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Awesome: Colombian army duped FARC by wearing Che t-shirts
http://hotair.com/ archives/ 2008/ 07/ 03/ awesome-colo...
Shouldn't the shirts have tipped them off? [â¦] Read the rest »
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Obama On The Hostage Rescue: That Was Some Great Diplomatic Work
http://amerpundit.com/2008/07/03/obama-on-the-hostage-rescue...Obama On The Hostage Rescue: That Was Some Great Diplomatic Work by Stephan Tawney | 2:44 pm Because nothing says fighting terrorism through diplomacy like a months-long military operation that utilized multiple helicopters and deceived the enemy.
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FARCing up Hugo Chavez
http://environmentalrepublican.blogspot.com/2008/07/farcing-...FARCing up Hugo Chavez Sphere: Related Content In what can only be described as a brilliantly executed plan, the Colombian military rescued fifteen hostages held by the leftist terrorist group FARC: Colombia's military yesterday rescued the most
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Maybe Its Because He Used to Sell Coke?
http://advocateoftherepublic.blogspot.com/2008/07/maybe-its-...Here's the difference between Venezuelan President (Uh, Dictator) Hugo Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Chavez claims to be "negotiating" for the release of 15 hostages from Marxist Commie assholes FARC , Uribe rescues them with a bunch of guys wearing Che Guevara shirts just to rub it in. Uribe deserves more press than he gets. Remember Columbia? That South American Country with the historical misfortune of being the perfect place to grow cocaine? The country under siege by drug cartels on one side and commie drug lords on the other? Yeah, Uribe tamed that country. He's rescuing hostages that people had given up for dead. He's killing FARC leaders at a 12th grade level. He's got Hugo Chavez mobilizing troops and running with his tail between his legs to Russia to buy arms. Its a shame no one (in the press at least) seems to be paying attention. With all seriousness, I believe Uribe getting Columbia under control is the greatest feat of our young century so far. George Bush agrees and wants to reward this struggling country with a Free Trade Agreement. Enter Barry Obama who believes Free Trade is a tool of the devil. In addition to slighting our friendly (if fascistic) neighbors to the north, Barry wants to nix the Colombian agreement which is pending while it awaits congressional approval. If we abandon Colombia just as they get their country out of the mess we helped create (yeah, its our money that fuels Colombia's problems, coke head) it will be a tremendous stain on America's national honor. Barry (that nuanced liberal who has plenty of experience and would never commit a massive foreign policy faux pas just to appease some reactionaries in the AFL) doesn't seem to think so. He doesn't think we should help out the guy who's trying to cut off the coke supply to our kids and welfare recipients. Way to go Barry. You're certainly the new politician we've heard you are. You'd never take the typical, worn out democrat position and refuse to support an anti communist ally. Barry Obama: Change we can believe in -- unless you're anti communist, then you can go f*** yourself.
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Recommended 7/10
http://danwismar.com/archives/wizblog/2008/07/10/recommended...Taranto wades into the Jesse Jackson affair, and the media try to figure out how to report what Jackson said. Richard Fernandez on Russia and deterrence and the unilateral surrender of deterrence. VDH on Barack W. Bush Mary Anastasia O'Grady at the WSJ on why the FARC terrorists had no problem buying the idea that an NGO was willing to help them out. More at Power Line, Campaign Spot and Hot Air on the rescue and the aftermath. And a great John Hinderaker post on Obama's critique of Americans' foreign language skills. Disclosure that there have been hundreds of tons of "yellowcake" uranium in Iraq, secured by the U.S. and the U.N. for five years, should be a huge story...you'd think. Nah. From the "It Can't Happen Here" Department... Honor Killing in Georgia, by Robert Spencer.
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FARC'D
http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/030497.htmlYou may have already heard some details of the the dramatic hostage rescue in Colombia this past week:...two white helicopters arrived in a jungle clearing where the hostages were being held. The men in the helicopters looked like guerrillas, Betancourt later said, describing details of the rescue at the military airport. "Absolutely surreal," she said, noting that some of the men who got off the helicopter wore T-shirts emblazoned with the iconic image of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "I thought this was the FARC," she said.Members of the Colombian mlitary were disguised as allies of the communist guerrillas on a mission to relocate the hostages. After binding them, they loaded them (along with their captors) on the helicopters, then sprung their little surprise. Video of the rescue: The New York Times:The rescuers included an agent pretending to be Italian, another supposed to be from the Middle East and a third who performed his role as an Australian so convincingly, according to Mr. Santos, that he invoked the spirit of Crocodile Dundee. Even the video itself was part of the ruse, shot by two agents pretending to be television journalists. The Colombians’ three-minute video captured some of the despair, trickery and euphoria involved in the operation. In some images, for instance, Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician captured by the FARC in 2002, gazes despondently at the ground before being guided aboard the helicopter. Another portion shows Raimundo Malagón, a mustachioed soldier held for a decade by the FARC, pleading to tell his story to the journalists. The journalists even tried to interview César, the guerrilla charged with guarding the captives, but he declined to talk. César smiled at the cameras, seemingly shy about appearing on film while more than a dozen comrades stood nearby grasping assault rifles. Choppy and blurry in parts, the video also shows Keith Stansell, one of three American military contractors freed in the operation, while a rebel was handcuffing him. “I love my family,” Mr. Stansell said into the camera, smiling widely. “Pray a lot.” The rough video lacks audio in parts and seems to have been edited, though Colombian officials attributed a gap to the camera operator lunging at the two guerrillas aboard the helicopter as agents subdued them. The video ends with images of elation among the captives, who embrace one another aboard the helicopter. ***** Several commenters have already expressed amusement at the Che t-shirt ruse, but James Taranto noted another seemingly inexplicable level of FARC gullibility:The soldiers had infiltrated the FARC, but still it seems these terrorists were pretty gullible to believe that they had helicopters. It reminds us of an Israeli joke*, recounted in this Ha'aretz story: An Israeli pilot whose helicopter was in trouble over the sea lands on an aircraft carrier. The captain chastises him: "How dare you? This is an American aircraft carrier." "Really?," says the Israeli innocently. "I thought it was one of ours."But deeper background is now available, revealing the helicopters weren't so unbelievable after all. They were Russian craft, painted to resemble those of the terrorists' "friends from Venezuela":The undercover officers cultivated an unkempt appearance. Playing a convincing role was crucial because the undercover agents were to be unarmed during the mission. The military got two Russian-made helicopters and painted them in white and red, similar to ones used by Venezuela during the hostage release in January. <...> Things went perfectly on the day of the operation. When the helicopter landed, one undercover soldier strolled off to take pictures of the jungle, as a tourist might do. Another two, disguised as television news crew wearing the red shirts and black vests usually worn by reporters from Mr. Chávez's Telesur network, who have been along on prior hostage releases, rushed Mr. Aguilar, and started interviewing him. "It inflated his ego," says a Colombian military officer.That via this (subscription only) Wall Street Journal story, headlined "Details Emerge of U.S. Role in Colombia's Hostage Rescue". But that headline might be considered deceptive, too. According to the article that role was minimal ("One area where the Americans were directly involved: Giving Hollywood-style acting classes to the Colombian undercover military officers who duped the guerrillas into handing over the hostages.") and discussion thereof represents a small fraction of the incredible story. Read the whole thing for details on the planning, training, and execution of a mission that should draw the attention of publishers and Hollywood execs. ("Mr Banderas, the studio is on line one...") Even the comic relief is already available - beyond the Che t-shirts: "Fidel Castro on Thursday praised the Colombian action and said the hostages should never have been held to begin with" and "Mr. Chávez, chastened by the revelations from the captured computers, also praised the rescue and called for the FARC to free all hostages and lay down their arms." Now if only they could find some angle where America looks bad, next year's summer blockbuster would be on the way. ***** In the meantime, readers might consider the parallels with other debates in the action vs negotiation arguments presented here.The successful rescue has boosted Mr. Uribe's political standing abroad in capitals other than Washington. Since he took office in 2002, the conservative has launched an aggressive military campaign against the FARC, which funds itself largely through drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping, holding nearly 700 hostages in the dense Colombian jungles. Mr. Uribe's campaign has decimated the FARC and earned him high approval ratings at home, but also has drawn criticism from many Latin American and European governments that the Colombian leader has relied solely on a military solution to the insurgency at the expense of negotiations. Mr. Uribe, whose father was killed by the FARC in a botched kidnapping attempt, firmly believes the group won't negotiate unless it is forced to its knees. Those differences also came into play over how to deal with some 40 hostages the FARC held for political purposes rather than for ransom, a number that until last week included the Americans and Ms. Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and France's Nicolas Sarkozy urged the Colombian government to avoid any rescue mission that could endanger the hostages and negotiated directly with the FARC. This year, that approach gained momentum when the FARC released a handful of hostages through Mr. Chávez's offices. But things changed dramatically March 1, when the Colombian military killed the FARC's No. 2 man, Raul Reyes, in a bombing raid on his camp just across the border in Ecuador. Laptop computers that belonged to Mr. Reyes showed that Mr. Chávez and the FARC were using the negotiation process to try to gain international legitimacy for the rebels and force Mr. Uribe to call off his military offensive. Emails in the laptops also revealed that the FARC had no intention of releasing either the three Americans or Ms. Betancourt, calling her their most valuable negotiating card. But in one dramatic stroke this week, the rescue mission won support for Mr. Uribe's get-tough approach. "I have to recognize that the strong hand has prevailed," said human-rights activist Robert Menard, founder and secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders. "Our insistence on the need to negotiate with the FARC, hoping they would release their most valuable card, was foolish."
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Total win
http://www.ioterran.com/?p=20144Total win Author: Ian S. 5 Jul The Columbian army fooled FARC and staged the recent hostage rescue by wearing Che T-shirts. Beautiful.
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I love it ...
http://booksinq.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-love-it.html... and what a way to end the Fourth: Colombian army duped FARC by wearing … Che t-shirts. Via Instapundit. And yes, you guessed right: I'm not a Che fan. But then I remember watching on TV clips from the post-revolutionary tribunals. And I remember thinking that young Raoul in particular looked like a mean little bastard. I was a Young Tory then, of course.
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Awesome
http://philosophicalantizombie.blogspot.com/2008/07/awesome....I am so buying one of these shirts: Colombian army duped FARC by wearing . . . Che t-shirts.
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More damage to FARC
http://fivetensfourtens.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-damage-to-...FARC Is Burnign at Both Ends Interesting on the continued decay of FARC. Also a very impressive commando OP. July 2, 2008: The army pulled off a spectacular commando operation that resulted in the release of fifteen prominent hostages (including three Americans and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt) and capture of several mid-level FARC leaders. The operation was based on using captured documents, and interrogations of recently captured or surrendered FARC members, to successfully send a false order, allegedly from the new FARC commander, for the FARC unit holding the fifteen hostages, to march them to a nearby NGO (non-governmental organization) operation, and board helicopters that would carry the hostages to the new location. Once in the air, the FARC guards were disarmed by the commandos (posing as FARC operatives) and arrested. The shocked hostages were then told that they had been rescued. This will become one of the textbook examples of how to carry out a high-risk, big payoff type operations. Really shows how important secure communications are. Oh wow... It's amazing what the commandos wore to trick FARC “Absolutely surreal,” [one of the former hostages] said, noting that some of the men who got off the helicopter wore T-shirts emblazoned with the iconic image of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. “I thought this was the FARC,” she said.
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