Chavez Believes He's a Terrorist Target

[bemildred]

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
demanded Wednesday that the United States crack down on Cuban and
Venezuelan "terrorists" allegedly training in Florida to kill him.

In a combative speech sure to strain U.S. ties,
Chavez also lambasted President Bush (news
- web sites) for invading Iraq (news - web
sites) and dismissed Bush's plea at the United
Nations (news - web sites) for help in Iraqi
reconstruction.

---

Chavez was supposed to attend the U.N. summit on terrorism earlier this
week in New York but said he canceled because of an alleged plot to kill
him.

Chavez said he recently gave U.S. Ambassador Charles S. Shapiro a
Florida newspaper article reporting that Cuban exile militias were training
with Venezuelan armed forces exiles to kill Chavez.

Yahoo

[Jack Rabbit]

1. He's been a target of terrorists for years

He's been a target of terrorists like Otto Reich and Orlando Bosch.

[bemildred]

2. I thought him handing Shapiro the newspaper story

was pretty funny, I would have liked to watch that.

[flamingyouth]

3. He's a target of the BFEE

So, yeah, he's right.

[Gman]

4. I'm afraid Chavez will not be around much longer

He'll either be overthrown or killed and then the government overthrown. One thing is certain, the Bushes will not put up with him.

[AP]

5. They didn't kill him last April because parts of the army were still loyal

and the crowds amassed outside Milla Flores, and he has only consolidated his power since them.

I think it would be impossible to kill him unless the CIA has bribed someone within his government to take over who will outwardly seem to be liberal, but covertly turn control back over to the oligarchy. I wonder if that's the plan.

[FlemingsGhost]

9. They said the same thing about Castro...

Poppy blew his chance in April.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. Viva Chavez

"Who gave the United States government the right to bomb cities, invade countries, overthrow governments?" Chavez said. "No one gave this right to the United States government. And here, we will keep saying that."

And here, we'll keep saying that too.

[haymaker]

7. Trust me Hugo, you are.

Just not by Al Queda.

[Judi Lynn]

8. I read this article earlier before checking in here at D.U.

So glad to read your comments here.

Started looking through google to see if I can come up with the article Chavez had read, somehow, or an article describing it.

Found this intrigueing article written in 1999 which seems to reinforce comments I read in this thread above:

(snip) Fidel Castro defends Chavez, denounces plot to kill him
Havana - Reuters

Cuban leader Fidel Castro defended his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez as a like-minded "revolutionary" and denounced an alleged plot to kill him by U.S.-based Cuban exiles.

Castro used a news conference in Havana with Venezuelan journalists to denounce the alleged plan to kill Chavez that he said was scheduled to be carried out in December by four Cuban exile "terrorists" living in Florida. He linked the death plot against the Venezuelan leader to what he said was a campaign of "fantasies and lies" by Chavez' enemies to portray him as another Castro bent on transforming Venezuela into a one-party communist state like Cuba. "I would venture to say that Chavez is a revolutionary," the veteran Cuban leader said. He added: "But if they tell me Chavez is a socialist, a Marxist, a Leninist revolutionary, I would say no, he is not".

The Cuban leader did not immediately offer an explanation as to why the Cuban exiles would want to kill Chavez. But, citing a report from Cuba's intelligence services he said he received three days ago, he named the four Cuban exiles allegedly involved in the plot as Eusebio de Jesus Penalver, Rene Cruz, Ernesto Diaz and Mario Chanes de Armas.

The four were part of Florida-based "counter-revolutionary" Cuban exile organizations, he said. Diaz and Chanes are former political prisoners who served long sentences in Cuba's jails before being released earlier this decade after years in prison. Castro said the four alleged plotters had held a meeting in a Miami office last November 18 to discuss the assassination plot against Chavez. He gave the address of the office and its telephone number. (snip/...)

http://www.turkishdailynews.com/old_editions/12_02_99/for3.htm
(It's a Reuters article)
(second story)

[Judi Lynn]

10. This article looks close to what Chavez was describing

(snip) The Wall Street Journal: Miami's Little Havana Finds New Foe in Venezuelan Leader

The Wall Street Journal

Comandos F-4, en Tampa.

January 29th, 2003


The Wall Street Journal showing how rightist Cuban exiles are now working closely with their Venezuelan counterparts in Miami. In other words, "turds of a feather".


By Jose de Cordoba
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MIAMI -- As if beleaguered Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez didn't have enough problems already, now the F-4 Commandos are on his case.

With headquarters in a shabby second floor walk-up in the down-at-the-heels neighborhood of Little Havana, the Commandos are one of a raft of tiny, and largely toothless, Cuban-American groups dedicated to the overthrow of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Not long ago, the self-proclaimed leader of the F-4 Commandos, Comandante Rodolfo Frometa, 56 years old, signed a "civic-military" allegiance with dissident Venezuelan Capt. Luis Eduardo Garcia, leader of the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta. The two groups have vowed to join their combined military experience and exchange "intelligence and counterintelligence" to combat Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Mr. Chavez, whom the groups brand as "traitors to the Latin American fatherland."

"Our goal is to see Venezuela and Cuba be free," says Mr. Frometa, a slight man who sports a black, Ho Chi Minh-style wispy beard and whose day job consists of chauffeuring elderly patients to a medical clinic. "We want Venezuela to
be free by peaceful means but in Cuba the only way is through an insurrection." (snip)

(snip)But Capt. Garcia, 37, the leader of the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta seems to be hedging his bets. A strapping 6-footer whose close-cut hair is streaked with gray, Capt. Garcia was one of the first military officers to openly defy Mr. Chavez. During last April's abortive military coup against Mr. Chavez, Capt. Garcia was grazed by a bullet on the side of the head as he stormed the presidential palace by a back door.

Now Capt. Garcia says he is providing military training for some 50 members of the F-4 Commandos, 30 of them Cuban-Americans, the rest Venezuelans, in a shooting range close to the Everglades. "We are preparing for war," he says. Nevertheless, his movement opposes military coups. "Our struggle is to show the world how Chavez is the enemy of democracy." (snip/...)

http://www.antiterroristas.cu/index.php?tpl=noticia/anew¬iciaid=706¬iciafecha=2003-02-01

[oasis]

16. Castro and Chavez "traitors to the Latin Amerrican fatherland"

:crazy:

[Judi Lynn]

11. Cuban "exiles" were found in a yacht headed to Venezuela

with rifles and night vision goggles, where Castro was attending a conference, in this article. (Once you start looking these stories up in google, you'll see there's a ton of stuff which has been going on which ordinary Americans have never heard. It just doesn't get out here.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Puerto Rico federal jury acquitted five exiles of plotting to kill Castro
in December. The U.S. Coast Guard stopped a yacht near Puerto Rico
and found rifles, night-vision goggles and satellite navigation equipment;
one of the men said they were heading to kill Castro at the 1997
Ibero-American Summit in Venezuela.

Defense attorneys argued the men planned to help Cuban officials to defect
and they needed the weapons for defense. Among those
acquitted in that case was a director of the Cuban-American National Foundation. (snip/...)

http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000cov/Fidel_Denounces_Latest_Gusano_Plots

[bemildred]

13. Chavez has been supportive of Castro,

both rhetorically and in practical terms,
there is a synergy between them,
they are both interested in some measure of social justice,
so it's not at all surprising that the Cuban exiles
don't like him, or that the Venezuelan "opposition"
and the Cuban exiles find common cause, assuming they
need some motive more complicated than Uncle Sugar's
money.

[seventhson]

12. A Tasget of the MPRI (Clark's friends?)

Maybe THIS is why they need Clark in...

to finish what Bush has started?

Just asking...

Investigate MPRI. They are the most likely planners of the Chavez business

[bemildred]

14. I dunno.

They (MPRI) probably do whatever they are told, hired help.

I have some aquaintance with Clark, and will only reluctantly
vote for him, somewhat for the reasons you state, I suspect
he will try to shore up the empire rather than liquidate it
in favor to a cooperative regime of the World's governments.

In any case, I am skeptical that they need Clark, Junior is
about as on board as anyone can be, and Clark will not somehow
suddenly make them competent again.

[sam sarrha]

15. the CIA will get him before anyone else can........he supports the poor