Speech by Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-New York), March 6, 2002

Speech by Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-New York), March 6, 2002

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I move to strike the last word in support of the bipartisan resolution on Colombia and the need for a change in our policy, now before the House.

While, I have long followed events in Colombia, I long gave the benefit of the doubt to the Pastrana administration in Colombia with its protracted negotiations and its Switzerland sized DMZ safe haven provided the FARC, that naivete has finally ended, hopefully not too late.

The FARC has attacked cities, towns, police stations, bridges, dams, and power lines all across Colombia since the peace talks ended last month. Let there be no mistake, the FARC are terrorists, and I have been financed by illicit drug proceeds.

Along with their ELN terrorist friends in the last 10 years, the FARC and ELN have kidnaped 50 Americans in Colombia and killed at least 10 of them. Their trade in illicit drugs help take numerous American lives here at home as well from their illicit drugs. For example, it is noted that the DMZ, now abandoned in Colombia, was loaded with opium growth for heroin production eventually destined for American streets and communities.

Bogota, the capital of Colombia, is only 3 hours from Miami, and the beleaguered democratic nation of Colombia is up against the wall from these narcoterrorists and right wing paramilitaries all financed with the illicit drug trade and all engaged in terrorism per our own U.S. State Department.

While our Nation is engaged in fighting global terrorism in Afghanistan, Yemen, Georgia, and the Philippines, we still maintain the fiction that the battle in Colombia in our nearby neighborhood is only about illicit drugs, and our aid has been limited to counternarcotics

We have maintained the fiction of counternarcotics aid only for Colombia long enough. The same people who kidnap, blow up pipelines, and who kill Americans trade in illicit drugs to finance their other criminal and terrorist activities. Only our State Department maintains the drugs only fiction, on the ground the reality was different and the Colombian democracy slipped further and further away.

This resolution calls for our administration to take off its rose color glasses that President Pastrana and our State Department wore for far too long and let Colombian democracy slip away. It is time we get serious and fight terrorism and the illicit drugs that finances it in Colombia and threatens American national interests in our very back yard.

Protecting pipelines from terrorist attacks is but one way to help Colombia. It is not enough for a Colombian policy and as the Bob Novak column noted this week, it is a sorry excuse for a real antiinsurgency strategy in Colombia. We need to do more.

We must help the Colombian police antikidnaping unites with helicopters to rescue victims, including Americans in the often hard to reach terrain. We ought to also restore the clarity we need by giving the anti-drug mission in Colombia mainly to the excellent antidrug police, who have a stellar human rights record.

Our assistance to the Colombian military should be antiterrorist assistance, and not operate under the failed antidrug fiction of the past. Let us bear in mind that no one here, nor anyone in Colombia has ever asked for, or called for American combat troops for Colombia.

The Colombians want and deserve the equipment and training they need to defend themselves and their democracy from the terrorist threat at their and at our door.

Accordingly, I urge support for this resolution.

As of March 7, 2002, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r107:@FIELD(FLD003+h)+@FIELD(DDATE+20020306)