Posted on 10/22/2007 8:38:02 PM PDT by LibWhacker
NAPLES (Reuters) - Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.
Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.
"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.
"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."
The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics flights from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of illegal drug seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.
It offers a fact-sheet on the base at: http://ecuador.usembassy.gov/topics_of_interest/manta-fol.html
Correa, a popular leftist economist, had promised to cut off his arm before extending the lease that ends in 2009 and has called U.S. President George W. Bush a "dimwit".
But Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told Reuters he believed relations with the United States were "excellent" despite the base closing.
He rejected the idea that the episode reflected on U.S. ties at all.
"This is the only North American military base in South America," he said.
"So, then the other South American countries don't have good relations with the United States because they don't have military bases? That doesn't make any sense."
Fine. He has to pay rent and abide by zoning and other land use laws.
We live in scary times. Orwell was prescient, he was just a couple of decades off.
His logic is impeccable.
We can't even secure our own borders or put down an insurgence in a country we're occupying, but we can run surveillance operations on Pacific drug-runners. What's wrong with this picture?
Good for ecuador! Saving US taxpayer dollars when our politicians won’t.
You misread his statement.
“don’t” and “shouldN’T” meaning, that he does not believe that Americans should be silent about their government.
He then WENT ON to elaborate about what he meant with regard to Carter/Church and the expectations of conducting foreign policy in a certain, unrealistic way.
I’m not sure where you got the idea he was saying Americans shouldn’t question.
I forgot to ping you but billbear misread the poster’s statement. Disagree with the rest of his post all you want or let’s have a discussion but billbear clearly misread it as saying something totally objectionable to any member of FR when that is clearly (just read the statement) not what he meant or typed.
Close the base and then close our borders. You don’t need that type of drug interdiction unless the US keeps an open border policy.
Billbears, that was a double negative. VOA was in complete agreement with you, that people should question their governments.
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