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In fact you're both wrong.
Escobar's unrestrained violence was a roaring success. He and the
Medellin Cartel at large, accomplished all their goals. They stopped
Extradition of Cartel members dead. (It's now part of Columbia's
constitution that its citizens cannot be extradited). He forced the
government to adopt an amnesty program for Cartel members allowing
them to serve little or no time and to return quietly to business as
usual. He managed to get himself and his close associates put in a
prison of his own construction and to get the army guards who oversaw
the prison stacked with his supporters. Moreover, he managed to get
his detractors in the Columbian Defense Force banished from an area
some 6 miles in radius from the Prison itself. This put him in a
position safe from his enemies in the rival Cali cartel as well as
his enemies in the Army. He had the Columbian government in full
appeasement mode.
During the first cocaine war Escobar pretty much won every battle,
managed to buy safety and security for himself, his family and his
close associates. He bought himself time and proceeded to settle
down to business in something like peace. The government was leaving
him be and he continued to run his business and dominate the
processing and distribution of Cocaine from his self-built
Prison^H^H^H^H^H^H Mansion retreat. He left whenever he wished and
was often seen in the night clubs during his "incarceration." No one
said anything. Why rock the boat?
After killing nearly 1200 people, setting off bombs in busy public
squares in Medellin and all the other attendant nastiness his
downfall was a relative small thing. He murdered four other cartel
members in the prison itself. That was the straw that finally made
the Columbian government, under U.S. pressure and now in concert with
the Cali cartel, move against him and attempt to move him to a prison
in Bogota. Not particularly eager to be moved, Escobar, with plenty
of warning, escaped.
Even after he escaped the raid designed to move him to more
restrictive housings he was a folk hero amongst the locals around
Medellin, many of whom would happily house him and his associates in
small homes about the countryside. Saddam Hussein would later take
Escobar's example and hide among the many small villages and such in
Iraq during the Gulf War, sleeping in a place for a night or two at
the most. It took over 16 months and some hundreds of millions of
dollars to eventually corner him and only then because he was
increasingly brazen about using cellular phones and (after the
government shut down non-essential cellular service to all of
Medellin and the surrounding areas) line of site VHF radios to
communicate with his family- most particularly his son- even while he
knew he was being eavesdropped on. Occasionally he would taunt the
authorities and the Columbian Search Bloc over his phone or radio
during conversations with third parties.
No, Escobar's violence didn't kill him. Four poorly timed but
otherwise inconsequential murders did. Escobar lacked the political
vision to see this for the issue it was. He even wondered aloud
about why the authorities were so worked up over those last four
murders given all that had gone before, insisting that it was "just
business" inside the Cartel. And no, in the end WOMD would not have
helped him.
In the end Escobar did just fine, but would have been better served
if he had followed the example of his colleagues the Ochoa's- 2/3 of
whom are alive and happily enjoying a comfortable retirement today.
Incidently, while Delta was almost certainly at the site of his
killing and involved in a support role, it was Columbians, right down
to the radio direction finder, who finally caught and, mostly likely,
assassinated him. In the end it was only American equipment in
Columbian hands that caught Escobar. (The CIA direction finding
effort was the laughing stock of the show. The Army stuff was much
better but still- in the end- insufficient).
- -uni
At Tue, 29 May 2001 14:35:34 -0800 (PDT), [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>At 08:33 AM 5/29/2001 +0000, Dr. Evil wrote:
>
>Escobar's real downfall, of course, was his unrestrained violence.
>After he blew up an Avianca flight, killing over 100 people
>(including 2 Americans) just to assassinate one guy (who wasn't even
>on the
>plane), he made a lot of enemies and lost a lot of support. He also
>gave the US a justification for getting involved, because air safety
>is an international concern, and two Americans were killed.
>
><end of quote>
>
>No, his real downfall was assuming he could act ("kill") locally but
> operate globally. If he had used a portion of his wealth to
>purchase WOMD and place them in various U.S. cities with "deadman
>triggers" it might have provided a strategic counterbalance to
>Delta and U.S. special forces.
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