‘It is truly terrifying’: farmer bombed by US-Ecuador armies exposes false positive attack

Vicente Garrido, Vice President of San Martin on Ecuador’s border with Colombia, speaks to The Grayzone’s Oscar Leon about the bombings of his community’s dairy farm by the Ecuadorian military.After US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed credit for destroying a “narco-terror” training camp, local Ecuadorian media exposed the truth: Ecuadorian soldiers had bombed a farm, then abducted and tortured locals to cover up the attack.The Grayzone places this incident in the context of a pattern of crimes throughout the US “war on drugs” in the region, starting with the False Positives Scandal in Colombia during the 1990’s, when US-trained Colombian soldiers massacred hundreds of leftist opponents and community leaders, then branded them as narco traffickers. Under President Daniel Noboa, a close US ally demonstrably implicated in the international narcotics trade, Ecuador is using the drug war as cover for the consolidation of a hyper-militarized state which brutalizes social movements and left-wing opposition parties while doing nothing of substance to stop the flow of drugs to the north. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegrayzone.substack.com/subscribe