s political opponents and civil society groups."
And it gets worse: the reason the Uribe went after the Supreme Court, according to prosecutors, was because "its investigative magistrates were unraveling ties between presidential allies in the Colombian congress and drug-trafficking paramilitary groups." So yes, anti-drug aid money from the U.S. was used to keep ties between the government and its allies to the drug rings hidden. A group set up "to root out ties between foreign operatives and Colombian guerrillas" immediately turned its attention to the Supreme Court when it began investigating Uribe's cousin....
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