Alek Boyd of VCrisis  has a fascinating bit of breaking news up about President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia handing over to the Venezuelan government a list of FARC Marxist narcoterrorists.
 
To those of us from afar, it might not look like anything earth—shattering. But it is.
 
President Uribe is one of the most effective terror fighters in the world today, a man with Bush—like and Sharon—like resolve to stomp out some of the world's most savage organized killers. Like them, he's taking a huge risk by doing it. And he's winning big.
 
Over the weekend, it came to light that he was fighting his country's monstrous terrorists whenever, wherever, they wander on this earth. Not surprisingly, that led straight to Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez's capital Caracas. Some news reports and diplomatic sources say one of these guerrillas went not only to Caracas, but to the presidential palace itself for a visit. But what the guerrilla didn't do was escape the reach of President Uribe, who paid bounty hunters to snatch the brutal leftist thug back from Caracas to Colombia to face justice.
 
The deed certainly made Chavez apocalyptic. He broke off commercial relations and recalled his ambassador. Uribe wasn't fazed. He warned Chavez he was the injured party in this, and called for a public meeting about why Marxist narcotrafficantes were walking freely in Chavez's Bolivarian paradise. Chavez wasn't up for that.
 
But President Uribe doesn't back down. He doesn't budge. He's pressing the issue by releasing the names of all of the terrorists who've taken shelter in Venezuela, based on powerful intelligence, possibly from the Americans. Uribe's got satellite pictures showing guerrilla camps in Venezuela, and a huge trove of further damning evidence.
 
Uribe's a smart politician so he's releasing it publicly. He's not doing that for Chavez, but doing that for us, and the entire world. He's laying down the case that Hugo Chavez is neck—deep in narcotrafficante terrorism and  a menace to our entire hemisphere. Uribe's shattering the image Chavez likes to show of himself as a champion of the poor an downtrodden. Like Arafat, who also liked to play that image, it's just Chavez's mask for his support of killers.
 
A.M. Mora y Leon 01 20 05