Botero's anger at Abu Ghraib on display in Rome


By Shasta Darlington

ROME (Reuters) - Bloodied hoods and anguished prisoners strung up naked by their feet or forced into sexual poses are hardly the images one expects from Fernando Botero, an artist who has made jovial, rotund portraits his trademark.

But that's what visitors to an exhibition that opened in Rome on Thursday will find.

Tucked in between paintings of the corpulent cardinals, presidents and prostitutes of Botero's native Colombia is a room filled with "the horrors of Abu Ghraib," a series that is on display for the first time.

Latin America's best-known living artist broke with tradition last year after reading an article about U.S. soldiers' abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail.

"There are a lot of things that hit me, but the torture at Abu Ghraib is something different," the 73-year-old painter and sculptor said at a press conference to inaugurate the show.

"I didn't expect it, like most people, like the majority of Americans, this conduct from a so-called civilised country."

Botero, who was aboard a plane when he read the report, was so enraged, he grabbed a piece of paper and started the sketches that served as the basis for the new series.

Since October, he has produced more than 60 works, including 20 oil paintings, on the topic. Some 45 of those are on display at Rome's Palazzo Venezia, a venue usually reserved for Italian artists who have long since died.

"It's a great honor, a consecration of Botero," said Riccarda Contini, a gallery owner who helped to organize the show.

In one painting, a prisoner stripped from the waist down dangles from the ceiling of his dark cell. In another muscle-bound men dressed in women's lingerie are forced to lie on top of each other.

Instead of the pastel churches and tropical trees, these grim paintings are colored by sprays of red blood, purple hoods and blue plastic gloves worn by prison guards.

Ahead of the opening, Botero told Reuters he hoped his works would be a "permanent witness to a great crime" in much the same way Picasso's "Guernica" has become a permanent reminder of the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War.

"The first thing I had to do was get it out of my heart, but art has this capacity to keep on accusing and I hope that will be the impact in the long term," he said.

The exhibition is being held in the 15th century palazzo that housed fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's office. He gave his public speeches from the balcony.

The retrospective includes more than 200 paintings, sketches and sculptures by Botero and will be on display through Sept. 23. The Abu Ghraib series will then head to Germany and Greece.

Can Patriots Survive the Patriot Act?
by Alan Caruba


It is the worst kind of foolishness to think that the federal government is going to nobly enforce the USA Patriot Act without yielding to the temptations of its authoritarian powers.

Like everyone else I will be celebrating the Fourth of July as the birthday of our great nation, but I will be doing so with a nagging sense of foreboding about how much longer it will still be a nation that protect the rights set forth in the Constitution.

It is an aspect of politics, liberal or conservative, that those who believe in America’s historic role come together when the Constitution is threatened.

Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D., is as liberal as I am conservative. He teaches journalism at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. His latest book, “America’s Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights” ($24.95, Peter Lang Publishing, New York) was recently published and it documents how the Patriot Act and its enforcement should scare the daylights out of everyone.

I find myself in the company of some of the most famed liberals, Noam Chomsky and Paul Krassner, among others, recommending that anyone concerned about where this nation is currently headed, read Dr. Brasch’s book.

Within six weeks of September 11, 2001, Congress approved the USA Patriot Act. Only a few of its members had an opportunity to read its 342 pages before they cast their vote. Only one of a hundred senators voted against it, joined by sixty-six of the 435 members of House of Representatives.

The great service Dr. Brasch has rendered is to have meticulously documented the ways elements of the Bill of Rights have been trashed. “Enforcement of the Patriot Act butts against the protections of six amendments to the Constitution: the First (freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.) Fourth (freedom from unreasonable search). Fifth (right against self-incrimination and due process). Sixth (due process, the right to counsel, a speedy trial, and the right to a fair and public trial by an impartial jury). Eighth (reasonable bail and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment), and Fourteenth (equal protection guarantee for both citizens and non-citizens).”

The Patriot Act was written in secrecy and rushed through Congress at a time when Americans, including myself, were very scared. The prospect of more horrific attacks loomed large in our imagination. The fear of Muslim members of our population, both native-born and naturalized, was palpable. The desire for retribution against our enemies was satisfied initially by the use of military force in Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban.

None of this, Dr. Brasch rightly concludes, justified then or now rendering the Bill of Rights a mere platitude. The Act was a composite of three separate acts; the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), “passed during the Cold War when there had been increased worldwide terrorism, especially in the Middle East,” the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, passed in 1996, and what Dr. Brasch describes as “a massive overreaching bill that same year that did not meet Congressional approval.”

Much of the Patriot Act, Dr. Brasch concedes, is non-controversial, being largely administrative or allowing funds for the pursuit of terrorists, permitting federal law enforcement to hire more translators (in 2001 the FBI had, perhaps, two on staff who could translate Arabic or Farsi. As a result, information that might have prevented 9-11 went untranslated.) More importantly, however, “Prosecutors, from small towns to the federal government, already had legal and constitutional authority to pursue anyone they believed was either knowledgeable about a crime or had committed a crime.” (Emphasis added).

On October 26, 2001, the Patriot Act gave the Justice Department and others like the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service, vast new powers to operate in secret. It “reduces judicial oversight of telephone and Internet surveillance.” It “also allows secret searches to seize an individual’s property without notifying that person even after the seizure (Section 806); and ‘sneak and peak’ searches (Section 213) without notifying the citizen, to allow a search (of) the premises when the subjects are away, not just for investigation of potential terrorism cases, but also for ‘any criminal investigation.’”

Anyone who has read my weekly commentaries knows I am no friend of Muslims who think ill of the United States or who plan to harm it. When the Twin Towers were first bombed in 1993, one of the conspirators lived in my former hometown. However, that man received a fair trial. Under the Patriot Act, there is simply no way of knowing how many Arab-Americans have been rounded up and/or deported without having had any connection to 9-11.

Even now, having supported the invasion of Iraq to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein to his own people and every other nation in the region, I find myself troubled by the way the government of the United States has concocted something called “an enemy combatant” and kept them far from any judicial or congressional oversight in Camp Delta in Guantanamo. One worries, too, that the justifications for the invasion have proven vacant.

Simply stated, if the United States is to be the exemplar of freedom, it must conduct itself within the limits of the Constitution and with respect for the Geneva Convention. When such laws are jettisoned in the name of “national security,” there is no security for any American.

Even the Justice Department’s inspector general, in 2003, reported that the detention of individuals in the United States was “indiscriminate and haphazard” and that there were “significant instances” of “a pattern of physical and verbal abuse” that included beatings of illegal immigrants, most of whom were Muslim or Arab, almost all of whom were imprisoned, notes Dr. Brasch, for minor offenses. Why does this remind me of the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II?

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, spoke out against what occurred in the wake of 9-11 and the USA Patriot Act. “Where I find fault with (the Department of) Justice and the attorney general is in the disingenuous way they defended the Patriot Act and then tried to imply that anyone who faults the act is either in league with terrorism or not sensitive to terrorism.”

Another conservative, former member of Congress, Bob Barr, expressed grave reservations about Sections 411 and 412 of the USA Patriot Act that permit the Secretary of State to designate American groups as “terrorist organizations.” Under Section 802, it permits the government to define any organization opposed to government policies or which is involved in civil disobedience as being a terrorist threat to the security of the United States, and denies them the right to advocate their views or fund-raise to secure support for them.” Barr said this “has an Orwellian effect on speech and political advocacy, especially direct action advocacy, arguably the most effective grassroots technique to influence political change.”

To be a true conservative, one must extend these and other enumerated Constitutional rights to liberal and other organizations with whom one may vehemently disagree.

It is the worst kind of foolishness to think that the federal government is going to nobly enforce the USA Patriot Act without yielding to the temptations of its authoritarian powers. This piece of legislation needs to be significantly reformed to insure judicial oversight remains an essential element of investigate actions and law enforcement.

Washington’s Colombian Habit

by Eric Fichtl

As U.S. involvement in Colombia’s civil war reaches dangerous new levels, there are new allegations about just what U.S. taxpayers are getting for the billions of dollars. In the last two months, five U.S. soldiers have been arrested on cocaine smuggling charges, two other U.S. troops were arrested for allegedly arranging an arms deal with Colombia’s rightwing paramilitaries, and—despite running the largest current account deficit in U.S. history—the Bush Administration is now seeking an additional $734 million to continue its counternarcotics folly in Colombia, despite no evidence of a reduction in supply.

In the most recent scandal to plague the embattled U.S. military, Warrant Officer Allan N. Tanquary and Sergeant Jesus Hernandez of the 7th Special Forces Group based at Fort Bragg were arrested by Colombian police on May 3. Serving in Colombia as part of the U.S. contingent of 800 military advisors to the Colombian military, the pair were caught with three Colombian civilians and over 40,000 rounds of ammunition that Colombian officials say were destined to be sold to members of Colombia’s right-wing paramilitaries, a group with which the Colombian military is theoretically at war, and which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogotá took immediate steps to have the two arrestees turned over to U.S. custody so that they could be shuttled to the United States under a 1974 treaty that ensures U.S. officials and soldiers “diplomatic immunity” in Colombia. On May 5, with aggravation mounting in Bogotá, Colombia’s Inspector General requested a one-day delay in the planned handover so that he could investigate the legality of the 1974 treaty under Colombia’s 1991 constitution, but the Colombian Attorney General’s office had already passed the pair to U.S. embassy officials. Then, the Attorney General’s office had an overnight change of heart and on the morning of May 6 requested permission to question Tanquary and Hernandez. The U.S. Embassy initially agreed to the request, but then quickly whisked the two soldiers back to the United States.

The incident has proven quite an embarrassment to the U.S. military and diplomatic corps, since Colombia’s paramilitaries are included on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher jumped in on damage control: “There is absolutely no U.S. policy and U.S. support or U.S. inclination or U.S. military operations involved in arming paramilitaries… We have declared these groups to be terrorist groups.”

The diplomatic flurry continued, with several big guns called out to help diffuse the tension. On May 11, General Bantz Craddock, the head of the U.S. military’s Southern Command, appeared at a school opening in Colombia and stated, “I can assure you that within the U.S. military investigations will be thorough and complete… The required persons will be held accountable.” Addressing the House International Relations Committee in Washington that same day, Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega stated, “We continue to monitor the investigation by Colombian and U.S. authorities into developments last week in which U.S. military trainers on temporary duty in Colombia were alleged to be involved in trafficking in ammunition. All affected agencies take these allegations very seriously; we recognized what is at stake. We and the Colombian government intend to get to the bottom of it.”

Also on May 11, the Washington Times ran a commentary by the recently retired Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Robert Charles, in which he advocated for the renewal of Plan Colombia, touting such benefits to Colombia as the Plan’s training program in the “culture of lawfulness” and underscoring its importance as a bulwark against “divisive radical socialism” emanating from Venezuela. While giving a hard sell for additional Plan Colombia funding that is all but guaranteed in Washington, Charles neglected to mention the recent arrests of seven U.S. soldiers on arms- and drug-smuggling charges tied to their participation in Plan Colombia.

The May arrests of Tanquary and Hernandez come in the wake of another smuggling scandal involving U.S. troops in Colombia. In March this year, five U.S. soldiers were arrested for allegedly smuggling 16 kilos of cocaine with a street value estimated to be between $300,000 and $500,000 to the United States aboard a U.S. military aircraft. Despite calls from Colombian lawmakers for the soldiers to stand trial in Colombia—especially because Colombia has honored hundreds of U.S. extradition requests in narcotrafficking cases—the United States would not consider the extradition requests, insisting the five soldiers had diplomatic immunity under the 1974 arrangement.

In 1999, another problematic episode brought considerable embarrassment to U.S. operations in Colombia. That year, Laurie Hiett—the wife of U.S. Colonel James Hiett, then-coordinator of U.S. anti-drug activities in Colombia—pleaded guilty to smuggling some $700,000 worth of cocaine and heroin to the United States using diplomatic postal services. Laurie Hiett received a five-year sentence, while her husband, who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges related to the smuggled drugs, only received a five-month prison sentence, outraging many Colombians.

It should come as no surprise that U.S. personnel stationed in Colombia are succumbing to the corruptive influence of the illegal trades that help fuel the country’s conflict. With the U.S. street value of cocaine, according to White House ONDCP figures, at between $10,000 and $36,000 per kilo, the incentive of the profits to be made from even a single successful smuggling deal cannot be underestimated. Given that a few kilos of smuggled cocaine has a value in the range of the yearly salaries of many U.S. personnel in Colombia, and considering the ready accessibility of cocaine there, the temptation is considerable. The Colombian arms trade offers similar opportunities for illicit rewards.

U.S. taxpayers should expect much more of this behavior in the future, as Washington is sucked deeper into the vortex of Colombia’s endless war. The Bush Administration recently increased the number of U.S. military personnel in Colombia from 400 to 800, in addition to the 600 private military contractors performing various roles there. Plan Colombia has already cost taxpayers $3.5 billion, and has signally failed to accomplish its original objective: the eradication of coca and poppy plants, which are planted anew or more effectively hidden after each fumigation flight. According to satellite data touted by the White House in March this year, the area of Colombian land under coca cultivation remained stable during 2004, unchanged from the 2003 level of 114,000 hectares.

On the other hand, with each dollar spent on Plan Colombia, the United States is drawn more inextricably into the Colombian state’s counterinsurgency war. As President Bush seeks Congressional support for his $734 million one-year renewal of Plan Colombia, it is time to once again reflect on Washington’s Colombian habit.

Eric Fichtl is the Associate Editor of Colombia Journal.