COLOMBIA

Guardian: To crush the poor by George Monibot

Last week, on the day George Bush delivered his state of the union address, the Pentagon received a visitor. A few hours before the president told the American people that "we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men", General Carlos Ospina, head of the Colombian army, was shaking hands with his American counterpart. He had come to discuss the latest instalment of US military aid.
General Ospina has done well. Just four years ago he was a lieutenant-colonel in command of the army's fourth brigade
According to Human Rights Watch, the fourth brigade, under Ospina's command, worked alongside the death squads controlled by the paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño
"The attack on El Aro was one of dozens of atrocities which Human Rights Watch alleges were assisted by the fourth brigade. Villalba testified that the brigade would "legalise" the killings his squad carried out: the paramilitaries would hand the corpses of the civilians they had murdered to the soldiers, and in return the soldiers would give them grenades and munitions. The brigade would then dress the corpses in army uniforms and claim them as the bodies of rebels it had shot. "
At the beginning of last month, US special forces arrived in Colombia to help train General Ospina's troops. One of the two brigades they are assisting - the 5th - has also been named by Human Rights Watch for alleged involvement in paramilitary killings. It has been equipped with helicopters by the US army