TIME TO CONFRONT THE TRUTH ABOUT ANOTHER U.S. WAR

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- A few weeks ago, the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy was ballyhooing statistics showing that
the price of cocaine on the streets of America was up 19 percent to
$170 a gram and the quality was down 15 percent.

This was supposed to be good news for America's second-most-important
and second-most-expensive war, the war on drugs, in which the United
States has spent billions of dollars. If the price is up and the
quality is down, it means the shippers aren't getting as much good
junk into America.

Then last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the
Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan investigative
arm, had doubts about the White House figures.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who requested the GAO
evaluation, told the Chronicle that the GAO report "is saying it is
very difficult to prove the policies are affecting the overall drug
trade."

So goes the debate in Washington over whether the biggest foreign
spending program outside of the Middle East and the war on terror is
working. In this case, it's a bureaucratic wrangle over statistics
that don't come close to reflecting the human tragedy spawned by
illicit drugs in America, the largest consumer, or in Colombia, which
supplies about 90 percent of the world's cocaine.

In the last five years, the United States has spent more than $3
billion in its support of what is known as Plan Colombia to eradicate
the coca and poppy crops in Colombia and to strengthen the Colombian
government's authority - military authority mostly - in a country
whose people have been devastated by one of the world's
longest-running civil wars.

If the White House figures are correct and one gram of lesser-quality
dope is going for $170, that doesn't mean, of course, that fewer
Americans are consuming cocaine. It means they are paying more and in
many cases have to steal more to get the price of a fix. Meanwhile,
murderous gangs and individuals working in the drug trade hold sway in
just about any large American community.

In Colombia, the toll is different and the calamity is even greater.
The civil war there began as a challenge to the authority of an
economic and political elite that controlled the country's vast
resources while the majority of Colombians lived in abject poverty.
But what started as a social revolution transformed over the years
into a vicious battle for turf, financed by drug money.

Colombia is one of the most beautiful countries in South America,
richly endowed with agricultural and other resources. Yet the majority
of its people still live below the poverty line. Tens of thousands of
Colombians have been killed in the endless conflict; upward of 3
million people have been displaced from their homes and live in
squalid shanty communities.

The oldest rebel force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, depends on drug money to pay for the weapons to continue the
war. So do the right-wing paramilitary forces arrayed against the
FARC, which sometimes act in collusion with the Colombian army.

The FARC rebels kill people and destroy homes and infrastructure, as
do the paramilitaries. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is committed
to drug eradication, with massive aerial fumigation and all the
collateral damage that entails, and to armed victory, which has eluded
him and his predecessors for four decades.

A large part of the debate here is over the efficacy of that approach
as opposed to social and peace-building programs that would strengthen
democracy and public participation at all levels. But that takes
patience, ingenuity and honest government, none of which is a hallmark
of the Colombian condition today.

"Uribe's thinking is how to beat the rebels militarily, not how to
make peace with them," says Monsignor Hector Fabio Henao, who directs
Colombia's Caritas, the Catholic Church's development and social
service organization.

People such as Monsignor Henao criticize the balance of U.S.
assistance to Colombia - 80 percent of which goes to the eradication
program and to the Colombian military, the rest to social and
development programs.

So here's another statistic: The United States has spent between $3
billion and $4 billion fighting the drug war in Colombia while cutting
social programs at home. Illicit drugs from Colombia earn about $65
billion a year in the United States. Somebody's winning the drug war,
and it isn't the people of America or the vast majority of Colombians.