CHAVEZ: "will be no torture or hooding ... our soldiers are not sadistic"

[Imperialism Inc.]

Ok I needed a break to digest the horrific video. So here is some news closer to home.

BTW, What is he talking about? Has he forgotten his own National Gaurd's abuses? I like Chavez , but he shouldn't so readily dismiss the work his own police still need to do.

Terrorist Plot Foiled!
But Democracy must be vigilant, for there are still more Terrorist plots to come!
by Justin Podur
May 10, 2004
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=5499

The interview, conducted by journalist Darvin Romero Montiel, features one of the captured Colombians who gave an anonymous testimony on camera wearing a mask (for obvious security reasons). He claimed that the Colombians were paid about $250 USD to work. The man, a Colombian army reservist, says he was under the impression that he would be going to do agricultural work in the countryside, but, along with the others, was then informed that he would be training for a major military operation. "When we learned what was really going on," he said, "more than one Colombian wanted to escape. One Colombian tried, but they caught him after 100 metres, and told him the next time they would kill him, and they took our papers."

This seems an unlikely story. There are large numbers of battle-hardened, cold-blooded, well-trained Colombian paramiltaries and soldiers who have already conducted operations on the Colombia-Venezuela border. Would the plotters of a coup really choose duped reservists as the advance guard of a mission to infiltrate, commit terrorist attacks, and overthrow a government? And the captured paramilitaries have, after all, every reason to lie.

Reactions are coming fast and furious. Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, framed the issue in explicitly anti-terrorist terms. "We've struck a blow against coup-plotters, destabilizers, and terrorists, in this endless struggle against terrorism, destabilization, and the enemies of democracy and the people." The whole operation was an assassination attempt: "They came to kill me."

He also made an important reference to the treatment of the Colombian prisoners by the Venezuelan armed forces. "There will be no torture or hooding, no sadomasochism, because our soldiers and police are not sadistic."

--cut--

The story is still incomplete. But if William Blum's 'Watergate law of politics' ("Don't believe anything until it has been officially denied") is on the books, this is just a continuation of "some US conspiracy to overthrow the Chavez government". Because the Venezuelan elite seems incapable of doing the job, the Colombian military and paramilitaries are being used. That plan has been in the works for years, and there have been paramilitary raids into Venezuela for well over a year (3). In Colombia itself, a major offensive, called 'Plan Patriota', is being planned, supposedly to attack the guerrillas in southern Colombia (but perhaps to attack Venezuela?) US Southern Command is asking that Congressional restrictions on numbers of US troops in Colombia be relaxed. Even as US troops smash their way through Najaf and Fallujah, even as photos of US troops engaged in sadistic torture traverse the world, these troops are being presented as the 'solution' to some kind of problem that Colombia and Venezuela have.


======

The reference # 3 above is very interesting too.

What is the Colombian Army doing Attacking Venezuela?
by Justin Podur
April 03, 2003
https://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=3389

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on Venezuelan radio on March 31 that: "A short while ago, I ordered an air force operation and we bombed an area where we detected the presence of a group" of Colombian irregular forces along the border. The Colombian 'irregulars' had attacked a Venezuelan military post, after which Chavez ordered the raid last Thursday. Chavez stressed that Caracas would not tolerate Colombian armed groups entering Venezuela. "Neither paramilitaries nor rebels nor the armed forces of Colombia have authorization, nor will they have it, to be on Venezuelan territory," he said.

Colombian analysts have stressed for years that Colombia's armed conflict would be used as a pretext to militarize the region, targeting Venezuela in particular (1).

--cut--

And this is where Colombia enters the picture. Having failed to crush Venezuela's movement by military coup and 'strike', is the US trying to get Colombia to export its own civil war to Venezuela?

One of the recurring patterns of the Colombian civil war is the 'spectacular incident' that is supposed to demonstrate the futility of a political or negotiated solution (5). Such 'incidents' can be real or manufactured. There is some evidence that one such 'incident' was manufactured in Colombia in late February of 2003, when the Colombian consulate and Spanish Embassy in Caracas were bombed. The Colombian government immediately insinuated that Chavez was behind the bombings, but no international 'incident' materialized and investigations suggest that the Venezuelan 'opposition' engineered the bombings.

The next attempt at an 'incident' came at the 'regional security summit' in Bogota, in mid-March 2003. There, the Colombian government (with its US patron behind) pointed fingers at every single neighbouring country. Panama was blamed for being a route by which arms and people are transported. Ecuador came in for criticism as a drug trafficking route. Brazil was asked to send troops to Colombia for a 'multilateral force against terrorism'. Remember that in January 2003, Uribe asked for a US intervention in the country.

And, of course, singled out for special criticism was-Venezuela. The claim was made that Venezuela is training and supporting Colombia's guerrillas, the FARC. Since the FARC is already on the US State Department's list of 'terrorist organizations', a deft combination of Bush doctrine (of overthrowing states accused of supporting 'terrorism') and the Rumsfeld doctrine ('the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence') is enough to justify an intervention against Venezuela.

--cut--

The problem is that Colombia need not 'win' against Venezuela. It only needs to provoke the kind of 'incident' that could spark a war or an intervention. If this is the second front of the third world war, the war aim here is also 'regime change': the destruction of Venezuela's democratic process. And the instrument, for now, is the Colombian government.

[corporatewhore]

1. Kerry should have said * is becoming a dictator not Chavez here is a great

response to that claim
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x521824">Chavez

[Imperialism Inc.]

2. But more importantly right now is that Bush should be stopped

at encouraging (or planning) these kinds of plots.

We know as his numbers drop like a stone he is going to escalate, escalate, escalate! Not just in Iraq but everywhere. He will try to create a situation such that no matter what happens some of his(their) aims are going to "have" to be pursued.

[bemildred]

3. Blather.

It would be entirely in character for the US to try to use
whatever violent assholes came to hand to continue with
attempts to destabilize Venezuela. However using Colombians
is boneheaded on several counts:

1.) They are not locals, hence have little chance of success,
viz. this fiasco.

2.) Uribe is up to his eyeballs in alligators as it is.

3.) Venezuela will kick Colombia's ass if the latter invades or
attacks the former.

4.) Oil is already $40 a gallon.

[Imperialism Inc.]

4. And yet, the paramilitaries were there. And, it appears, they

were there to carry out an attack of some kind anyway.

It seems the opposition to Chavez, where ever it is coming from, doesn't share (and hasn't! shared) your pessimism.

[On the Road]

5. What Do You Have to Do to Avoid Being Invaded?

Other than donating your country to the upper class and multinationals to do with as they please?

[Imperialism Inc.]

6. No, that's all you have to do!

;-)