We've already seen the difficulty down there with the program because of delays. This will include the delivery of 18 Black Hawk and 42 Huey 2 Helicopters. US Green Berets will be sent to train three new Colombian counterinsurgency battalions.
Powerful herbicides are then to be sprayed on the coca fields from small aircraft.
Scientists warn the impact of these chemicals, both on the population in these areas and on the country's ecology, could prove catastrophic. It is a war that will kill, terrorize and chemically poison thousands upon thousands of poor peasants, driving them from their land and depriving them of a means of subsistence. Ironically, the growth of Colombia's role in cocaine trafficking is itself the product of earlier US efforts to curb the drug trade in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Indeed, the days leading up to the Clinton visit have seen uninterrupted carnage on the part of Colombian soldiers and the right-wing paramilitary groups that work in collaboration and under the protection of the Colombian military. Barely a week before the US president enacted the aid package, Colombian troops massacred six children who were on an excursion with their school class outside a village in the department of Antioquia.