Bush Makes ‘Free Trade’ National Security Issue

The standoff in the Andes ended like a sappy Latin American telenovela with stiff hugs and handshakes at a March 6 summit. But that’s not stopping the Bush administration from using the conflict to ram Colombia’s pending “Free Trade Agreement” (FTA) through Congress.

Almost a week after the summit held in the Dominican Republic, President Bush cited the crisis, saying, “The Colombia agreement is pivotal to America’s national security and economic interests right now, and it is too important to be held up by politics.” Democrats have opposed the plan over concerns about labor rights and violent attacks on unionists in Colombia.

In fact, in just the six days between the summit handshakes and Bush’s appeal for Congress to set aside “politics,” four more Colombian unionists were murdered—two teachers, a banker, and a hospital worker. This adds to more than 2,500 unionists murdered since 1986—more than those killed during the same period in the rest of the world combined. A report by Human Rights Watch published last year blames “the majority” of these killings on illegal paramilitary groups…. news.nacla.org

Posted by John Malloy on 03/30/2008. Filed under International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry