Word: barco
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President Virgilio Barco Vargas' four-month-old war against his country's top narcos -- Gacha, Pablo Escobar Gaviria and the three brothers of Medellin's Ochoa family -- has not gone as well as he or the nation had hoped. Since Mob hit men assassinated presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in August and ignited Barco's offensive, the leaders of Colombia's coke cartels have gone into hiding, forfeiting posh estates and bank accounts; some law- enforcement officials believe that the drug princes have even undergone plastic surgery. Nevertheless, Gacha and company remain immensely powerful, with their pipeline...
...early weeks of the offensive raised unrealistic expectations that the drug empires could be quickly crushed. Jungle labs were torched, properties and chemicals seized, and some 11,000 people detained. Today, with the war continuing but with fewer spectacular results to show for its efforts, the Barco administration is having a harder time making its case that the struggle is worthwhile. Meanwhile, the drug Mafia has struck back with more than 200 bombings and singled out and killed at least 13 officials. By the standards of civil war, the DAS headquarters would qualify as a military target and therefore part...
Though the escalating violence is intimidating the population and eroding Barco's support throughout the country, Colombian officials contend that the season of terror is proof that their battle is taking its toll against the intended targets. "We're winning," insists General Miguel Maza Marquez, who as head of the DAS directs the government's offensive (he escaped injury in last week's bombing). "The chieftains no longer live comfortably. They are in the mountains. The best proof that they are cracking is the level of madness to which they have sunk...
...Bush Administration professes to be pleased with Bogota's resolve, though officials are studying whether it will be safe enough for the President to attend a drug summit in Colombia early next year. "Barco is an engineer, and so he took a while to make up his mind," says a U.S. official. "But now that he's taken a decision to fight these guys, he's unshakable." But if Barco's campaign is lauded by the politicians in Washington, it has more than its share of deserters among the politicians in Colombia. Aware that the specter of an American jail...
Drug traffickers have killed three federal judges in three months, one just befoer President Virgilio Barco declared war on the cocaine cartels in August. They have shown no sign of easing a terror campaign aimed at forcing the government to end extraditions to the United States...