And you're flat out misconstruing the situation. Colombia's government — the military, the spokespersons, the President himself — can make any allegation whatsoever about Venezuela's and Ecuador's government, and it is reported and treated as fact and important, and meanwhile when Ecuador and Venezuela get tired of hosting Colombian refugees and Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries operating in and out of their territories (and in Ecuador's case, having the military continually hunt down and close FARC camps, apparently with more regularity than the Colombian military), it's treated as some unquestioned fact that, of course, if it weren't for those darned meddling kids Correa in Ecuador and Chavez in Venezuela, Colombia sure would have wrapped up all those guerrilla and paramilitary problems by now!

Chavez actually presented, for what it's worth, the documents revealed from a Colombian state intelligence agency (DAS, the same one which has been using U.S.-provided electronic surveillance equipment to spy on nearly every part of civil society Uribe wasn't allied with, and in the case of Jorge Noguera, using that information to facilitate the paramilitary assassinations of a professor and trade unionists) which he claimed were the basis of the subversion and assassination allegations. He also presented the documents tracing down the sale of the Swedish rocket grenades, when they were sold, and where at least he claimed they were stolen from a Naval depot before his tenure. Are the documents all accurate? How would I know — that's what we're supposed to depend on journalists for, but since these days 'investigative' journalists tend to just turn to one or another Colombian or U.S. think tank for PR spinning, I don't know. At least the Colombian press has the guts to publish any original documents they get their hands on for you to decide — and if there have been heroes in Colombia over the past decade outside human rights workers, human rights attorneys, unionists, and the peasants simply trying to survive (on their land or displaced), it's the Colombian press and the Colombian courts.

Meanwhile, institutions like the Washington Post can simply repeat Colombian military claims that captured laptops had documents proving Hugo Chavez gave 'hundreds of millions of dollars', and if you actually read the documents which were released by the Colombian magazine Semana, they said no such thing whatsoever. Jackson Diehl literally added in words which were not present in the originals — words like "millions" and "dollars" — you know, nothing big. And there was no retraction, no correction, because, hey, it's Hugo Chavez, who gives a sh*t, right? Made-up sh*t is fine. Standards of evidence are clearly only for communists.

So Colombia's government and military are supposed to be able to continually make public declarations of criminality on the part of their neighbors, including funding illegal armed insurgents, and if Venezuela or Ecuador respond and make similar charges, then, omigod, they're threatening war!

That's the double standard. Colombia's supposed to be able to continually scream about the illegalities and crimes of their neighbors who are tired of dealing with Colombia's disorder bleedover, and they're just supposed to shut up and not say anything back.

And as others have pointed out, as is well understood, this sort of behavior by Colombia reinforces the worst, most authoritarian tendencies of the Venezuelan regime, and vice versa — there's nothing Uribe wants more than prompting bellicose rhetoric by Venezuela, and Hugo Chavez is always more than happy to provide it.

And something of a double standard in terms of evidence as well. Colombian forces capture anti-tank weapons sold by Sweden to Venezuela (a fact confirmed by Sweden, by the way) and Chavez issues a shrill denial and declares any inquiry, much less accusation, to be an attack on Venezuelan sovereignty and an effort to overthrow the Chavez regime. But Mr. Chavez can declare without evidence that Colombian paramilitiaries are sneaking into Venezuela to assassinate him, or that the Colombian-US treaty represents an attack on Venezuelan sovereignty or a conspiracy to overthrow him, and that is accepted uncritically.

Good lord, if Colombia's military can try to accuse Venezuela of arming the FARC for rocket grenades stolen from Venezuelan bases sold by Sweden in the 1980s, how hard would it be for Hugo Chavez to accuse Colombia of supporting the narco-paramilitaries which bring crime and drugs trafficking to Venezuelan territory, given 1/3 of the Colombian Congress (and Uribe's most fervent supporters) under court investigation for collaboration with those same narco-paramilitaries, and even having had several Senate elections reversed due to courts' findings of narco-paramilitary electoral subversion?

And do Venezuela and Ecuador get to use the same arguments and pursue FARC guerrillas or narco-paramilitaries across the border and bomb their hideouts in Colombia, which 'gives sanctuary' to these groups, for 40 years now?

People seem to think that it's the responsibility of Colombia's neighbors to (a) put up with the consequences of Colombia's unresolved civil war — hundreds of thousands of refugees, illegally armed groups, government-allied paramilitaries, stupendously huge narco-trafficking, and (b) solve Colombia's civil war for them.

Funny enough, Colombia's neighbors see this as a problem Colombia burdens them with, rather than it being their fault for not resolving Colombia's ongoing war.

yet it violated nationa/international law by 'invading' ecuador