Salon: The corruption of Col. James Hiett. “In two weeks, a retired Army colonel will stand for sentencing before Judge Edward Korman in the Cadman Plaza federal courthouse. The

colonel’s name has never been uttered on the Senate floor. You can rummage in vain for any mention of him in congressional committee testimony and reports.

Yet the case of Col. James Hiett, former commander of U.S. Army anti-drug advisors in Colombia, due to be sentenced in mid-July for covering up his

wife’s drug smuggling, has everything to do with the passage last week of more than $1 billion in military aid to Colombia. Hiett’s case offers dark hints of

what the United States is in for by turning the Colombian drug-war theater into a large-scale American military enterprise — and it reveals, too, some of the

costs of the drug war on America’s own streets.” Visions of being mired in Indochina make me think this is starting to sound like “deja vu all over again.”