Word: base
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...will come down to the green zone and fight, and you will win," the farmer concedes. "But you will win only for one hour. Then you will go back to your base. The Taliban will return. You have to fight the Taliban for more than one hour, you have to push them back...
When the Colombian military made its controversial incursion into neighboring Ecuador two months ago, it may well have removed more than just a camp full of leftist Colombian guerrillas. The raid may wind up taking out a $70 million U.S. Air Force base as well. On Monday, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said he's "convinced" the U.S. aided Colombia in the March 1 attack and reiterated his suspicions that U.S. intelligence agencies had infiltrated Ecuador's armed forces and police - remarks that seem to all but assure that the small South American nation will not renew the lease...
Correa, an ally of Venezuela's left-wing, anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez, has made no secret of wanting to give the Manta base the boot since he became President last year. He views the facility - which the U.S. Air Force calls a Forward Operating Location (FOL) and not a full-fledged military base - as an affront to Ecuadorian sovereignty. Many if not most Ecuadorians agree, if only because of what they consider the questionable circumstances under which it was established in 1999. That year the U.S. failed to reach a deal with Panama on continued...
...host country. "There is an information vacuum," says Assemblywoman Tania Hermida, a Correa ally and member of the sovereignty committee. "The situation is so delicate that we need to know its activities over 100% of that [Feb. 29-March 1] period." She adds: "Any concrete proof that the Manta base was involved [in the Colombian attack] would be more than enough reason to close it immediately...
Either way, it appears all but certain now that the Manta base will be one of the most high-profile casualties of the Andean fracas. U.S. officials argue the Manta FOL has played a key role improving drug interdiction as the southern tip of a triangle that includes U.S. FOLs in El Salvador and the Caribbean island of Curacao. They estimate those three FOLs intercepted, in street-value terms, $4.2 billion worth of cocaine and other drugs in 2007. But many anti-drug experts in the U.S. nonetheless argue the bases are expendible in the larger interdiction picture...