Colombia Regime Approaches Pariah Status in DC

April 8, 2008
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Dear Colleague,

The embattled US-Colombia “free trade” agreement met yet another setback in the US political scene after Mark Penn, Senator Hillary Clinton’s chief presidential campaign adviser, announced he would be stepping down. This, after The Wall Street Journal reported of Penn’s dual role as lobbyist for the Colombian government and a meeting he held last week with its ambassador to strategize for passage of the trade pact.

Publisher Al Giordano, recently returned to Narco News after covering the US presidential race for nine months, reports on the Bush Administration’s last desperate moves to save the trade agreement as Congressional Democrats are finding Colombia’s serial violations of human rights and assassinations of trade unionists to be a political liability in this election year:

“Penn, facing the increased public and press scrutiny that political consultants, lobbyists and registered foreign agents seek intensely to avoid (Penn represents many controversial clients, from Blackwater’s the private security forces in Iraq to the makers of poisonous Chinese toys imported to the US), offered up his own resignation as Clinton's campaign chief on Sunday.

“By Monday morning (today), the oft-ignored matter of the proposed US-Colombia ‘free trade’ agreement was – finally – part of the lead story on network news programs: NBC’s ‘Today,’ ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ and CBS’s ‘Early Show,’ as well as MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe.’

“Sensing the public relations meltdown, US President George Bush took to the airwaves with a live televised speech on Monday morning, trying to stem the bleeding, and invoking ‘national security’ as his last-ditch argument to get the unpopular trade agreement with Colombia approved by Congress”

Read the rest of Giordano’s report online at Narco News:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue52/article3058.html

From somewhere in a country called América,
David B. Briones
Webmaster
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com

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