"We have reached out and feel very much as though we are forging a new set of relationships," she said at a press conference. "It's the 21st century. It's 2010. We're not turning the clock back.

"We're not expecting countries that have their own internal agendas in order to accomplish their own economic and social goals to be exactly as we are. If we ever did, it's no longer the case. I think the goals that Ecuador and its government have set are goals that the United States agrees with."

But Correa's Ecuador is the last country whose goals the U.S. should be agreeing with on anything. Correa is one of the most anti-American leaders in the hemisphere. He has trashed democracy in his own country, taking over the National Assembly by ousting elected lawmakers on spurious legal grounds. His rubber-stamp legislature now structurally resembles that of communist Cuba.

He's also corrupted the judicial system, taking over the Supreme Court and making every judge a crony. Small wonder recent tapes show rulings-for-sale by an Ecuadorean judge in a $26 billion lawsuit against Chevron. Now Correa's going after the press, jailing even leftist reporters and shuttering 95% of the private media.

He's chased out nearly all foreign investment and driven domestic investment into alliances with market-friendly neighbors in Colombia and Peru. He's also allied Ecuador with Venezuela as well as Iran — effectively merging his country's dollar-based central bank with that of the Islamic Republic. Not surprisingly, Ecuador has become a center for money-laundering.

Correa has also sharply lowered cooperation with the U.S. in the drug war, making Colombia's war against FARC Marxist narcoterrorists that much harder. To top it off, even his Cabinet members have been caught in open collaboration with the FARC. Information that they were shielding these cocaine terrorists came to light after a FARC computer was captured in Ecuador in 2008 by the Colombian army — news of which prompted Ecuador to threaten open war.