McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Commentary: Plan Colombia is a failure and should be shut down

Mar 13 -- President Obama says he is determined to cut the federal deficit in half, so I have an idea that will start saving millions of dollars right now: Shut down Plan Colombia. To date it has wasted about $6 billion.

Joel Brinkle
13 de marzo de 2009

Over the last few weeks, senior Colombian officials have been flooding Washington, lobbying everyone they can find to renew federal funding for this ridiculous enterprise. I had a chat with one of them, Vice President Francisco Santos. "So far," he told me, "we have not heard of any changes to Plan Colombia." That's too bad.

The program began in 1999, under President Clinton, and it seemed to make sense at the time. The United States deployed a small air force in Colombia, 82 aircraft, and began spraying coca plants with a non-toxic herbicide, while also helping Colombia fight insurgents and shut down processing plants that use coca leaves to produce cocaine. Back then, Colombian traffickers had 463,322 acres of coca-plant cultivation. From that, they produced 90 percent of the world's cocaine.
 
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