Juan Manuel Santos, the Colombian Defense Minister, has made several surprising admissions and lies inconsistent statements as he sells Colombia's war on drugs/terror/leftists/reason to the US. Santos revealed that the Colombian military employed not one, but two unsavory types of "dress up" during "Operation Jaque". Not only did a soldier illegally wear a Red Cross emblem on his chest, but soldiers also used the Telesur logos during the hostage retrieval. But Santos has stated that there would be no apologies to Telesur.
Unlike the case of the Red Cross, there is no specific International Convention that bans military personnel from disguising themselves as journalists; however, long-established customary international law has led to a Draft Convention that would do just that. The reasoning is simple: if the military dresses up as journalists, they put the lives of legitimate media members at risk, and threaten the public's fundamental right to information during times of war.
Where's the outrage from Reporters Without Borders and other organizations that purport to protect journalistic freedom? Does the fact that TeleSur is the brainchild of Hugo Chavez have anything to do with the overall acceptance of this tactic? What if it had been CNN logos?
Santos also said that Colombia has weakened support for the FARC, "through their families, through all kinds of media propaganda, whatever, and this has been very successful.” Putting aside concerns over what type of pressure Colombia places on guerrillas' families, the admission of concerted media manipulation regarding the FARC is not surprising. But Santos better start getting better at "whatever", because he's trying to get away with all sorts of bulls#%t on the hostage operation and his government's newfound desire to negotiate with the FARC.
President Uribe initially denied the Red Cross emblem reports. And he and Santos continue to maintain that the soldier's decision to put on the Red Cross logo was done right before he exited the helicopter to meet the rebels, despite pictures that show him wearing it before the mission took off.
Parallel to that probable lie, Santos also stated that the use of the TeleSur logos was a "spontaneous decision". This makes absolutely no sense. If this was such a well-planned and "Hollywood"-rehearsed event (that took over a year of planning with the help of Isreali, American and French intelligence according to some reports), what media outlet had they been planning on using during the meticulous planning stages?
And what type of press identification did the faux TeleSur reporters use? If they didn't have any or if they didn't look official, that would have been pretty sloppy.
Obviously they used TeleSur b/c it is the lone major progressive Latin American media outlet and TeleSur had has had many exclusive FARC-related stories. TeleSur was the lone outlet present when the FARC released Colombian Congresswomen Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez to Hugo Chavez in January. TeleSur was also the first to report on the release of Congresspersons Luis Eladio Perez, Gloria Polanco, Orlando Beltran and Jorge Gechem, again to Venezuela, a month later. Santos even admitted that using El Tiempo or another news organization would not have made sense when he denied that an apology to TeleSur was necessary. Using TeleSur makes sense not only operationally, but it is a backhanded slap at the leftist news organization and Chavez's prior successes in convincing the FARC to release hostages.
During his speech at the Center for American Progress on Wednesday and other events, Santos has also been insisting that, contrary to prior declarations, the Colombian government is ready to negotiate peace talks with the FARC. Why is this not examined further or made into bigger news when the FARC has indicated that they are willing to negotiate? The FARC has also just released 11 more hostages to the Red Cross, which can be seen as a sign of that willingness.
But Santos wants more money for Plan Colombia to fight the FARC, which is supposedly a startling "bipartisan success in US foreign policy." Given his prior declarations on the matter and history of stretching the truth (not to mention Uribe's), who really believes that the Colombian government intends to negotiate a peace accord?
The sad part is not that the Colombian government attempts to manipulate the US and Colombian media in their fight against the FARC. The sad part is that the media allows itself to be manipulated when the truth is fairly obvious. But maybe, like Uribe and Santos, the media believes that the ends justify the means when it comes to issues of war and peace in Colombia.
