The New Colombian Gold and What the FARC Is Up With Weapons Dealers?

As you may recall, there is a lot of spooky intrigue raising it’s ugly head lately in South America. It is hard to tell if the Bushies are just trying to screw up every continent before they leave office, or if there is some type of master plan, especially between South America and the Middle East. As a quick recap, early in March we saw Soviet Russian arms dealer extraordinaire Viktor Bout arrested in Thailand on what appears to have been a US warrant stemming from information "obtained" in a Colombian execution raid into Ecuador to kill Raul Reyes, the FARC Number 2, based upon US suggestion and intelligence. The upstart of all that seemed to be that FARC was trying to either obtain and/or sell uranium. Oh and by the way, the rumor was nicely planted that FARC had been given $300 million to get involved in this uranium terrorism by Hugo Chavez our new arch-enemy from Venezuela. Then, of course, there is our old friend Chiquita Bananas who, as opposed to Chavez/Venezuela, we do know has supported FARC terrorism. Jeebus.

The latest piece of this convoluted puzzle comes today with the announcement that the FARC uranium has been "found".

The seizure of up to 66 pounds of low-grade uranium linked to the FARC rebels adds weight to the evidence found in a captured rebel laptop that the guerrillas were interested in buying and selling the material, according to the Colombian Defense Ministry.

But the 30 kilos of uranium found Wednesday in plastic bags dug up about three feet from a road in southern Bogotá was "impoverished," the ministry said, and in that state could not have been used to make a radioactive bomb.

Uranium is the new "Colombian Gold"! The bit about the uranium being found 3 feet from the road to the FARC camp is almost hilarious. Almost. Um, let’s see, Chavez, terrorists, uranium and a fortuitously discovered laptop computer. That doesn’t sound at all like any Fourth Branch government we all know and love does it? Especially not on the heels of the recent visit the Saudis received from Cheney.

The other half of this two headed post involves a different arms merchant freakshow, this one being underwritten by the US government. In a long expose just published in the New York Times, the story is told of a couple of skateboard punk looking ammunition suppliers in their early 20’s, from Miami, that have been given US contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to supply ammunition and ordnance to our Afghani partners.

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Fast Times At Ridgemant High The Pentagon I guess. The NYT story is long, but stunning in it’s depiction of incompetence; and I am talking about our government and the Pentagon, not the skateboard punk arms merchants (although they are rich in that detail too).

What in the world is our government doing?

UPDATED to correct spelling error on "Colombian" per suggestion of BrendanX.