Venezuela has lots and lots of oil. Why do you think we give a sh*t about Chavez?

Iron ore too. Enormous amounts; probably more than the Mesabe Range.

Not that that matters to us.

sPh

What threat does Chavez pose? Well he/Citgo are keeping gasoline prices artificially low in the Northeastern US...how dare he cut into everybody else's oil profits in the industry, lol!!!

Domestic drug use isn't a security issue? That is why we keep on hearing about drug users funding terrorist sponsoring groups like the Taliban and us trying to destroy the poppy harvests for that reason...not that Chavez is doing that as far as I know. If he is involved in trafficking it is probably solely to enrich himself, lol!!

Actually he sounds like a believer in the free marketplace if you ask me...he probably doesn't like the fact that the US isn't in support of truly free markets. ;)

Venezuelan oil watch out - here come Dick and W under the guise of the "war on terror".

Tom

Columbia is not a terror threat but the United States has troops in Columbia aiding the government there fight the drug cartel.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

waiting for the next terror is nothing but a bore. waiting for the war is the most frighting thing in the world that a man can do. if you seem to find the new method of fighting with out the weight then maybe you'll find an entertaining thought. if you seem to find the peaceful escape, your a geinus.

vicious guerilla war against Columbia

I'm certaintly no FARC supporter, but it is actually Colombian paramilitary forces (such as the AUC) that commit the vast majority of the abuses against civilians in the armed conflict.

The paramilitaries have long been supported by the Colombian government - which itself has received very considerable U.S. security assistance over the years.

So if anyone's upset that an outside force is contributing to 'viciousness' in Colombia through arms transfers - they might write a letter to the U.S. government.

Voteless In DC

An assumption in the note and many comments is that rational security and foreign policy analysis is at the center of Cheney/Bush doctrine. Dorothy, it’s been a long time since we’ve been in Kansas. I would suggest that smite and demonstrating once again to the world of their cantaloupe-size testicules is the determinate factor in the current policy toward Venezuela.

Via Dave Weigel, it seems the war on terror is expanding to Venezuela, which is apparently supporting terrorism in the form of Colombian guerillas. What threat Colombian guerillas pose to the United States I couldn't say.

The Rabid Republican propaganda has obviously been making the rounds. Without any careful analysis, since the failed coup attempt, the conventional wisdom has become that Venezuela is bad.

-- Insane George W. Bush comment #394: See, free nations do not develop weapons of mass destruction.

So again, while you're no supporter of FARC, you don't see any real moral distinction between an elected government and a guerilla movement dedicated to overthrowing the democratic process?
After all, nobody has "any claim to the moral high ground." Why do I think the situation wouldn't appear nearly so "complex" if it was a left wing elected government fighting right wing guerillas? By your logic the Republican government in Spain during the 1930s had no "real claim to the moral high ground" against Franco because some of its supporting armed groups committed abuses against civilians.

Are you really trying to argue that the fact of being in rebellion against a democratically elected government is in fact worse than rampant killing of civilians? By that logic, the rebels in Darfur are far worse than the government that is sanctioning, supporting and performing genocide.

You don't have to support the FARC to recognize that the AUC is generally more of a human rights abuser. I think I'd assign the US less responsibility than the grandparent, given that both groups have for nearly a decade been allied with and supported by narcotraficantes. But greater human rights abuses are not offset by the badness of acting outside the law of a democratically elected government (which of course raises the question of how fair and open the pre-Uribe elections really were, but that's a different story).

The American Right needs ennemies in order to rationalize and justify its existance. If America does not have deadly ennemies, what is the point of a staunchly pro-war party for the USA? Obviously it is a bit more complexe than this but when you strip the issue down to the essentials, such is the cynical heart of the GOP. It needs ennemies to function efficiently as an electoral machine and a "governing party". Chavez fits the bill nicely. What he really is and what problems he crates for the USA fade into insignificance compared to the propaganda need he fills in the heart of the GOP and its believers.

As for Columbia no one in America should be too quick to champion the guerillas or the government. Columbia's politics is an ugly tragedy and a bloodstained fury that makes claims of "justice" and "rights" for one side look silly.
At a meta level Columbia is a good example of what happens when a country continually turns to violence to resolve political questions. At key points in its history, 1899-1902, 1940s and 1950s the country has split into armed faction and resolved its political disputes with guns. Hundreds of thousands of Columbians have been killed during these explosions of political violence. In the 1960s the Columbian left was killed and executed out of electoral politics. In response left wing politics in Columbia became increasingly violent and headed outside of the political system and into the jungle to forment revolution.

Today however it is hard to see the FARC guerillas as the chanpions of anyone but themselves. They exist in order to survive. There is no justice in their goals or methods. As for the Columbian goverment and its institutions we can say they are legitimate in that they are democratic, but there is a real problem in that they can not be trusted to maintian political peace. If the FARC gives up its weapons and rejoins the regular political process can the Columbian state keep the Columbian far right from picking up its guns and massacring the disarmed left? History says no; and so the tragedy continues. Columbia is cursed by violent politics. We should not be fooled. Democracy is no guarantor of political virtue only legitimacy.

What is sad is that other political juristictions have managed to move themselves out of the abyss of violence. Chilie, Northern Ireland, Peru, Argentina, South Africa, Mozanbique, all these countries have managed to reincorporate a violent left and turn them into an electoral left. In all these cases it was the discipline of the right wing political actors in these countries to maintian a non violent environment for politics that allowed this to happen.

So I would say that the biggest problem in Columbia is that the Columbian state is not committed to creating a non violent political space for left wing parties. It is still persuing a strategy of extermination (ie no leftist no problem)

Instead of partnering with the Columbian government to fight "the war on drugs" the USA should be looking for ways to nomalise Columbia's politics. But as I indicated ealier, normalisation is not ideologically useful for the Republican Party and until there is a change of who controls the American Executive there will be no change in policy.

To the United States? Not dangerous at all. Why? Because he's the President of Venezuela, that's why. It's Venezuela and the day Venezuela becomes capable of seriously threatening the United States is a long, long way off.

We currently import more oil from Venezuela than Saudi Arabia.  Its not exactly peripheral to our strategic interests.  The question is whether Chavez can cross the line from irritant to threat.  Offering subsidizing heating oil to the poor that's one thing, selling F-16s to Iran is another.

It would also be a good idea for liberals to stop lionizing Chavez simply because he opposes Bush  Anyone who's tried to take power through a coup has suspect democratic bona fides, even if they subsequently win an election.  However, absent any connection between Chavez and Islamist terrorists, it is particularly stupid for the Bush administration to try to fold Chavez into the War on Terror narrative.  Rather, the US should be ensuring that Chavez not be permitted to transform himself from an illiberal democrat to an unchecked autocrat.

Actually, if Greg Palast is right in his new book, they don't actually WANT the oil - they want the oil OFF THE MARKET.

Palast says he has evidence going back to the 1930's that the oil companies hated Iraq oil because it messed with the oil prices and the deals they had with the Saudis and the rest of OPEC.

This lends new meaning to the notion that the US WANTS Iraq to fragment into a civil war - because that will guarantee no oil comes out of Iraq any time soon.

I couldn't figure out why the US would want Iraq to fragment - unless it was just for Israel's benefit. But I didn't think the US was THAT controlled by Israel, despite the Israeli Lobby. I figured the US and its oil companies DID want the oil, at least.

Now Palast may be right or wrong, but it's an argument that explains quite a bit if he's right.

Palast points out that Chavez is going to ask OPEC to certify that at current prices he now has FIVE TIMES the oil the Saudis have. Which makes Chavez a major threat to the pricing structure of OPEC and the US oil companies.

Chavez's offer of a "floor" to oil prices is also a threat as well as his offers of cheap oil to the US and EU poor.

And Palast also points out that the unifying condition between Saddam's Iraq, Chavez's Venezuela, and Iran is that those countries insisted on taking the oil money and then NOT repatriating it back into the US investment markets as the Saudis do.

THAT was the key issue - the money didn't come BACK!

The US doesn't CARE what it pays for oil - as long as the money comes back in investments in the US!

Instead, those countries used it to build up their infrastructure to make them independent of the US and World Bank money lenders.

This is precisely the issue with Iran - they are using their oil money to build a nuclear energy infrastructure that might also (someday in the future) be used to build a nuclear weapons infrastructure that could be used to establish Iran as a regional power.

It's not the Saudis that are all that worried about that - it's the US and the oil companies that are worried.

If Palast is correct, he may have hit upon the lynchpin for a lot of US foreign policy decisions in the ME.

See my posts above about Greg Palast's theory.

Chavez is a "threat" because his oil regime doesn't toe the OPEC line and is a disruptive influence on oil prices - as well as refusing to give the oil money back to the US in US investment markets.

If Palast is right, the US and its oil company owners have no choice but to attack Iran and Venezuela just as they attacked Iraq.

Naturally, attacking Venezuela will take a certain amount of "preparation of the ground" before the US public can be convinced that Chavez is an "immediate military threat" to the US. The Iran plan is much closer to being operational and Iran is considered more of a "threat" as it also threatens Israel's geopolitical goals which Venezuela doesn't.

Of course, once the US attacks Iran, it's capacity to attack ANYBODY else is going to be long gone, so I don't think Chavez needs to worry about it. He should continue to worry about a US-backed coup or an assassination attempt, however, no doubt about that. The US DOES intend to kill him or get him out of power, that much is absolutely certain.