The guerrilla offensive close to Bogota in Colombia and the crash of an intelligence-gathering aircraft with five U.S. military personnel on board indicate to me the strength of the guerrillas in Colombia and the fact that the United States will do everything in its power to prevent a leftist government from taking power there.

Just as the real reasons for the intervention in Yugoslavia were masked by claiming it was done to prevent ethnic cleansing, the intervention in Colombia is masked by claiming that it is part of the “War on Drugs.”

It is well known and has been revealed in testimony before congressional committees that the police, militaries and local elites in Latin American countries are the largest drug dealers, not the guerrillas.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the acceptance by China of extensive corporate investment, the boogeyman of the international communist conspiracy is no longer a sufficient fear-inspiring idea to present to the American people.

Consequently, new boogeymen are devised like terrorism, ethnic cleansing, drug dealers, etc. to camouflage the imperatives of imperialism.

This is all necessary to make the world safe for the Fortune 500, ensure that all enterprises are privatized and deregulated, ensure that the land, labor and resources of the Third World are under corporate control and make certain that no good examples of a competing economic system arise anywhere in the world.

Gary Sudborough

Resident

Bellflower, Calif.