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"US played role in rebel strike - March 04, 2008 - A highly placed official in the Colombian defence ministry said it was a US intelligence agency which first told Bogota several weeks ago Reyes was sporadically using a satellite telephone, whose signal could be pinpointed. "The US handed over the identification of the satellite telephone to (Colombian) police intelligence units, which in turn processed the information and was tasked with finding the location of the telephone,'' the official said."

Thank you for this Joe. It's the first I've heard of our role in the matter.

And I submit it offers further evidence that Plan Colombia is working.

Looks like there are other benefits to busting up FARC leadership, since that raid may well be where we got the intel to bust up this worldwide arms network:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1981446/posts

[quoted from NY Times article]:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/world/europe/07dealer.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

BANGKOK — One of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, suspected of supplying weapons to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and of pouring huge arms shipments into Africa’s civil wars with his own private air fleet, was arrested by Thai authorities in a hotel here Thursday. His capture was prompted by a tipoff from the United States in connection with the procurement of weapons for the Colombian FARC rebels.

The Justice Department said that federal prosecutors in New York would unseal criminal charges against the arms dealer, Viktor Bout, 41, and one of his associates later Thursday, charging them with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Such a step would mean that American prosecutors think it likely Mr. Bout will be brought to the United States to stand trial.

Mr. Bout, who is wanted by the police in many countries, is a former Soviet Air Force officer. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he built a network of air cargo companies in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and the United States, according to the United States Treasury,.

United Nations reports and other investigations have concluded that Mr. Bout may have run the world’s largest arms-smuggling network. Peter Hain, a former British minister for Europe, who investigated the arms-for-diamonds trade, has called him “Africa’s chief merchant of death.”