Human Shields

It's amazing to me that President Uribe thinks that he can make deals with these people:

Warplanes preparing to bomb a paramilitary camp abandoned their mission after militants used villagers as human shields, Colombia's army chief said. A soldier and 14 paramilitary gunmen were killed in subsequent firefights.

The clashes at the camp holding 150 members of the outlawed Central Bolivar Bloc, or BCB, erupted Wednesday as the army waged a campaign to expel the paramilitary fighters from this oil-rich region of northern Colombia.

When army soldiers approached the camp, near the town of El Arenal, 220 miles north of the capital, Bogota, the paramilitaries used civilians as human shields, Gen. Martin Orlando Carreno said Thursday.

"For that reason we weren't able to deal them an overwhelming blow," the army chief told reporters in the city of Barrancabermeja, which holds Colombia's largest oil refinery, about 50 miles from the camp.

Carreno said the paramilitary fighters have been killing civilians, displacing them from their homes and stealing their cattle in the region. He also accused the group of siphoning oil from nearby pipelines.

This is why the only side I am on in this conflict is the side of those who are trying desperately day after day to lead a normal life in this country.

Comments

[akaky]

the colombian military will have to get over its squeamishness. it's a terrible thing to say but the middle of a knife fight is not the best time to start having ethics. a gang of criminals know nows that the best way to avoid being shot by the army is to snatch civilians off the street and threaten them. so how many more times is this going to be repeated before the government decides enough is enough? and how many people will die before the thugs realize that this tactic wont work anymore?

[Randy Paul]

The problem is that this is the same military that has allied itself with these same thugs all too often and by relying on these same thugs, the military has already compromised its ethics.

What the government needs to do is apply the same standards to thugs of the left and the right.