Bush Brings the False Intelligence Game to South America
But the real question is this one: Are Bolivia's citizen uprisings homegrown or a creation imported from abroad?UPDATE:
If you speak with people in the streets, the answer is dead clear. After more than a decade of being a lab rat for an experiment in free market fundamentalism imposed on the country from Washington, Bolivians want to change economic course. They want control of their natural resources. They want their children and grandchildren to reap the benefits of those resources, not only corporations such as Bechtel, Shell, Enron and British Gas.
One can agree or disagree with the positions advanced by these protests and with the tactics they have employed. However, what is not in doubt is that the political movement underway in Bolivia today is the product of genuine Bolivian sentiments.
And if US officials really want to track down the agents of foreign influence that have spawned all this, they don’t need weapons inspectors or spies. A simple mirror will do just fine.
I should have been clearer about this. Bolivia is perceived by some in the US administration as a third-party staging ground for the Colombia-Venezuelan battle. Venezuela supports the cause of peasants attempting to reclaim their heritage; the US supports Colombia as a form of struggling against the growth of South American socialism. This article makes clear that Bolivians simply want a better life and don't care much about the supposed geopolitical battle, which I think, anyway, is another figment of the Bush administration's overly aggressive (literally and figuratively) imagination.
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