If you or I knowingly funneled $1.7 million to one of the worst, and best known, terrorist organizations in the world, we'd be sent to Guantanamo permanently. But when it's the senior management of Chiquita Banana, the Bush administration gives them a fine.
A fine.
Some war on terror we're running. We'll throw grandma in Cuba just for being Muslim, but if you're a corporate executive who knew what you were doing, and knew it was wrong (their own lawyers told them not to do it), the Bush Justice Department gives you a slap on the wrist.
Great message to be sending our troops, and every country on earth. Terrorism is bad, unless you're a big corporate friend of Bush. Then, not so bad.
One of the groups Chiquita funded was the terrorist group FARC in Colombia. Let me give you a quick look at who FARC is.
From the Council on Foreign Relations:
FARC is responsible for most of the ransom kidnappings in Colombia; the group targets wealthy landowners, foreign tourists, and prominent international and domestic officials. FARC stepped up terrorist activities against infrastructure in cities before Colombia’s May 2002 presidential election. Recent FARC operations include:
* the November 2005 kidnapping of sixty people, who are currently being held hostage by FARC, until the government decided to release hundreds of their comrades serving prison sentences. Former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt—who was kidnapped in 2002—is among the hostages;
* the February 2002 hijacking of a domestic commercial flight and kidnapping of a Colombian senator on board;
* the February 2002 kidnapping of a presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, who was traveling in guerrilla territory;
* the October 2001 kidnapping and assassination of a former Colombian minister of culture; and
* the March 1999 murder of three American missionaries working in Colombia, which resulted in a U.S. indictment of FARC and six of its members in April 2002.
