Offending article can be found at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34699790/ns/world_news-americas/

This article is a ridiculous piece of propaganda that has no factual bearing on what is actually going on. It reminds me of the garbage "news" articles that were used to pump up the US population to go to war with Iraq (e.g. WMDs, Al-Qaeda, etc.), but worse! And now we're still expected to belief statements from these different "officials" without supporting evidence? I don't think so! On the other hand there IS plenty of evidence that the US was involved in the attempted coup against Chavez, that the CIA helped create Islamist terrorist organizations (Operation Cyclone) leading to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Queda, that the CIA has been involved in massive drug and arms smuggling, that the US arms and funds the Colombian military (and by extension the death squads because the army are the paramilitaries). The terrorism of FARC, while unforgivable, is tiny compared to the state terrorism of the US, who launched a war of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq in which over a million people have died, plus the 1.5 million from the sanctions regime, and the many hundreds of thousands others who died in the US instigated Iran-Iraq war. The US helped set up death squads in the Iraq (the El Salvador option) as well as death squads in Central and South America during the dictatorships (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Operation Condor, etc.), Vietnam (Operation Phoenix), and in the US against social justice organizations, to name a few instances.

Richard Vargas in "The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Illicit Drug Trade", along with Byron Wells' "FARC is being demonized: scholar" and FAIR's "Colombia's Cocaine Shell Game" are just some of the articles that point out that the role of the FARC, with regards to illicit drug production and drug trafficking of coca and cocaine, remains primarily focused on taxation of illicit crops. But they tax all economic activity in their area of control. There is, however, evidence linking Colombian paramilitaries (i.e. the army), high-ranking generals and high-level government officials to the drug trade.

This article was just a shameless piece of propaganda to raise support for intensifying the US attack against Colombia and either attacking of supporting another coup attempt of Venezuela. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes.