U.S.-Colombia FTA or the end of life as we know it

It looks like the Bush Administration will soon push Congress to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia, and so more pro-FTA commentary is flowing.

It seems to me, though, that the administration is shooting itself in the foot with hyperbole. I am interested in hearing real debate about the FTA, but there won’t be any. President Bush himself has linked the FTA to defeating the FARC and countering Hugo Chávez. He even laid it out in his typical black and white terms:

As the recent standoff in the Andes shows, the region is facing an increasingly stark choice: to quietly accept the vision of the terrorists and the demagogues, or to actively support democratic leaders like President Uribe.

So pass the FTA or you support terrorism. What kind of monster would vote to “accept the visions of the terrorists”?

The U.S. Trade Representative is even more apocalyptic, to a degree that must make even FTA supporters cringe:

Leaders in the hemisphere and Latin America have said that the single most destabilizing factor in Latin America today may be the U.S. Congress's failure to ratify the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. That is more destabilizing today than anything that Colombia's neighbor Venezuela is doing or threatening to do— and that is saying a lot.

I don’t know who these “leaders” are, as I’ve not heard anyone making that sort of claim. But it seems that not passing an FTA with Colombia will destroy Latin America. What kind of a monster would vote “no” when it means wholesale destruction of the region?

By those standards, the WSJ’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady sounds almost rational when she agrees that an FTA will make Colombia just like Ireland, and that failure to approve an FTA will harm Colombia’s national security because other countries will have an FTA and it won’t.

What kind of a monster would refuse to allow Colombia to be just like Ireland and protect its national security?

UPDATE: If anyone is interested, here is a copy of the FTA.