Chavez claims two interceptions of U.S. fighter jets in Venezuelan airspace

[cali]

Sat Jan 9, 2010 2:32am EST

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez said he ordered two F-16 jets to intercept a U.S. military plane that twice entered Venezuelan skies on Friday, but Washington said none of its planes flew over the South American country's airspace.



Brandishing a photo of the plane, which he described as a P-3, Chavez said the overflight was the latest violation of Venezuelan airspace by the U.S. military from its bases on the Netherlands' Caribbean islands and from neighboring Colombia.

"They are provoking us ... these are warplanes," he said.

Chavez said the F-16s escorted the U.S. plane away after two incursions lasting 15 and 19 minutes each.

A spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department denied Chavez's assertion, saying in an e-mail: "We can confirm no U.S. military aircraft entered Venezuelan airspace today. As a matter of policy we do not fly over a nation's airspace without prior consent or coordination."

Senior Obama administration officials said the U.S. Southern Command was unaware of any incident involving U.S. government aircraft in Venezuelan airspace on Friday.

<snip>

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6080BB20100109?type=politicsNews

[howard112211]

1. Hmm. His word against the word of our guys.

Both sides have incentives to be untruthful, so both are equally unreliable sources.

So: No way to know what happened.

[Turbineguy]

Chavez

Our hemisphere's Li'l Kim.

[cali]

2. Exactly my thoughts- though that bit of logic will escape partisans from both

sides.

[Goldstein1984]

3. "As a matter of policy ..."

What do we do as a matter of practice?

Since Honduras, our street cred in Latin America is pretty low.

Venezuela has oil.

We're doing half the world's military spending protecting our vital national interests.

I believe Chavez.

[cali]

4. Of course you do.

I neither believe nor disbelieve Chavez. I prefer to see actual evidence and not merely agree with something because it fits my narrative. You clearly prefer to believe whatever fits your worldview and to hell with evidence. You have tons of company here.

[Goldstein1984]

5. No, just a Hugo Chavez fan

He's a goof, but he's the people's goof. I like his style. "I smell sulfur" was priceless.

As a Marine in the 1970s, I was deployed to Central America as part of a "quick reaction team," during which time the helicopter squadron detachment to which I belonged engaged in all sorts of activities that our government would say were "not our policy." In one four-week period we fired more than 200,000 rounds of ammunition. My wife saved the newspapers while I was gone, as she always did, and there wasn't a word about U.S. forces being in our area of operation. And this was with Carter as president.

I'm very comfortable with my narrative, and it's based in large part on facts that I have experienced rather than read.

I not only have every reason to believe we're doing recon over Venezuela, I think we're probably doing more.

[Kolesar]

10. And we "born in the sixties" kids had to go register for the draft

Starting in 1979. Carter had an awful domestic political problem dealing with America's right wingers.

Personally, I think Chavez says "all kinds of things" (1) because he still has a sore spot from the US backed coup in April 2002, and (2) for domestic consumption to keep his people afraid of America.

[Goldstein1984]

28. Young males still have to register for selective service

They just aren't threatened by an actual draft. From there, perhaps, comes the apathy.

Chavez uses street theater. His efforts to keep his people afraid of America is really no different from our leaders efforts to keep us afraid of Hugo Chavez. The difference, as you point out, is that Hugo Chavez has never backed a coup against U.S. leaders.

I worked for Williams Energy in 2002. It was one of the U.S. businesses behind the coup. There was much internal discussion among employees about the company's role. There were basically two opinions: 1) The view of leadership that the failure of the coup was embarrassing; and 2) The view of many like me that participation in the coup was embarrassing.

Latin American leaders like Chavez and Morales have every justification for fearing the U.S. empire. They need look no further than recent events in Honduras to see what they should fear.

[Kolesar]

32. The US has sent "troops" to most Central American countries in the 20th century

And the US has a horrible record of covert action in South America. People all around the world have a knowledge of that.

But the message for homeland consumption is that our military is needed to "protect our freedom".

Men born in 1957, 1958, and 1959 did not have to register for the draft.

[Toots]

15. I, like you, was involved in activities while in the military that was not admitted to by our govern

Our government out and out LIES about much of what our Military is involved in. I have personal insight to that fact.. In this case I do indeed believe Chavez over our government..What is his motivation to LIE? I know what ours is..

[Goldstein1984]

29. Money.......right? You're thinking money is the motivation.

Why don't more people take off their tool-of-the-system, party loyalty, rose-colored glasses and let reality smack them in the face?

Here's some recommended reading for them:

"Open Veins of Latin America" -- Eduardo Galeano (The book gifted to Obama by Chavez)
"A Peoples History of the United States" -- Howard Zinn
"Salvador" -- Joan Didion
"The New American Militarism" -- Andrew J. Bacevich
"Descent into Chaos" -- Ahmed Rashid
"Stripping Bare the Body" -- Mark Danner
"The Geopolitics of Emotion" -- Dominique Moisi
"Perilous Power" -- Noam Chomsky & Gilbert Achcar
"Interventions" -- Noam Chomsky (Banned from the inmate library and Guantanamo May)

They weave a very clear picture of history, current events, empire, and the manipulation of the few by the many.

[zeemike]

6. you mean evidence like Francis Gary Powers?

Where the Russians shot him down during a spy mission.
Or the CIA plane captured smuggling guns into South America?
What Chavez said about provocation was corredt....they send a P-3 Orion, which is an information gathering platform, and if Chavez shoots it down we have a reason to go after them.
That is how this game is played.
And if he does not shoot it down they deny it ever happened and make him look like a paranoid ruler, at least to the Americans, which serves the same purpose.

[Goldstein1984]

8. I think the evidence in question would be a well-worded

denial from the State Department.

People should read more Chomsky, Klein, or Danner, and fewer government press releases.

[zeemike]

11. Agreed

But most people just hear the government press release.
And the few like Chomsky are ignored by the MSM.

[Dr.Phool]

18. It fits a long time US pattern.

The NSA was doing ferret missions in Russian airspace since the '40s. The idea was to get them to turn on their air defense radars, so we could learn how to beat them.

James Bamfords books go into it in great detail.

[Goldstein1984]

30. I've not read James Bamford.

I'll make it a point to do so.

My son is in Army Intelligence, and he's spent the last two years working at Fort Meade, Maryland. He just asked to be transferred to a tactical unit, and is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in 2010. He can't tell me anything about what he does, so our discussions are long (because I like to talk to him) and one-sided (because of his job). But I have been arguing with that boy for 25 years, and I know when he agrees with what I am on target and when I am not by his reactions. (He's turned into a Republican since joining the Army, but I should have expected that because when he was just a toddler we couldn't get him to stop putting his pants and shoes on backwards.)

Nothing has changed since I was part of "advising" missions in Central America and the Philippines in the late 1970s, except that they have gotten worse.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Why don't he just shoot them down ?

:shrug:

I think he should do so.

[howard112211]

9. Countries violate each others airspace all the time.

This is not necessarily a reason to shoot someone down. Non-allied countries with a not openly hostile relationship towards each other
tend to cut each other slack in such cases. It is considered a somewhat friendly gesture.

edit: The best way to embarrass the other country is to force a landing and capture the aircraft and turn over the pilot. China did this
once to Bush and he was pissed as hell but didn't have much ground to make a fuss over it.

[Enrique]

35. you want the flight crew to die?

you want the incident to be escalated?

Why, when he can just escort the planes away, would he shoot it down, and why on earth would you want him to?

:shrug:

[Tejas]

12. LOL@Chavez

"Foes say Latin America's loudest U.S. critic is hyping the idea of a foreign threat to distract Venezuelans from domestic problems such as economic recession, rampant crime and inadequate public services."


That wannabe dictator is as transparent as they come.

[Statistical]

13. Exactly. "I know life sucks here but it is all the boogey man USA fault, they used a warplanez"

Chavez is a joke. I give him 10 years tops before someone inside his own administration puts a bullet in the brain pan. Of course even then some on DU will swear up and down they *know* it is some ultra black-ops mission when in reality it was a 2 bit dictator getting offed by one of his countrymen sick of his delusions.

[Mudoria]

14. Wag the Dog I believe it's called

[Kaleva]

16. Many nations use the P-3 patrol aircraft.

[Kaleva]

17. unrecced as the P-3 isn't a fighter jet.

It's a turboprop patrol aircraft used by the US and many other nations.

[Dr.Phool]

19. The media source probably called it a fighter jet.

They routinely call a Cessna 172 a business jet, or a Citation as a small prop.

[Kaleva]

21. The source identifies the plane as a military aircraft (a P-3).

[StarfarerBill]

22. If it's a P-3 Orion, it *is* a military aircraft; specifically, the Navy's.

It's an antisubmarine patrol plane.

[Lurks Often]

25. There are 2 variation on the basic P-3 airframe

The first variation is the P-3C which is a sub-hunter; the second variation is the EP-3 which is an intelligence gathering aircraft. Essentially a snoop, it gathers radio intercepts and other electronic eavesdropping and rarely gets closer then within 50-100 of a country's airspace, because it doesn't need to. Neither would fly over Venezuelan airspace. Neither variation is capable of going much faster then 400mph (if that), not exactly an aircraft you send into unfriendly airsapce.

IF we were going to violate their airspace to spy on them, we would use a drone, which is unmanned, MUCH harder to detect and wouldn't result in American deaths if it was shot down.

I'm not buying the story, because there is currently no military reason to violate Venezuelan airspace with a manned aircraft to do something that could be done equally as well with in a drone or a satellite.

[TheMightyFavog]

24. Pic of a P-3...

[Tejas]

20. Picture of "US bombing run" shown by Chavez!

Surrender now Chavez!

[asdjrocky]

23. Who do you believe when two lying liars tell you something? nt

[Tutankhamun]

26. If I had to bet, I'd bet on Chavez being the truthful one.

Our government already tried to oust him once, despite the fact that he was democratically elected. There's a lot of oil there, too. Oil has a way of making our government (and our media) lie its ass off.

But I'm only saying I'd bet on Chavez if I were forced to bet on one government or the other. If I weren't forced to bet, I'd be holding my money until I had some more info.

[Odin2005]

27. Chavez needs some meds.

[Forkboy]

34. How would you feel if someone made this comment about someone you like?

Either the cracks about meds and mental illness bother you or not. :shrug:

[Goldstein1984]

31. "I smell sulfur"

Chavez and I have the same reading list:

"Hegemony or Survival" - Noam Chomsky
"Open Veins of Latin America" - Eduardo Galeano

[Forkboy]

33. Chavez for the interception!

Sorry, a sports weekend.