[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2497-2498]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            AID FOR COLOMBIA

  (Mr. BALLENGER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, there are those who compare providing aid 
to Colombia to providing aid to Vietnam. This is an expected but faulty 
comparison.
  Unlike Vietnam, the consequences for failure in Colombia will not be 
another fallen domino in a far-off land. It will be more drug-related 
deaths in our own streets among our own children. Without immediate 
action on the proposed aid package to Colombia, the drug lords will 
continue, largely unimpeded, to produce and distribute their deadly 
drugs which kill almost as many American kids and young adults each 
year as died in Vietnam. That, Mr. Speaker, should be a wake-up call.
  Because Colombia is right here in our own hemisphere and not halfway 
around the world, what happens there will affect us more profoundly 
than what happened in Vietnam. The fact

[[Page 2498]]

that Colombia is only 4 hours away by plane and can be reached by a car 
or truck, it becomes that much more important for us to help the 
country fight the narco-terrorists. The drugs which enter the United 
States each day from Colombia are far more of a threat to our national 
security than any Communist regime in Southeast Asia.

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