Behind the media's focus on Colombia's drug war is an unmentioned horror story: the Dirty War that has given Colombia the worst human rights record in the hemisphere.

With icy precision and passionate prose, Father Giraldo and Noam Chomsky reveal the deadly landscape of what Eduardo Galeano termed the "Democratatorship": how the United States helped Colombia carry out unrelenting human rights travesties; how the paramilitary system functions to shield the military from connection to death squad activities; and what Americans can do to change a situation funded with our tax dollars.