Word: farce
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...hostage of Colombia's Marxist guerrillas is to be on the move. The rebels - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - sequester their captives deep inside the country's mountainous jungle terrain, and they regularly lead them on long, arduous marches from one mosquito-infested camp to another to keep the Colombian military from detecting their whereabouts. But on one of those treks today, the FARC finally exposed itself long enough for the army to score one of the most stunning hostage rescues in the history of a country where human abduction is virtually a national pastime...
Among the 15 people liberated was the most high-profile FARC hostage of all, former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt - a French-Colombian whose six-year-long captivity had become a cause célèbre in Europe - as well as three American defense contractors who had been held for more than five years, one of the longest U.S. hostage ordeals ever. Surrounded by his top military brass, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said, "They were rescued safe and sound...
...battle victory - no commando missile attack on a FARC camp, like the one that killed the FARC's No. 2 leader, Raul Reyes, last March - could have dealt Colombia's once powerful guerrillas a more devastating blow than the liberation operation that took place along the Apaporis River in southern Guaviare province, long a FARC stronghold. Under conservative President Alvaro Uribe, and with the help of the $5 billion U.S. aid crusade known as Plan Colombia, the once laughable Colombian military has severely hobbled the FARC, slashing its ranks from as many as 20,000 combatants a decade...
...Either, way, pundits agree that it's as smart for Chavez to distance himself from the FARC as it is to backtrack on his new domestic intelligence law. They also suggest that the Venezuelan leader is keeping his radical burners on medium-low for now, in the hopes that fewer outbursts from Hurricane Hugo - who has previously called President Bush "the devil" and Uribe "a criminal" - could even help get a Democrat into the White House this fall. "[Chavez] may decide to go a little less gonzo in the coming months as a result," says Birns. Meanwhile, the rest...
...once powerful FARC has been battered in recent years by Colombia's U.S.-backed military; and last month's death of its elderly chief, Manuel Marulanda, was just the latest loss to its command structure. But the guerrillas, who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year protecting cocaine trafficking, aren't likely to disband or free their captives any time soon...