Posted on 10/24/2007 6:07:35 AM PDT by George W. Bush
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."
I agree. We ought to leave a big messy pile so they have lots to clean up. I see no reason why we should leave one thing there. Anything they could use should not left behind & smashed.
Maybe we could compromise and lease him land in Bajura, Puerto Rico.
But we should definitely call his bluff!
*Retirement*??
HA!!!
The end for useful idiots has been & always will be the same.
...they sleep with the fish.
If we did, the new Ecudorean base in Miami would have an awful lot of Venezuelans in it. Build our base elsewhere, but be sure to demolish anything we have to leave behind.
A visit from Blackwater bringing nice chainsaw.
Oh yeah, and when your government topples itself... Don’t bother calling... The line will be busy...
Thank you, Rummy.
You can’t go out and play until you clean up your room.
Consider Gitmo, multiple fences and a minefield. We could provide the same level of security for an Ecuadorian base in the US, with free round-the-clock security perimeter patrols and really excellent RF monitoring. Plus a firewall for data comm worth millions of it were available on the market.
Plus low-light and IR cameras, tunnel detection gear, sonar monitoring.
Let them come! Even offer to build the infrastructure for them!
Give them lots of press coverage too, and let the sun shine in!
Arizona? Oklahoma? Texas? Miami of Ohio?
Sounds like a good place for Yucca Mtn. #2.
I'm assuming it'd be fully armed and authorized to fire when threatened.
Equador probably still claims territorial waters out to a couple of hundred miles.
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