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And the puppet master, holding all the strings, decides when to effect a nod, a stoop, a crook, the twisting of the arm that will compel entire governments to dance. 

Wherever you find vulnerable populations of people being systematically oppressed, robbed, raped, kidnapped, tortured or murdered, either the U.S. is funding the effort, or we simply don’t care.

Recent U.S. history stands as evidence: Unless oil interests are involved, our government turns a blind eye to the politics of a region, no matter how great the human suffering. If oil is involved, however, we will either allow the brutalization to continue (covertly aiding those who brutalize their citizens, fortifying our ties, while weakening the country) or will spare no effort and no cost to “save” a country with good old U.S. democracy, which always necessitates U.S. occupation of their country (read that: puppet regime). Is it a fledgling democracy or rogue regime? Only our government can say, and their interpretation can change overnight, depending on how well a country follows the Bush-Cheney script for oil. This same arbitrary allegiance applies to those individuals caught in the crossfire– be they prisoners of war, or mercenaries working for the U.S. government in Colombia, who have been kidnapped, held hostage, tortured and/or murdered: these individuals are of no interest to our government. This is why Bush-Cheney have paid, at best, only a token interest in their release. Like the British Empire, once described by Prime Minister Palmerston:  

The U.S. has “neither permanent friends, nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.”

History has recorded these “permanent interests” playing out all over the world, notably Iraq over the past 20 years, as U.S. allegiance flip-flopped according to Saddam Hussein’s role in our oil strategy. The same is true in Colombia, a country already divided by 40 years of civil war. Having installed a puppet-regime base in Colombia, the U.S. focus is now (as in the Middle East and the Caspian Sea region) toward expansionism in Latin America, toward weakening and overthrowing bordering countries of strategic oil field or pipeline interest.

Our Latin American focus is now on Venezuela and Ecuador — which Bush accuses of having terrorist influences — with both countries bordering Colombia and, coincidentally, of strategic, vital interest to the U.S. oil mandate. To you will always find before a war in any country (e.g. Iraq & Iran) Bush-Cheney are working to demonize the government with a flimsy smear campaign , alternately calling them terrorists or terrorist appeasers, who offer aid to the FARC guerrillas in Colombia — an accusation denied by both countries. Demonizing rulers and countries is necessary, of course, to justify our attacks on them — such as the April 2002, U.S.-backed military coup against democratically-elected Venezuelan president, Hugh Chavez. While the coup was short-lived, Chavez being restored to power within 48 hours, it sent a clear warning to other Latin American countries of what is to come. More recently, in March 2008, the U.S. sent armed forces into Ecuador –to the condemnation of Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan president, Chavez, continues to be demonized by Bush-Cheney as a rogue leader and a terrorist appeaser who, according to Bush, “squanders” their oil wealth, leaving his people to “face food shortages.” Quite an irony, when you look at the conditions in the U.S. today, and compare them to Venezuela where — since coming to power in 1998 — the Chavez government has increased public spending dramatically, directing billions of dollars of oil revenue towards social programs that provide free education and health care to the poor, as well as providing low cost oil and unconditional aid to Latin American and Caribbean countries.

When Bush accuses Venezuela of squandering their oil, what he really means is that Venezuela is not following the Bush-Cheney script for compliance with U.S. oil interests… 

…Unlike the Uribe regime in Colombia, which does follow the script; unlike Colombia, where all sides have been corrupted, due in great part to the U.S., which plays all sides, including the drug traffickers, from whom our government extracts both money and drugs. We fund whichever sides suit our purposes of the moment, be they the Colombian government, the military our own mercenaries, or our “enemies” — the paramilitary death squads, the guerrillas, the drug lords. The only “good guys” left in Colombia are the powerless citizens, whose daily lives are terrorized by the lawlessness and greed of the powers-that-be, in their warring for oil and drugs, with the U.S. pulling all the strings. This was the corruption that Ingrid Betancourt fought for 8 years before her run for the presidency and her subsequent kidnapping. This is the sort of corruption that many in the U.S. are fighting, within our own government. As she, herself, said shortly before her kidnapping in 2002:

“All our big leaders have been killed in Colombia, all of them, they have been assassinated. So the challenge is to be alive till the end of the elections.”

Sadly, there are many of us in America who increasingly feel the same way about our own country. The dismantling of our U.S. Constitution over the past 7 years has been aided and abetted by our own Congress, as our laws have been re-written by the very corporations that serve as foot-soldiers in the Bush-Cheney wars for oil. The majority of our representatives and lawmakers on Capitol Hill have either been bought and paid for by these corporations, or they’re just too damned afraid to speak out. To those rare dissenters – the courageous representatives on Capitol Hill who have maintained the patriotic integrity of their sworn dutes — the costs can be enormous to their careers, their campaigns and their reputations. Adding insult to injury, any one on Capitol Hill who votes against the Bush-Cheney agenda will find their integrity smeared with the same brush as any rogue leader: terrorist appeaser.

Is it any wonder, then, that many in this country find a clearer reflection of reality in the discussions of so-called conspiracy theorists than in the official news delivered by our media and our government? Is it any wonder then that, lacking the protection of our Constitution or our lawmakers, some in this country feel as powerless as any citizen in the jungles of Colombia, when we read our own government’s “contingency plans” for martial law in the U.S., via the Defense Authorization Act of 2007, the REX 84 plan, Operation Garden Plot , the Civilian Inmate Labor Program, PDD 51 H.R. 1955 and the myriad Executive Orders associated with these plans? Is it any wonder that some of us in America actually fear our own government? That some of our own politicians almost fear our government, as they’re barred access  to the facts?

Should Bush-Cheney’s PDD 51 come to fruition this fall, our country would not be so different from the Colombia described by Ingrid Betancourt. Only, in the U.S., our corrupt executive branch would be the pathogens to the infection, as described by Betancourt’s husband, Juan Carlos LeCompte:

The guerrillas, the paramilitary, the violence in Colombia… are like the fever a person gets because of an infection. The infection is what causes the fever. The real infection Colombia has that must be cut out of the country is corruption. Corruption is the infection. If you get rid of the corruption, you get rid of the fever. You get rid of the violence.

Of course, our Congress had a golden opportunity to clean our country of these pathogens that have delivered an epidemic of terror around the globe, but Congress turned away from it. Was it greed or fear that prompted our Congress to table impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney for war crimes and treason? Perhaps one day the history books will make these truths known. For now, most of the facts — past, present and future — can only be gathered piecemeal, drawn together by a willingness of the human mind to suspend incredulity that our government, that any government, could be guilty of the atrocities the U.S. has committed in the name of oil.