Did House Democrats kill the Colombian Free Trade Agreement to help Marxist FARC terrorists?

It looks like some of them might have…

The Economist, in The FARC Files: Just how much help has Hugo Chavez given to Colombia’s terrorists?, reports that “Interpol has now concluded that the huge cache of e-mails and other documents recovered from the computers of Raúl Reyes, a senior leader of the FARC guerrillas killed in a Colombian bombing raid on his camp in Ecuador on March 1st, are authentic and undoctored.”

Batches of the documents have been seen by The Economist and several other publications. They appear to show that Mr Chávez offered the FARC up to $300m, and talked of allocating the guerrillas an oil ration which they could sell for profit. They also suggest that Venezuelan army officers helped the FARC to obtain small arms, such as rocket-propelled grenades, and to set up meetings with arms dealers.

The Wall Street Journal wrote about the links between FARC, House Democrats, and the Colombian Free Trade Agreement in A FARC Fan’s Notes:

A military strike three weeks ago killed Raúl Reyes, No. 2 in command of the FARC, Colombia’s most notorious terrorist group. The Reyes hard drive reveals an ardent effort to do business directly with the FARC by Congressman James McGovern (D., Mass.), a leading opponent of the free-trade deal. Mr. McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia’s elected and popular government.

House Democrats killed the Colombian Free Trade Agreement in April.  The American published a good overview of the FTA process in The Fast-Track Trade War:

By a vote of 224 to 195, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership pushed through an amendment that eliminated rules requiring Congress to approve or reject the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement…

President Bush charged that “the message the Democrats sent today is that no matter now steadfastly you stand with us, we will turn our backs on you when it is politically convenient.”

Suffice it to say that there is little disagreement on the economic payoff: it is largely a one-way street. Since 1991, most of Colombia’s exports have entered the United States duty-free under the Andean Trade Preference Act. The FTA would provide reciprocal duty-free access for almost 90 percent of U.S. exports to Colombia within five years, and it would ensure total free trade within ten years. (NOTE - this means good for the US)

The special congressional rules for ratification of trade agreements were established in 1974…  Under the “fast-track” legislation, after a trade agreement is sent to Congress the House must vote on it within 60 legislative days, without amendment; then the Senate has 30 days to complete action, which means the whole process must occur within a 90-day window.

FARC’s friend Rep. McGovern was instrumental in killing the Colombian Free Trade Agreement: 

Rules Committee chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) had discussed the option of stripping time requirements from the fast-track process since January. When the administration signaled that it would forward the agreement even without a sign-off by congressional Democratic leaders, Slaughter and McGovern seized the opportunity. On Tuesday, April 8, the president formally sent up the agreement and supporting documents; that same evening, Slaughter and McGovern presented the deadline-stripping plan to Speaker Pelosi, who, after meeting with other members of her leadership team, the next day backed the changes in a larger Democratic caucus. And on Thursday, as noted above, the House Democratic majority rammed through the amendments to House rules, effectively gutting the fast-track process for the Colombia FTA. 

More:

…there seems to have been no serious discussion of the far-reaching implications of overturning three decades of U.S. trade policy.

…powerful U.S. foreign policy and security arguments fell on deaf congressional ears. There could be no starker example of a beleaguered U.S. ally, flanked by regimes (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia) increasingly hostile to U.S. interests, than Colombia.

…the speaker of the Colombian House of Representatives described the U.S. House action as “colonial treatment.” 

  

 

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This entry was posted by Reactionary on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under Communism/Socialism, Economy, Ethics Scandals, International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.