Benjamin Gilman: “Mr. Chairman, lest our friends on the other side of the aisle forget that the Plan Colombia concept was a Clinton…”

“Mr. Chairman, lest our friends on the other side of the aisle forget that the Plan Colombia concept was a Clinton administration proposal to help save Colombia from becoming a failed narco-state on the Clinton watch, we need to stay the course. We have not even delivered most of the equipment we promised to Plan Colombia, the helicopters that were provided for. In fact, they just started arriving this month. So how can we attest to the fact that this is a failure? It has not even started in full. Let us be fair and accurate in this debate. With what we in the Congress previously gave to the Colombian National Police ahead of Plan Colombia, their antidrug units are already about to totally eliminate opium this year, the source of more than 70 percent of the heroin coming to the United States. We also eradicated 30,000 hectares of coca in southern Colombia with Plan Colombia, all since mid-December of 2000, far ahead of schedule. All the above was accomplished in the year 2000 by the anti-narcotics police without one credible allegation of human rights abuse against its antidrug units.”