Peter Krupa

If you haven’t been following the Betancourt/Colombian military/FARC/dramatic Hollywood rescue saga, Simon Romero has an excellent round-up in the New York Times this morning. The official version is that the Colombian military tricked the FARC into putting their prize hostages onto two “international mission”-looking helicopters that appeared to be of Venezuelan origin. In reality, they were Colombian military. The operation rescued a handful of high-profile hostages and made the FARC look ridiculous.

The thing is, it’s all just a little too perfect. Uribe is coming off as a national hero just at the moment when he must decide whether to make the legally-sketchy move of running for a third term. Some Swedish radio station is saying that the “rescue” was really a ransom, paid by the U.S., of $20 million. While I’m not inclined to believe Swedish radio stations per se, it seems really likely that something “extra” is going on.

Either that, or Colombians are just total bad-asses. Which, you know, is also kind of true.