Another Obama lie
One lie that slipped by the media while they rushed out to check the veracity of Joe the Plumber and unearthed his $1100 tax lien, was the lie Obama told about his reasons for not supporting the Free Trade Agreement for Colombia. His answer was as dated as his political philosophy.
Sounding strangely like a union thug, Obama repeated the Big Labor talking points;
The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Mary Anastasia O’Grady disagrees with the old lie;
In October 2006, [Colombian President Alvaro Uribe] created a special investigative unit inside the attorney general’s office to handle union murders. The unit began operations in February 2007, and it says that as of this August “some 855 cases have open investigations” and that “179 security preventive detention measures have been issued, 61 cases are ready to be referred to court for trial, and 115 suspects have been convicted in 75 sentences.”
It is far safer to be a union member today in Colombia than to be a member of the general population. This is a fact, and it would be interesting to know why Mr. Obama has repeatedly refused to acknowledge it.
Even the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker weighed in;
According to data provided by the Colombian government, assassinations of trade union members declined from 205 in 2001 to 26 in 2007, significantly outpacing the overall fall in the murder rate. The government attributes the decline in part to a state-run protection program that now covers around 2,000 senior union leaders and the creation of a special sub-unit in the Attorney General’s office to investigate killings of labor activists.
So why won’t Obama acknowledge that Colombia has made progress? Because he’s in the pocket of Big Labor who’s in the pocket of Colombian Maoist narco-terrorists FARC. The FTA with Colombia would be the final arrow in the quiver that Uribe (who’s father was murdered by FARC, by the way) needs to put FARC out of business, but the Maoists in our own country oppose it.
I wonder how much of the money that Obama has raised came from FARC…but we’ll never know because he won’t disclose his sources.
Category: Politics
These are the same filthy talking points Pelosi used to block the trade agreement with Columbia. These commie scumbags in our own country have the opportunity to “bring the world together and undue the damage the Bush regime has done to our relationships with our friends around the world.” But, when it comes to union dollars flowing into their campaign accounts, we learn the truth: They don’t give a damn about imrpoving relations with the world, unless they can cash in on it. Scum, outright scum.
Obama’s points on Colombia are so far off, I don’t even know where to start. Under Uribe, the murderers of trade unionists are actually being prosecuted and sent to jail. Read the Colombian media and you’ll see how members of extreme rightist and leftist groups are being tried and/or sent to the US for trial. The number of prosecutions over the past six years is more than all previous administrations combined.
I would love for Obama to talk to the average Colombian who lives in Bogota, Cali, or Medellin, and ask them if they feel safer now or six years ago. I’ll put $100 that he or she says now. The last time I was back in Bogota, you couldn’t go out after dusk; now, people are out at all hours of the night. Families go to plazas in the evenings to walk around, and feel safe.
From a non-emotional point of view, look at how the rate of foreign investment has skyrocketed; that doesn’t happen in countries (like Venezuela) where things are worsening by the day…
AP News, 10/17/08:
In Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe is facing new allegations of trying to block several probes of his allies’ ties to right-wing death squads. More than sixty members of Congress are under investigation for using the paramilitaries to intimidate voters. Uribe has proposed removing the court’s investigative authority. In Bogota, Human Rights Watch Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco accused Uribe of obstructing justice.
According to Vivanco, “the government of President Alvaro Uribe is putting at risk the attempts to investigate and judge the crimes committed by paramilitaries and their accomplices in Colombia. One may reach the conclusion that there has been a sort of integral campaign by the government of President Uribe to invalidate and discredit the Supreme Court, and occasionally the prosecutor’s office, when it investigates themes that are sensitive to the government.”