Top US general: Venezuela not a threat
Source: Associated Press
Top US general: Venezuela not a threat
August 1, 2012
Associated Press
LIMA, Peru (AP) — The Air Force general responsible for U.S. military operations in most of Latin America said Tuesday that he does not believe Venezuela, despite ongoing arms purchases and close ties to Iran, poses a national security threat to the United States.
Gen. Douglas Fraser also said he would like to see more counterdrug cooperation from Venezuela, from which most northbound cocaine smuggling flights continue to originate, according to U.S. and Colombian officials.
Fraser was asked if he thought Venezuela's newly announced development of unmanned aerial vehicles and continued purchase of billions of dollars' worth of weaponry, including anti-aircraft missiles from Russia and other nations, did not present a danger to his country.
"From my standpoint, no, I don't see it that way," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "I don't see them as a national security threat."
Read more: http://www.tribtoday.com/page/content.detail/id/248374/Top-US-general--Venezuela-not-a-threat--.html?isap=1&nav=5030
= new reply since forum marked as read
The question is: how to do it?
The Bush Junta miscalculated, big time, with their coup attempts, their military threats (reconstitution of the U.S. 4th fleet in the Caribbean threatening Venezuela's oil coast, overflights from the Dutch Antilles, U.S. military support for their mafioso 'president' of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, who tried every way he could to start a war with Venezuela, bombing Ecuador, etc.), non-stop propaganda, USAID funding of fascist groups, and more). In 2000, there was only one leftist government in Latin America (Venezuela). Soon there were many--including other major powers such as Brazil and Argentina--all strongly allied with Venezuela.
It takes a subtler, nuanced approach to defeat such an overwhelming historical development as this--the success of the leftist democracy movement in Latin America and the rise of "New Deal"-type governments all over the landscape, and what is more, the alliance of these new leaders in an unprecedented, new unity of purpose.
Enter Leon Panetta--close associate of Bush Senior--whose very first visible travel as CIA Director was to go to Bogota (!) to yank the warmongering Uribe from the stage (and land him on a silk cushion because of his ties to Bush Jr.) and to begin that subtler, more nuanced approach, which has involved, for instance, the creation of fake "constitutional crises" in Honduras and Paraguay--the two weakest leftist countries--in order to re-install local wealthy fascists in power.
I'll give Leon Panetta this: He is a lot smarter than Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld who actually aided the historical leftist democracy movement in LatAm, with their "big boots" tactics. (For instance, when the Bush Junta reconstituted the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, Brazil's leftist president said that it constitutes "a threat to Brazil's oil." Everybody knew that it was a threat to Venezuela's. He thus allied Brazil with Venezuela in the face of this threat, and went on to propose a LatAm-wide military defense.)
But, for all Panetta's wiliness, smarts, nuances and long term thinking, his goals and those of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are the same: To serve U.S. transglobal corporate monsters and war profiteers. One of his tools is the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs," which was used to slaughter thousands of trade unionists and other advocates of the poor in Colombia, and to brutally displace five million peasant farmers, in prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich," and is now being used similarly in Honduras. We see an echo of this horrible reality--the misuse of the "war of drugs" (or, was that its purpose all along?)--in this U.S. general's added comment, that he would "like to see more counterdrug cooperation from Venezuela."
The Pentagon desperately wants more U.S. boots on the ground in LatAm (including DEA, FBI, AFT, DIA, USAID, etc., spying and dirty tricks boot-wearers). They have been kicked out of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela--and had been kicked out of Paraguay (by Lugo) and were about to be kicked out of Honduras (by Zelaya), pre-coups. The Pentagon uses the "war on drugs" as the excuse for U.S. military expansion in LatAm and has built up numerous military bases and "forward operation locations" in Colombia, for instance, and is busily expanding in Honduras. One of the FIRST things that the coup government in Paraguay did was to rescind Lugo's refusal of U.S. troops in Paraguay!
The new Panetta approach to use of this weapon (the "war on drugs"
is to promote the goddamned lie that Venezuela, and also Bolivia and Ecuador, are "soft of drugs." Quite the opposite is true. These countries have never had so many successful busts of major drug lords since they got rid of the DEA (which may tell us something about the DEA, especially as run by the Bush Junta). Panetta (and this general) are trying to pressure these countries to let spies and dirty tricksters into their midst--if not DEA protectors of favored drug operations--and also to support the political platform of militarists and war profiteers within these countries, and to lay the ground work for re-introduction of this execrable U.S. weapon--the "war on drugs"--if other plots should succeed in putting U.S.-friendly governments in power.
Under Panetta (the real president of the U.S., in my opinion), two leftist presidents have been ousted from their elected positions by fake "constitutional crises" designed in Washington DC. These were poisoned arrows at the heart of Latin American unity, which had been strengthening dramatically over the last decade, especially on issues of sovereignty, independence from the U.S. and social justice.
Panetta is now at the Pentagon (carrying out one of his missions from Bush Sr., to end the war between the Pentagon and the CIA that Cheney and Rumsfeld had started). So, this U.S. general is not speaking idly. He is speaking for Panetta, whose strategy is to scale down the war rhetoric against Venezuela (first move, get rid of the warmongering and very, VERY dirty Uribe) and begin to rebuild some cache for the "war on drugs" (U.S. military expansion) around the region, while busily expanding the U.S. military presence wherever conditions can be contrived for that purpose (Honduras, Paraguay) or where the country is already a U.S. client state with rightwing leadership (Colombia, Mexico).
Panetta's purpose may not be outright war--although it could be prep for outright war instigated by Bush Junta II (as, say, Bill Clinton prepped the war on Iraq for Bush Junta I). (Never forget that Venezuela controls the biggest oil reserves on earth--twice Saudi Arabia's, according to the USGS). His purpose seems more to be along the "divide and conquer" line and "softening up" the leftist alliance, by picking off its weakest members, one by one (in which case, Nicaragua and Peru are probably next--both with leftist presidents but saddled with prior governments' U.S. "free trade for the rich" agreements), looking for every opportunity (say, Chavez's death--although he looks healthy lately) to get more U.S. agents into these countries, support fascist causes, "groom" fascist candidates where democracy is strong (where elections are honest and transparent), support transglobal corporate resource profiteering and slave labor wherever he can, and so on. The Bush Junta's many blundering assaults on Venezuela's democracy (and on others such as Bolivia) merely got Latin America's back up in the midst of an historic unity movement.
Panetta, it seems to me, is trying to undo that "damage" to U.S. transglobal/war profiteer interests that the Bush Junta inflicted--or worsened--in LatAm but he is dealing with very smart adversaries (which he seems to be aware of). For instance, Lula da Silva, in his last speech office, in 2010, said, "The U.S. has not changed." Lula--whose chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, was elected to succeed him--was speaking for all Latin American leftist leaders, I think.
Just found this after reading your comments:
Connie Mack’s staff tied to anti-Hugo Chávez group
By JOHN BRESNAHAN | 7/25/12 11:51 PM EDT
For years in the House and in his current bid for Senate, Florida GOP Rep. Connie Mack has attacked Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez with a zeal possibly unmatched in Congress. Chávez, the congressman says, is a “thugocrat” and serious national security threat to the United States.
But the full story of Mack’s anti-Chávez campaign doesn’t end there. In a little-noticed and highly unusual episode, a trio of Mack staffers worked with a secretive nonprofit group whose sole purpose appears to be promoting the congressman’s crusade against Chávez. It’s not clear who provided the $150,000 used to bankroll the group, which apparently did little else than produce a 30-minute documentary that aired on a Houston TV station and consisted almost entirely of a Mack speech bashing Chávez.
The bizarre sequence of events could prove significant given the highly charged politics surrounding Chávez among Florida’s large Latino electorate — which Mack is aggressively courting — and the controversial role of outside groups in the Sunshine State’s political universe. Recent polls have shown Mack in a tight race with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, whom Mack has attacked for being soft on Chávez. Mack has shown strong support among different Latino communities, fueled at least in part by his unrelenting criticism of Chávez.
The Committee to Free Venezuela Foundation, a nonprofit group, was founded in Aug. 2010 in Delaware. The organization is “dedicated to educating the American public and policymakers about the dangers posed by Venezuela’s Socialist Dictator Hugo Chávez,” according to its Internal Revenue Service filings.
More:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78999.html#ixzz22Jcum98l
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Years ago the organizer of "Free Venezuela" made himself at home at D.U., baiting DU'ers and fighting like a madman to attack Chavez, but he seemed to leave. He claims to be American, married to a Venezuelan, and took credit here for convincing John Kerry he had to take an anti-Chavez political posture, if he wanted to get elected.
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In the same vein:
Rep Mack wants congress money to attack Venezuela.
(Wants to create a "Radio Free Venezuela" network, like the US-taxpayer financed "Radio Marti" the propaganda network operated by the radical right reactionary Cuban "exiles" in Florida.)
http://www.mombu.com/culture/colombia/t-rep-mack-wants-congress-money-to-attack-venezuela-4183948.html
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Houston TV Station Pressured to Air Documentary Critical of Hugo Chavez and CITGO Oil
A Houston TV station was pressured to air a documentary critical of fiery Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The Texas Fox affiliate, KRIV-TV, had originally decided not to air the 30-minute documentary critical of Chavez and CITGO, a move that led to retaliation from The Committee to Free Venezuela Foundation. The group publicly accused the station of trying to censor the film.
Naturally, the situation isn’t so cut-and-dry. On one hand, the station likely felt that airing the documentary would amount to one-sided anti-Chavez propaganda. Yet, members of the Committee believe the Fox station was simply trying to protect Chavez.
CITGO’s United States headquarters are based in Houston, a point of contention for the Committee to Free Venezuela.
"The only logical conclusion is that what makes KRIV uncomfortable is that by airing our documentary, KRIV might upset those in Houston who are involved with the oil conglomerate that lines Hugo Chavez’s pockets," CFVF Director Jeffrey Cohen wrote in a letter to the station’s vice president.
More:
http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2011/05/houston-tv-station-pressured-to-air-documentary-critical-of-hugo-chavez-and-citgo-oil/
Anti-Chavez group run by Mack acolytes
By WILLIAM MARCH | The Tampa Tribune
Published: July 21, 2012 Updated: July 21, 2012 - 9:00 AM
TAMPA --
When he decided at the end of November to run for the U.S. Senate, Rep. Connie Mack IV turned to people close at hand to assemble a campaign quickly.
His longtime aide and political operative, Jeff Cohen, returned from a high-paying public relations job to take over as both chief of staff of Mack's congressional office, a tax-paid job, and Mack's campaign manager.
But Cohen, a Mack loyalist who once worked for the lawmaker's father, former Sen. Connie Mack III, already had been working to boost his boss's political profile, perhaps in anticipation of a Senate race.
In August 2010, when Mack had been talking for months about the possibility of running for the Senate but had not made a decision, Cohen set up a nonprofit charitable committee, the Committee to Free Venezuela, linked to the public relations firm for which he then worked.
Its stated mission was to publicize the threat of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
More:
http://www2.tbo.com/news/politics/2012/jul/21/anti-chavez-group-run-by-mack-acolytes-ar-437674/
Mack appears to be using Chavez to generate money. Long green. Filthy lucre! Spending cash. Scratch.
That is all that I mean by "nuanced." Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were stupid if not insane. Some of the shit they pulled in LatAm was unbelievable--the clowns they supported in the Venezuela 2002 coup attempt, the Rumsfeldian "miracle laptop" business in Colombia, bombing Ecuador, ludicrous things like the CIA "suitcase full of money" caper out of Miami (trying to frame Chavez in Venezuela and Fernandez-Kirchner in Argentina on corruption charges--resulting in both being elected by big margins), and trying to dictate to people like Lula da Silva and Nestor Kirchner (when the Bushwhack dictate was sent down to LatAm leaders that they must "isolate Chavez," Kirchner replied, "But he's my brother!" . The Bush Junta really blew it. They chose to act like vengeful bullies in LatAm at the onset of the biggest democracy movement that has hit the world since 1776!
Anyway, Panetta has all this ugly clownishness, murderousness and overt offensiveness to counter, in order to regain dominion over South America and retain the U.S. "circle the wagons" region of Central America/the Caribbean, on behalf of U.S. transglobal corporations and war profiteers. Thus, we saw mafioso/death squad president, Alvaro Uribe yanked off the stage, and the milder rightwinger (rival to Uribe), Manuel Santos, vetted and installed in Colombia. Santos' first act in office--first day, even before he was inaugurated--was to make peace with Venezuela. (He has also--quite incredibly--called for the legalization of drugs.) That was Panetta's doing, believe me. (His first visible travel as CIA Director was to go to Bogota! --likely to oversee that transfer of power.) (The drug legalization idea is probably a long range Big Pharma plan to monopolize the trade.)
Panetta is subtler and smarter. There is no question about it. He is more of a realist about the utter contempt in which the U.S. is held in LatAm AND about the effective alliance that has been forged by the leftist leaders. He has been very careful to give a democracy gloss to both "divide and conquer" coups--Honduras, Paraguay--and has significantly toned down the Bushwhacky rhetoric against leftist leaders such as Chavez. He is lethally smart--and much more effective than the Bushwhacks.
We who follow events may see right through the crapola that was pulled in Honduras and Paraguay to depose elected leftist presidents--but those kind of coverup tactics give the rightwing (and the corporate media in LatAm, which is as bad if not worse than ours) reasonable-sounding "talking points"; they help confuse the "middle" (such as it is), and while they don't fool the left (the poor majority)and their leaders in LatAm, they DO fool a lot of people HERE.
Bottom line: The more stupid and brutal shit that the Bush Junta did in LatAm, the more leftist governments got elected; and now we are losing leftist governments, to wily, fake "constitutional crises," with a false veneer of democracy painted over them. The new and unprecedented leftist alliance is in crisis because they can't seem to stop these coups (the way they did to the Bush Junta coup attempt in Bolivia in 2008--another really ugly Bush Junta project, using white separatists). The U.S. has now struck a serious "divide and conquer" blow, not just to LatAm democracy in Honduras and Paraguay, but to the Brazil-Venezuela-Argentina-Ecuador-Bolivia alliance and its new organizations (Unasur and CELAC).
That is Panetta's goal--to break up the overarching democracy revolution that has occurred and its economic/political alliance. The Bush Junta got side-tracked, trying to get rid of Chavez (at Exxon Mobil's behest) and probably because they were so incredibly dirty on the cocaine trade and war profiteering. They quite stupidly failed to grasp how popular Chavez is, in Venezuela and in the region, and among the region's other leftist leaders. True, they succeeded in getting a whole lot of trade unionists murdered in Colombia, to further U.S. transglobal interests, but they turned Colombia into a pariah, and steadily lost ground for U.S. interests almost all the way to the U.S. border (leftists elected in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and very nearly in Mexico). I attribute the reverses we've seen in LatAm democracy lately to Panetta.
Clinton was more visible on Honduras but I think Panetta was calling the shots--how to turn a crude Bushwhacky instrument--the Honduran coup (designed by the Bush Junta and unfolded only six months into the Obama administration)--into an installed rightwing government? Answer: a fake election. Then that useful template (the "constitutional crisis" was re-used in Paraguay. Both of these events are so close to what Panetta did in Colombia in his first weeks as CIA Director--conferring a sort of legitimacy on corporate-friendly rightwing rule (in that case, by removing an obvious malefactor, Uribe)--that I am convinced that this is his policy (also Bush Sr. policy--and quite tricky in that respect, because part of what Panetta was doing in Colombia was covering up Bush Junta crimes which posed some peril to Junior--and still does, in my opinion).
Anyway, I am in no way being an apologist for Panetta or for U.S. policy in LatAm. But I think it's very important to try to look at things realistically, to make educated guesses at what is really going down and to try to figure out what our rulers are up to and the internal disputes that they have.
Unfortunately, we are the peons of an Empire and have zero say over what that Empire does--but we ARE affected by its actions, and are forced to pay for its actions one way or another, and, in our common humanity, we see other peoples greatly affected by our government's behavior and by the behavior of the transglobal corporations and war profiteers that it serves. We need to understand the "court," so to speak--just as the subjects of past kingdoms needed to suss out the factions around the king, for their own survival, if nothing else. We have more obligations as the citizens of a once great democracy--as the inheritors of traditions that once inspired the world--but our current position is little more than serfs and slaves to powers quite beyond our control. We NEED to understand those powers and it is a complex business--far more complex than the subjects of earlier empires ever faced. One of the complexities is the difference between the Bush Junta and the Obama (Panetta) administration, in LatAm and other places. If we don't see that difference then we are at risk of being fooled by it (thinking, for instance, that Obama policy in LatAm is "better" than Bush's. Cosmetically, it is. In substance, it isn't).
That can happen when the people get a chance to vote for someone who's intends to improve the well-being of the vast poor population.
Welcome to D.U. 
Can't have that Venezualen oil availability lowering prices in this country. 