Colombian intelligence has learned that Venezualan terrorists have recently been seeking uranium...

The British ... er, Colombian Government has learned that Saddam Hussein... er, FARC recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa... er, from "negotiations".

C'mon, Kevin. They had drafted their Craig's List want ad already. So they basically were just one small step away from having 50 kilos of uranium.

Uranium is pyrophoric, so it's easy to burn, and inhaling the smoke is bad news, leading to Gulf War Illness, immunological and reproductive issues (birth defects). It's the easiest material to get if you want to make a simple dirty bomb. Of course the effects take decades, but the purpose of a dirty bomb is to scare, not to do actual damage.

Not that the attempt to legitimize death squads in defense against narcoterrorists is anything new in Latin America (Fujimori, anyone?), but the Iraq misadventure provides the Colombian government with the fig leaf it wants for this episode. International borders, state sovereignty, & world opinion are irrelevant when you're up against international terr'ism.

FARC is probably just trying to figure out what to do with the devalued dollars they get from the coca trade. Perhaps the uranium was just a suggestion for some commodities speculating by their money launderers?

50 kg of would be about 130 rounds of 30 mm depleted uranium ammunition.

Nice to see the Columbians are finding a use for Iraq War surplus propaganda. Was FARC going to buy the uranium from Niger? (They could at least make it plutonium).

Even if they did buy some uranium, so what? Remember, it's only U235 that's fissionable - U238 is mainly good as a "depleted uranium" anti-tank round. It takes a large industrial capacity to separate the U235 from the U235, like Iran's centrifuges. Does FARC have more resources and technological capabilities than Iran?

As for a "dirty bomb" - gosh, it'd make the target almost as radioactive as if it had been hit by a few depleted uranium rounds. Ricin's far more deadly - if not as scary as those evil neutrons.

And the Venezuelan interior minister accuses General Naranjo of being a narcotraficante while some of the Venezuelan opposition are labelling Chavez a traitor. And lots more at El Tiempo, the Bogota newspaper.

Just in time to justify starting a proxy war in S. America with a puppet in Colombia and US air power supporting Colombian drug cartel "militias" to ensure that Exxon gets Venezulea's oil.

Hey it worked on the build up to the conquest of Iraq.

The only thing that might slow it down is if Blackwater decides they want to get paid in Euro's instead of the toilet paper they are printing in D.C.

dang, all of those pilfered laptops of mass destruction that just hap-hap-happen to provide the super duper secret terrorist plans to control the world. something stinky:

Mar 4, 2008
The 'laptop of mass destruction'
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The George W Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" - 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop - as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear program.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JC04Ak03.html

Wow. After that anti-Iran SC vote everyone's getting in on the stolen laptop scam.

My bet is that "X is bad because we found Y on their stolen laptop" is such a cliche that Letterman is making a top ten lists about it by February next year. Any takers?

concentrado de uranio o "torta amarilla"

Must be springtime... laptops are popping up all over... first Iran and now Central America.

I won't make any excuses for CNN other than to say that they clearly have translation problems. Every other newspaper is reporting that the FARC sought uranium which is fairly credible. Name one terrorist group that doesn't seek increasingly powerful weapons. I watched a bit of the news conferences last night on RCN here in Bogotá and no one down here ever said that the FARC had bought Uranium.

Anyway, KD misses the bigger point which is that there was a wealth of evidence on that laptop linking President Chavez to the FARC as a clear state sponsor. That qualifies them for the Terrorist list and all the subsequent sanctions. That's the real story from the American view and it's something I'm sure is being discussed at the highest levels (the US would be reluctant to cut off Venezuela since we buy their oil and sanctions would curtail Colombian-Venezuelan trade which would economically damage our only ally in the region).

To commenters: It's Colombia - not Columbia. One is a city in South Carolina or a University. The other is a country.

It's SOUTH America, not CENTRAL America.

The FARC are a terrorist organization - as classified by the US and the EU and by simple logic.

The FARC are bad because they're a terrorist org. It's not, "we found X on their laptop, they're bad". It's, "they routinely kill innocents, kidnaps non-combatants and keep them in inhumane conditions for years, engage in narcotics trafficking, and blow up bombs."

50 kg of would be about 130 rounds of 30 mm depleted uranium ammunition....

...which Hellboy intends to use in the Samaritan.

What a load of shit.

FARC may be real good now at processing coke, but I think they are several hundreds of millions of dollars and a few dozen scientists away from putting together even a "suit case" bomb. For starts, they live in the fucking jungle and are almost constantly on the move.

As far as the Chavez angle, he's sending his country into such a tailspin that I give him six-months more in office tops before either a military coup or popular uprising forces him out.

It should be noted that NO ONE has mentioned that they sought Uranium to make a Nuclear Bomb aside from commenters on the internets.

Probably but man do I ever hate the FARCers.

The FARC are bad because they're a terrorist org. It's not, "we found X on their laptop, they're bad". It's, "they routinely kill innocents, kidnaps non-combatants and keep them in inhumane conditions for years, engage in narcotics trafficking, and blow up bombs."

And this differentiates them from the government of Colombia in what way?

BushCo probably has a few dozen laptops still on hold in the Whatagon's Office of Special Plans. Besides the Iran and FARC ones, there's the Libya one, which didn't have to be used, maybe the Somali one, the Syrian one, the Hezbullah one, etc.

That said, this idea could spread. Picture Russia's Medvedev announcing he has just found a Chechen laptop.

If you hate FARC for the crimes they commit, you should really hate the DEA for the crimes they commit.

The Colombian police released 36 pages worth of documents today including the documents where the uranium was mentioned. They will be sending the documents to the OAS and other international organizations for verification.

I'm going to go ahead and guess you're not entirely serious when you wonder how the FARC is different from the Colombian government. Because only a single celled organisism could fail to see the difference between a terrorist org who kidnaps (gov doesnt), who imprisons non-combatants in inhumane conditions and in violation of international law (gov doesn't), and kills/bombs innocent civilians on purpose (gov doesn't) and a government that is fighting that group.

An intelligent human being would also note that while the government has been involved with atrocities, there are judicial procedures in place and a great number of those implicated are either serving time or will be serving time soon whereas the FARC are drug traffickers and murderers with their own brand of jungle justice that has neither judicial review nor a shred of objectivity.

So yeah, good joke about the FARC being the same as the Colombian government singularity.

If you hate FARC for the crimes they commit, you should really hate the W. Bush administration for the crimes they commit.

Brojo - done and done. I've been strongly against Bush since the beginning. Opposing the FARC doesn't mean that one supports X (bush, Col gov, etc).

As far as the Chavez angle

The explanation for this pathological hatred may lie in the fact that, given the socialist leanings of its current government, Venezuela dares to use its resources to provide health care at no charge to all its citizens who need it, especially the poor. Previous Venezuelan governments have promised free health care in the past, but they never had enough clinics and sympathetic doctors to turn the promise into reality. The Chávez government has both doctors and clinics.

The NY Times coverage of Venezuela is mostly anti-Chavez propaganda.

FARC being the same as the Colombian government

The actions of Saturday 1 March took place days before a major international demonstration scheduled for 6 March, 2008. Promoted by The National Movement of Victims of State-Sponsored Crimes (MOVICE), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and countless social justice-based organizations, March 6th has been set as an international day of protest against those tortured, murdered, and disappeared by the Colombian state, their allies within the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) and the newly reformed Black Eagles. Recently, President Uribe's top political adviser, José Obdulio Gaviria, proclaimed that the protest and protesters should be criminalized. In addition, paramilitaries in the southwestern department of Nariño (not far from where the illegal incursions were carried out in Ecuador), have threatened to attack any organization or person associated with the activities scheduled for Thursday.

Sorry Nobcentral.

As far as the Chavez angle, he's sending his country into such a tailspin that I give him six-months more in office tops before either a military coup or popular uprising forces him out.

Didn't we (and by "we" I mean the government we pay for) try that once already, both backing a military coup and our President accusing Chavez of being anti-democratic if he wouldn't schedule a special election to allow himself to be thrown out of office early?

This whole thing is a case of the CIA-US using Columbia as a proxy to goad Hugo Chavez into a military action that they can then 'intervene' in, thus allowing a large influx of US military into Columbia, with excursions into you-know-where - another case of the U.S. manipulation in order to move into an oil-rich country.

Chavez needs someone advising him to just be cool, and the same goes for Evo Morales in Ecuador.

I GUARANTEE that the CIA has people on the ground doing their old Operation Condor number, in all three countries.

Hopefully Chavez will not use any military force against Colombia. That is exactly what the Texans want.

What is all our oil doing under their land?

FARC has uranium? That sounds like Something Awful.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A14058E0-BC7A-428C-9690-E7A8AC213946.htm
Looks like the colombians got the goods: they found the uranium. Now...I'm sure the lefties on this page will go into spasms explaining how it was all planted, poor little FARC, made to look bad by the evil empire, when they are just fighting for the dignity of a people!