Oh yeah, wait... they were invited to help fight drug trafficking. GlobalPost reports:
Costa Rica doesn’t ‘officially’ have an army – but apparently it will be home to one for the rest of 2010.
A flotilla of 46 United States Navy warships capable of carrying 200 helicopters, along with 10 Harrier vertical take-off and landing fighter jets, and 7,000 combat ready marines available for land based operations is on its way to this Central American country with no standing army.
On July 1, 2010 the Costa Rica Legislative Assembly voted 31-8 to grant the U.S. military full in-country access through the end of 2010 to help fight drug trafficking.
As of this writing the new administration of President Laura Chinchilla -- who was previously Costa Rica’s Vice-President, Justice Minister and Minister of Public Security -- has not commented in great detail as to what the U.S. troops will be trying to accomplish with their new right of entry other than to say there will be a combination of anti-drug and humanitarian operations.
This type of deal is a growing trend in Latin American countries.
Columbia has for the last decade been increasing its commitment to full-time anti-narcotic U.S. support.
In September 2009, ten years after the last U.S. troops had ‘officially’ left Panama soil due to the canal treaties, the United States entered into a new agreement to open 2 new U.S. military bases on their Pacific coast in exchange for $7 million to fight organized crime associated with illicit drugs.
April 2009 Honduras opened a new Navy base near the border of Nicaragua with $2 million from the U.S. and most recently announced July 10, 2010 another new military base will be constructed on the Caribbean with U.S. funding to help fight drug trafficking.
By: Brant
Posts
2 comments:
Hey Brant ... if you're going to scrape someone else's writing and post as your own ... you should at least give proper credit to the source. It's just common courtesy!
source: Costa Rica Blogger | http://www.CostaRicaBlogger.com
story permalink: http://costaricablogger.com/2010/07/12/7000-us-marines-landing-on-the-beaches-of-costa-rica.aspx
The link in the intro goes back to the source, and the blockquoted text is never intended to be represented as our own, which is why we set it in a different typeface. We never intended to pass it off as anything original. Sorry about the confusion.
Post a Comment