The wars of the Empire, if we look at them from the point of view of their publicly announced purposes, have been a complete failure. The war on drugs has only increased prices, but not decreased production, not to mention consumption. Cultivation diminishes here and rises there; business prospers although the names of the owners change; one dies and another takes his place.

The “war against terrorism,” is other great war undertaken by Washington that is failing to bring the desired result. On the contrary, just as in the case of the lost battle against cocaine, the only likely result of this war is the generation of more and more terror. This is to say nothing of home-grown terrorism [ie: Timothy McVeigh]. One might have hoped that they would grasp the error of this strategy - that they might have grasped that their failure is due to an ignorance of the countries and problems they are prying into. But no.

I dare say (or repeat, since many voices with more authority than mine have already said it) that such wars have never succeeded to achieve their goals by the waving of the flag. That is to say, democracies cannot be created through force of arms; neither can drug addiction be stopped with Glifosato [a herbicide used to destroy coca], unless they pour it onto drug users, and, is worth saying, even this wouldn’t work. I think the point is, rathr, that these fights have been very profitable to those that provoked them. In the case of cocaine, the "war" is responsible for maintaining the high price of the drug, the profits of which end up in the coffers of the country of the north [the United States]. The blood is here, the white dust is in their noses and the silver is on Wall Street.

With regard to the war against the terrorism, we all know that the only pretext was to take control of petroleum. In this way, we can conclude that neither war has been a failure, if seen from the point of view of those who provoked them. With legalization, the war against the drug trafficking could be successful. The fight against terrorism, never, because the United States is alone in favoring it.

And, taking advantage of my presence in Washington, I dare say that [President] Uribe’s choice to be his new ambassador to the United States was a less than brilliant one [former President Andrés Pastrana]. Something tells me that he chose the ex-president and soon-to-be ambassador, because a good friend of Uribe’s father (also an ex-president, Julio César Turbay Ayala), thought Pastrana could “slide in'' to the embassy, where Pastrana and his wife Nohra would be closer to their children. I don’t doubt that he will evolve into his new post. The decision is over and done with. In fact, it would have been better for the country if he had been ambassador and not president. And, on the contrary, Luis Alberto Moreno president and not ambassador

C-SPAN VIDEO: President Bush and Columbian President Uribe Press Conference in Crawford, Texas, August 5, 00:29:16

[Luis Alberto Moreno is the current Colombian Ambassador to the United States. Pastrana, was Colombia’s president from 1998-2002. Julio César Turbay Ayala was Colombia’s president from 1978-1982].