Bush is actually the worst criminal in the planet.
S.F.
"RIMme" <****teigh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:1f8e6ca1-3131-4421-a70c-60d71ac4ea9c@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If the president decides to ignore clear evidence that Venezuela has
funded and conspired with an officially designated terrorist
organization, he will flout what has been his first principle since
Sept. 11, 2001."
Looks like Hugo is brewing up trouble for his neighbors and,
obliquely, for the U.S.
But Bu****e is unlikely -- and really unable financially -- to face
down Chavez ... at this time.
Two failing wars to continue, you know? $3-trillion, you know?
--------------------------
"The FARC's Guardian Angel"
By Jackson Diehl
Op-Ed
Monday, March 10, 2008; A15
Latin American nations and the Bush administration spent the past week
loudly arguing over what censure, if any, Colombia should face for a
bombing raid that killed one of the top leaders of the FARC terrorist
group at a jungle camp in Ecuador. More quietly, they are just
beginning to consider a far more serious and potentially explosive
question: What to do about the revelation that Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez forged a strategic alliance with the FARC aimed at
Colombia's democratic government.
First re****ts of the do***ents recovered from laptops at the FARC camp
spoke of promises by Chávez to deliver up to $300 million to a group
renowned for kidnapping, drug trafficking and massacres of civilians;
they also showed that Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa was prepared
to remove from his own army officers who objected to the FARC's
Ecuadoran bases.
But in their totality, the hundreds of pages of do***ents so far made
public by Colombia paint an even more chilling picture. The raid
appears to have preempted a breathtakingly ambitious "strategic plan"
agreed on by Chávez and the FARC with the initial goal of gaining
international recognition for a movement designated a terrorist
organization by both the United States and Europe. Chávez then
intended to force Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to negotiate a
political settlement with the FARC, and to promote a candidate allied
with Chávez and the FARC to take power from Uribe.
All this is laid out in a series of three e-mails sent in February to
the FARC's top leaders by Iván Márquez and Rodrigo Granda, envoys who
held a series of secret meetings with Chávez. Judging from the memos,
Chávez did most of the talking: He outlined a five-stage plan for
undermining Uribe's government, beginning with the release of several
of the scores of hostages the FARC is holding.
The first e-mail, dated Feb. 8, discusses the money: It says that
Chávez, whom they call "angel," "has the first 50 [million] available
and has a plan to get us the remaining 200 in the course of the year."
Chávez proposed sending the first "packet" of money "through the black
market in order to avoid problems." He said more could be arranged by
giving the FARC a quota of petroleum to sell abroad or gasoline to
retail in Colombia or Venezuela.
Chávez then got to the plans that most interested him. He wanted the
FARC to propose collecting all of its hostages in the open, possibly
in Venezuela, for a proposed exchange for 500 FARC prisoners in
Colombian jails. Chávez said he would travel to the area for a meeting
with the FARC's top leader, Manuel Marulanda, and said the presidents
of Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia would accompany him. Meanwhile,
Chávez said he would set up a new diplomatic group, composed of those
countries and the FARC, plus Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, for the
purpose of recognizing the FARC as a legitimate "belligerent" in
Colombia and forcing Uribe into releasing its prisoners.
In "the early morning hours," the FARC envoys recounted in a Feb. 9 e-
mail, Chávez reached the subject of whether the release of Ingrid
Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who is the
FARC's best-known hostage, would complicate his plan to back a pro-
FARC alternative to Uribe. "He invites the FARC to participate in a
few sessions of analysis he has laid out for following the Colombian
political situation," the e-mail concluded.
Assuming these do***ents are authentic -- and it's hard to believe
that the cerebral and calculating Uribe would knowingly hand over
forgeries to the world media and the Organization of American States
-- both the Bush administration and Latin American governments will
have fateful decisions to make about Chávez. His re****ted actions are,
first of all, a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373,
passed in September 2001, which prohibits all states from providing
financing or havens to terrorist organizations. More directly, the
Colombian evidence would be more than enough to justify a State
Department decision to cite Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Once cited, Venezuela would be subject to a number of automatic
sanctions, some of which could complicate its continuing ex****t of oil
to the United States. A cutoff would tem****arily inconvenience
Americans -- and cripple Venezuela, which could have trouble selling
its heavy oil in other markets.
For now, the Bush administration appears anxious to avoid this kind of
confrontation. U.S. intelligence agencies are analyzing the Colombian
evidence; officials say they will share any conclusions with key Latin
American governments. Yet those governments have mostly shrunk from
confronting Chávez in the past, and some have quietly urged Bush to
take him on. If the president decides to ignore clear evidence that
Venezuela has funded and conspired with an officially designated
terrorist organization, he will flout what has been his first
principle since Sept. 11, 2001.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/09/AR2008030901429.html
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