Recently Gov. Bill Richardson went on a diplomatic trip to Colombia to meet with Colombian President Uribe; Richardson's goal was to help release three American hostages. While these are not the only American hostages involved in the Colombian wars it does seem to follow the trend of United States involvement in Colombia. President George W. Bush has been involved with Colombia since the beginning of his presidency. Although there are many diplomatic reasons for this there are private sector reasons also. While there has been US involvement in Colombia there have been benefits to US oil companies. Plan Colombia has been enacted since the first term of Bush's presidency. With this plan there has US Army Special Forces deployed to Colombia to protect Colombia's main oil pipeline, and over 100 million dollars for anti-terrorist aid. The help that the US has been giving seems to have helped oil companies such as Harken Energy more than actually helping Colombia. Harken Energy which just happens to have a close tie to the president. President G. w. Bush was on the board of directors from 1986-1990. It just seems fishy to me that we have sent money down there to protect the people and we just seemed to be protecting the oil.
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia198.htm
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I agree that it is fishy, and I read an article about Bush and Columbia and how he is trying to push for free trade with Columbia, even though there has been much violence against the trade union leaders in Columbia. It seems like he doesnt care though, because he is just pushing and pushing for it and not helping to end the violence.
Yeah, it is always an interesting when the Bush Administration partakes in new foreign policy adventures. They don't have the best track record thus far, so it will be interesting to see where this one goes.
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