It comes back to the war on drugs. During the last decade, the U.S. has focused its efforts on illegal drugs outside of its own borders. Instead of funding treatment centers, education and domestic policing, the U.S. spends billions to drop chemicals on poor Colombian farmers. Uribe lets this happen, so the U.S. supports Uribe.

Most of the $2.5 billion dollars spent by the U.S. in Colombia in the last two and a half years have gone toward the fumigation of coca crops. And by supporting Uribe, U.S. dollars also support the AUC paramilitaries and continuing a bloody civil war.

It is impossible to drop chemicals from the sky and only affect a specific field of plants. Houses, water supplies, communities and animals have all been affected by this chemical rain. Farmers and guerillas often fire at crop dusters, and U.S. Blackhawk helicopters, flying along for "security," fire back, killing people in the crossfire. Cancer and dozens of other diseases are now beginning to show up in areas of heavy fumigation.

The farmers growing coca and their neighbors downstream never chose to fight a war, but they are paying the price while traffickers and paramilitaries use their power and money to stay out of jail and away from fumigating planes. The U.S. government has never made public the ill effects of its chemical campaign, but lately it has publicized the "success" of fumigation, quoting statistics like a 32 percent drop in coca crops since January. That's an impressive number, but never is the cost in human life and suffering mentioned.

In a recent interview with the Mexican Magazine Narco News, liberal Colombian Senator Pedro Arenas said that "fumigation is no solution" to Colombia's drug problems and the civil war ravaging the country. He said the "U.S.-imposed" Plan Colombia has made his nation suffer more. "We only punish the small farmers because they can't defend themselves," he said.

Despite "promising" statistics for more than a decade of a "war" fought on foreign soil, illicit drugs continue to satisfy the high domestic demand in the U.S. This all to obvious fact begs the question, wouldn't the war on drugs make more headway with treatment at home?

"Several billion dollars have been allocated to Andean counter-drug efforts in recent years, yet hardly a dent has been made in overall coca production" wrote Washington Office on Latin America consultant Coletta Youngers in a recent report. "And cocaine and heroin are just as cheap and readily available on U.S. city streets as they were (in 1989)."

The effects of fumigation and war have been spilling across the border to Ecuador for years, but this tiny nation on the equator garners far less attention from the north than Colombia (and in some ways, that's a good thing).

Health problems caused by fumigation don't respect borders; they are now appearing in frightening numbers in Ecuador's Sucumbios province. Several Ecuadorian organizations, including CONAIE (the Council of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador) and Ecological Action, have studied and spoken out about the health and agricultural dangers of U.S. crop dusting. One indigenous group in Sucumbios province is suing a U.S.-based chemical-maker for health problems caused by fumigation.

And the mistruths continue to flow from the U.S. military. In October, the U.S. announced plans to build three storage facilities in Ecuador; in Nueva Loja (near the Colombian border), Cuenca and Guayaquil. These centers are called "civil defense" bunkers, and the U.S. claims they were built to prepare Ecuador to respond to natural disasters. It is difficult to believe that the U.S. would build a military facility in Nueva Loja without using it to aid its expensive and widespread military presence in Colombia. Yet the lies are spoken with a straight face and Ecuador is expected to believe them.

Several Ecuadorian observers have accused the United States of obscuring its intentions behind these shelters. [Editor's note: For now, the Ecuadorian government has rejected the instillation of the "defense bunkers" on the sites mentioned]

Neither the history of United States military involvement in Latin America nor the current example of the deceitful war in Iraq warrants a sense of trust of the most powerful nation on Earth. The U.S. must begin telling the truth in Colombia -- and in the wider war on drugs -- before the situation can get better. The drug problem lies at home, and a solution should be focused there.

By coming clean and introducing humanitarian aid instead of donating destructive weapons and policies, the United States can stop stoking a civil war and help Colombia find peace.