OBAMA'S COLUMBIA YEARS: WTF WAS HE DOING?

You don't hear too much about Obama's Columbia years. This blogger muses about why that may be the case.

What did Barack Obama do while at Columbia from 1981 to 1983 and in the year after his graduation? That part of his life is scarcely mentioned in "Dreams From My Father"; the Wall Street Journal remarked in the mystery a month ago and the NY Times puzzled over it a year ago.

Let me just toss out the outlines of a theory that has just hit my inbox and left me agog. First, the usual disclaimers - this is speculative, there are gaps and leaps of logic, and nothing can be proven. However, that said... well, see if you are agog as well.

1. From Dreams From My Father and other sources we know that Obama was interested in South Africa divestment in the early 80's. For example, he had a moment of awakening at Occidental College when he gave a brief but well-received speech to kick off an anti-apartheid demonstration. Other sources indicate he maintained that interest while at Columbia.

2. A major focal point of the anti-apartheid movement in the fall of 1981 was the Springboks rugby tour - they were an integrated South African rugby team on a "goodwill" tour of the US, creating controversy and drawing protests everywhere. Some of the protests were violent, including one at John F. Kennedy Airport (from whence the team departed, I believe), and bombs were exploded.

3. Did I say "bombs"? Yes, and here is the jaw-dropping connection - the Weather Underground was involved in some fashion and the Brinks robbery which left two police officers and a security guard dead was apparently undertaken to finance activities such as the Springboks bombings. A flavor from the Times:

The police said they had several links between the robbery suspects and other people associated with radical activities in the past. Federal officials said they were looking into possible links between the holdup gang and the Black Liberation Army, which, like the Weather Underground of years ago, has been linked more recently to bombings, attacks on police officers and other violence aimed at toppling ''the establishment.'' Getaway Car Recovered

A yellow Honda used as one of the getaway cars, for example, was recovered and found to have been registered to Eve S. Rosahn, who was a Barnard College student in the late 1960's and was arrested in radical demonstrations at Columbia University then and more recently at a New York City airport demonstration against the Springboks, the South African rugby team.

These are just dots and it may be impossible to connect them, but we have Barack Obama at Columbia working on South African divestment (as were many peaceful protestors) while other radical elements with a Weather Underground flavor are setting bombs, killing cops, and working on South African divestment. As a bonus, Bill Ayers is studying at Bank Street College a quarter mile from Columbia towards his Masters in Education and Kathy Boudine, one of the Brinks getaway drivers, was working at a progressive Upper West Side School.

A small, small world in which Obama never met any of these people despite their shared passion for justice in South Africa. Never heard them speak at a rally, never heard anyone describe the Weather Underground to him, and felt comfortable assuming that Bill Ayers had been rehabilitated by 1995. In fact, a world so small that Obama won't talk about it now.

SPEAKER PELOSI WAS SENDING MESSAGES TO FARC TERRORISTS WHILE UNDERMINING COLUMBIAN GOVERNMENT

Today we learned something about FARC's "human rights" friends:

As we learn more about the Colombian military's daring hostage rescue last week, one detail stands out: In tricking FARC rebels into putting the hostages aboard a helicopter, undercover special forces simply told the comandantes that the aircraft was being loaned to them by a fictitious nongovernmental organization sympathetic to their cause called the International Humanitarian Mission.

It may have taken years for army intelligence to infiltrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and it may have been tough to convincingly impersonate rebels. But what seems to have been a walk in the park was getting the FARC to believe that an NGO was providing resources to help it in the dirty work of ferrying captives to a new location.

I am reminded of President Álvaro Uribe's 2003 statement that some "human rights" organizations in his country were fronts for terrorists. Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd got his back up over Mr. Uribe's statement, and piously lectured the Colombian president about "the importance of democratic values."

But as the helicopter story suggests, Mr. Uribe seems to have been right. How else to explain the fact that the FARC swallowed the line without batting an eye?

Left-wing NGOs have made undermining the Colombian government's credibility a priority for many years. A 2003 internal report from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá titled "A Closer Look at Human Rights Statistics" confirmed as much. It found that NGO analyses – for example by the Jesuit-founded Center for Popular Research and Education known as Cinep – of the human-rights environment contained a heavy bias against the government while granting a wide berth to guerrillas.

Last fall, Mr. Chávez and the FARC hatched an audacious plan whereby the Venezuelan would take "proof of life" of Ms. Betancourt to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, where the plight of Ms. Betancourt was a cause célèbre. The rebels wrote that Mr. Chávez was sure French pressure for negotiations would cause President Bush to "order Uribe to allow the meeting" between Mr. Chávez and the rebels on Colombian soil, something Mr. Uribe had refused to do. The rebels reported that Mr. Chávez was "super-motivated," because he viewed the rendezvous as a public-relations coup that would give him and the FARC "continental and world renown."

That plan flopped, but Mr. Chavez had other cards up his sleeve. One involved Ms. Cordoba, who is currently under investigation by the Colombian attorney general for ties to the FARC. She figures prominently in the captured rebel documents, and is notoriously close to Mr. Chávez.

She met at the Venezuelan presidential palace with FARC leaders last fall. From that meeting the rebels reported that "Piedad says that Chávez has Uribe going crazy. He doesn't know what to do. That Nancy Pelosi helps and is ready to help in the swap [hostages in exchange for captured guerrillas]. That she has designated [U.S. Congressman Jim] McGovern for this."

If the speaker of the House was working with Ms. Cordoba in this scheme, her judgment was more than a little misguided. The rebels write that on a trip to Argentina Ms. Cordoba told them, "It doesn't matter to me the proposal that Sarkozy has made to free Ingrid. Above all, do not liberate Ingrid." In short, why give up such a useful pawn?

Misguided? It's blatant subversion of the Columbian government and America's interests.

AMERICAN HOSTAGES RETURN HOME

What a Fourth of July these guys are going to have.

CHAVEZ THREATENS WAR OVER U.S. BASE IN COLUMBIA

I really, REALLY hate this fat head...

President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday warned Colombia not to allow a U.S. military base on its border with Venezuela, saying he would consider such an act an "aggression."

Chavez said he would not permit Colombia's U.S.-backed government to establish an American military base in La Guajira, a region spanning northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela.

The Venezuelan leader said if Colombia allows the base, his government will revive a decades-old territorial conflict and stake a claim to the entire region.

‘Whatever it takes’
Chavez urged his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, to "think it over well" before making such a decision because Venezuela will do "whatever it takes" to ensure that a U.S. military base is not built on the peninsula in the Caribbean Sea.

Something tells me Chavez will be dead by the time this base takes place. Just a hunch.

HUGO CHAVEZ, COLUMBIAN LEFTIST REBELS, OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS, AND ROGUE URANIUM IN SOUTH AMERICA

Yesterday, Interpol confirmed the authenticity of Raúl Reyes's computer files. Reyes was a top commander of Colombia's left-wing guerrillas the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) killed during a Colombian military operation in Granada, Putumayo, on March 1, 2008. In the aftermath of the attack on Reyes and FARC, the Columbian government claimed that it seized computers belonging to the rebels that contained emails and other information detailing support for, and the goals of, the leftist rebel group. Hugo Chavez took the opportunity to accuse Columbia of military aggression against Venezuela and massed thousands of troops on the Columbian/Venezuela border while threatening war. Chavez also claimed that the information contained on the laptops was a fabrication. Interpol, however, says Chavez was wrong.

According to Interpol:

The information found in the computers of the deceased leader of the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Raúl Reyes, was not manipulated by Colombian authorities, according to an Interpol's report to be released next May 15, as disclosed by Bogota El Tiempo daily newspaper.

The report stated that a committee comprising computer science experts from Korea, Australia, and Singapore working for the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) completed last May 2 the investigation into the three computers found in Reyes' camp in Ecuador, Efe reported.

"The first finding was that Reyes' files were not manipulated and that security agencies and citizens who had the computer in their hands kept them safe," the Colombian newspaper stated.

Based on the information found on the laptops, the Colombian National Ministry of Defense reported last month that authorities had seized 60 pounds of uranium that belonged to FARC.

The fact that the information has now been confirmed as authentic is horrible news for Colombia's FARC supporting neighbors and US Democrats.

Here is a partial list of what Colombian investigators found on the FARC terror leader's computer:

-- FARC connections with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa
-- Records of $300 million offerings from Hugo Chavez
-- Thank you notes from Hugo Chavez dating back to 1992
-- Uranium purchasing records
-- Admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria
-- Admit to planting a 2003 car bomb killing 36 at a Bogota upper crust club
-- Directions on how to make a Dirty Bomb
-- Information that led to the discovery of 60 pounds of uranium
-- Letter to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi asking for cash to buy surface-to-air missiles
-- Meetings with "gringos" about Barack Obama
-- Information on Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout who was later captured
-- FARC funding Correa's campaign
-- Cuban links to FARC
-- Links to US Democrats
-- $480,000 of FARC cash in Costa Rican safe house
-- $100,000 to President Correa's campaign for election

You can draw your own conclusions about the danger of 60 pounds of uranium in the hands of marxist terrorists. And you can draw your own conclusions as to the importance of this passage that was allegedly found on the seized laptops, now confirmed authentic by Interpol:

The gringos will ask for an appointment with the minister to solicit him to communicate to us his interest in discussing these topics. They say that the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support "Plan Colombia" nor will he sign the TLC (Colombian Free Trade agreement). Here we responded that we are interested in relations with all governments in equality of conditions and that in the case of the US it is required a public pronouncement expressing their interest in talking with the FARC given their eternal war against us.

You can draw your own conclusions. But in light of his Reverend Wright and William Ayers ties, his adherence to the Marxist black liberation religion, his stance on free trade agreements, and his despising of free-thinking, gun-toting small town America, I will draw my own conclusion too. Obama is a marxist. And while you may not see it, marxist rebels with uranium do.