July 25, 2007  We commend the Latin Business Chronicle for reprinting former U.S. Latin Envoy Otto Reich's testimony regarding Colombia's positions before the U.S. House of Representatives, (see here).  This dovetails with a strong position put forward by Spain's former PM, Jose Maria Aznar in the Wall Street Journal on July 23, 2007, (read it again here). Coupled with numerous other pieces in the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily, one has almost a text book analysis of the smear campaign waged against Uribe's leadership in Colombia. 
 
John Thompson has a superb piece on the same topic. (read it here.)

Both Aznar and Reich are completely correct that Colombia is suffering from a broad based smear campaign waged by the pro drugs crowd, denizens of the Foro de Sao Paulo, nascent Marxist supporters [whatever that means today], and their new found maestros de capilla...Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa, leading the choir of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies about Colombia.
 
The latest outrage can be found in the profoundly errant dailyKos blog, (read it here if you can stomach it), backed by uber liberals and pronounced the unofficial but official mouth organ of the "new" democrats in the U.S. Congress. Shockingly, this ridiculous screed, sourcing yet one more paid Chavez propagandist in the person of Eva Gollinger, tells us that democracy is better off in Venezuela than in the USA. Laughingly, the dailyKos writers commence telling us that the U.S. DEA is behind all of Chavez's drug problems...because, they tell us, rumor holds that the DEA is planting these drugs in Venezuela to make Chavez look bad when he is innocent, is as clean as can be, and is fighting hard against narcoterrorism. You cannot make this stuff up. What you can do is reject paid KGB-style disinformation campaigns whenever they occur and they are occurring today with a rapidity not seen since the height of the Cold War because they are allowed to break numerous laws while the lambs remain silent. One can only wonder if Caracas is a job corps for out of work KGB actors. Then again, one need not have been trained in the high art of deception under Russia's communists. Many paid mouth organs such as the Center for Economic Policy's Larry Birns like to tell us often that Hugo Chavez is just all right and that Uribe's position of principle is not all right. .
 
The truth is that Peru and Colombia and Chile are doing all right while Ecuador and Venezuela are in no way doing all right. Just the last week, the World Bank rated most every nation on Earth for its governance capabilities. Not surprisingly, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba, Sudan, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Venezuela and newest entry....Ecuador received failing grades in most every category. Failure to reform, failure to govern justly and failure as nations ... these leaders should be booted and replacements commenced. Not surprising at all is the fact that these corrupt regimes spend the most per person covering up their criminal empires with paid liars, shills and propagandists even as the misery ratings inside their own nations remains stubbornly unbearable.
 
By any fact based indicator, failing state Ecuador is not doing well at all. Ecuador is, by design of the adolescent princeling named Rafael Correa, on the ropes. Today Correa illegally builds a multimillion dollar monument to his criminal capers and foolishness- a massive temple in Montecristi to appear to legitimize his ridiculously deceptive so called constituent assembly, in homage to the place of birth of another terrorist best forgotten in the dust bin of history but revered, with CHE! and Fidel! named Alfaro. By then, Correa will control all judicial matters regarding his illicit assembly and the assemblage itself will be bizarrely isolated and cut off from the real world in this god forsaken small town, which of course Correa has ordered the local populace to be denied even electricity most days to light up his new erection: the assembly temple mount. No amount of shark fins or whatever the latest wild eyed claim pretends as an aid will help build this latest expensive but utterly goofy erection of Rafael Correa's.

Correa's latest homage is nothing more than a cow pen for his last cattle round up of the foolish herds before they realize how deeply they have been tricked by Correa. Being tricked is what happens after persons have been immune to their own complicity as co enablers. With no budget oversight for  what little passes as honest budget reporting, the people of Ecuador are duped as surely as they have been duped by Correa's wild eyed claims that Alvaro Uribe is their enemy. thinking Ecuadoreans know better. It is long past time for Ecuadoreans who think to stand united and start using their brains to tell the truth about Correa's bizarre, draconian plans.
 
- The Editors, ECRISIS