Only North Americans can of course come up with an idea to give military aid to a country that has no military.
Or hasn't it? Reuters' Andrew Beatty reports that Panama is to deploy a Special Force on the Colombian border which, we read, is going to "combat the flow of cocaine and weapons and to catch leftist guerrillas along its jungle border with Colombia (...)".
Oh?
Had Beatty done research in the Dariën instead of copying what our crooked government tells him, he would have realized how totally idiotic this story really is. Every other year or so the creation of new and better border patrol forces is announced by whomever holds the Ministry of Government & Justice at that moment, in conjunction with assistance from the United States. But if you try a quick tour of the Dariën you'll notice that that border is impossible to control - something most members of the border forces du jour will tell you privately as well.
Beatty also says that the "new" border force will catch leftist guerrillas. Will they leave the paramilitaries alone then? Again, had he gone to the Dariën instead of penning down this ridiculous spin, he'd have heard that many an attack there that was attributed to the FARC had, in fact, been carried out by Uribe's right-wing paramilitary forces. But maybe Beatty also believes that other fairy tale, the one about how the paramilitaries have been disarmed and no longer exist.
Where do stories like these come from? Easy. The gringos want a base in Panama to help the narco-president of Colombia and screw Chavez and Correa as they're getting their asses kicked out of Ecuador. This will of course be called an "anti-terrorist" initiative and wrapped in endless drivel about "regional cooperation" and "relations with our allies" and all the other usual pretexts to do the wrong thing.