Obama and Blair Delivered Another Stinging Rebuke, This Time in Colombia

Yesterday’s Colombian plebiscite for “peace” with the FARC narco-terrorists—which all along was a thinly-disguised British plan for shameless drug legalization, and which was widely expected to pass by a margin of 2 to 1—was soundly rejected by the Colombian population, with 50.21 percent voting “No” and 49.78 percent voting “Yes.” A shocked Washington Post Monday reported that “Colombians voted against the peace accord, in a Brexit-style backlash that defied pollsters’ predictions and left supporters of the deal in tears.”

Among those crying hardest today are Tony Blair, the long-time political godfather of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who risked everything on the peace deal, and lost. Also in tears today is Barack Obama, whose administration sponsored, organized, promoted, and lobbied for the deal at every turn, going back years. The final accord was signed a few weeks ago in the smiling presence of Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry, Cuban President Raul Castro, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

“Sunday’s outcome,” the Washington Post moaned, “also amounts to a setback for the United States and the Obama administration,” which had gone so far as to offer to remove the FARC, which is the world’s largest cocaine cartel, from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, allowing American banks and businesses to deal with them.

Back in June 1999, then New York Stock Exchange president Richard Grasso met in the Colombian jungle territory run by the FARC, with the narco-terrorist group’s chief financial officer, Raul Reyes, to discuss “mutual investments.” The two men were photographed in a tight, fraternal embrace—which the LaRouche movement made infamous internationally as the “Grasso Abrazo.”

In Feb. 5, 2016, EIR summarized what was really behind the “peace” deal:

“In 2014, the FARC leadership, which controls extensive marijuana, coca, and poppy plantations in the Colombian countryside, proposed at the negotiating table that the government agree that the State identify possible industrial and artesanal uses of these narcotics, and then `regulate the production and market for coca leaf, poppy, and marijuana.’ Last December, Santos took the first steps towards that, signing a decree legalizing the cultivation, processing, R&D and export of `medical’ marijuana. The plan is to turn marijuana exports into as big an `industry’ as flowers or food, Colombia’s Health Minister told Bloomberg news in January. On Feb. 3, PharmaCielo—a Canadian company run by former executives of Britain’s notorious Philip Morris company and speculator James Rogers, co-founder of George Soros’s Quantum Fund—filed their application to start farming and producing marijuana in Colombia. George Soros held a `very long meeting’ with Santos in 2012 to coordinate the operation.”