BASE CLOSING HINDERS WAR EFFORT ON DRUGS

Just about when the taxpayer/voter thinks our leaders in government may
have somehow, somewhere, managed to do something right, the illusion
disappears like a puff of smoke - leaving us worse off, and poorer, than we
were.

With decades of history and massive documentation that Panama was an
absolutely necessary cog for our drug-war wheel, our best and brightest
politicians ignored that fact when we handed the Panama Canal over to that
tiny country.

The turnover was complete. What we left in Panama, along with the Canal, is
a now-deserted Howard Air Force base that gave us gave us an ideal
launching pad for counternarcotics surveillance flights - a key element of
U.S. efforts to curb the flow of cocaine and heroin from South America.

Howard Air Force Base isn't only abandoned, it no longer belongs to the
U.S. We gave the base to Panama when we pulled our military out of that
country.

It didn't take long for that error to have an effect. Drug movement in the
entire area has picked up dramatically since we handed over what many U.S.
and Latin American officials claimed was an irreplaceable weapon in the war
on drugs.

There has been a major upsurge in small aircraft leaving Colombia and in
heroin and cocaine shipments leaving the country, observers say.

Colombian Minister of Defense Luis Fernando Ramirez confirms the heightened
activity. Since Howard's drug operations shut down in May of last year, he
said, there has been an increase in drug trafficking flights out of the
country, and the Pacific has been left totally unprotected by radar.

Incredibly, the top military officials for the area say we shouldn't talk
about the problem. ''Confirming what windows are left unlocked for the
burglar is not a good idea,'' said a spokesman for the U.S. Southern
Command, the warfighting command with responsibility for Central and South
America.

Even total silence wouldn't fool the drug lords, however. The counterdrug
operations at Howard Air Force Base included 2,000 surveillance flights a
year. It's hard not to notice when those flights disappear.

Meanwhile, we're spending tons of money in an attempt to replace the base
we gave away. Three airfields have been activated, but runway improvements
at Manta and airplane parking areas on Curacao and Aruba are unfinished.

Even accepting the rationale of the administration that the new bases will
eventually give the U.S. a heightened effort in the war against drugs,
there is still a huge hole where common sense should have been located.

We had years - even decades - to deal with the known effects of the closing
of Howard Air Force Base. And we did nothing.

We obviously need new heads on this matter. It's pretty dumb to let the
same people who left us in the lurch try to get us back in step again.