(Iran's President,) Ahmadinejad to tour Latin America

[Dover]

Ahmadinejad to tour Latin America
By Duncan Kennedy


BBC News, Central America
President Ahmadinejad has referred to Hugo Chavez as "my brother"


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is arriving in Latin America this weekend for a four-day visit that is likely to alarm Washington.
Mr Ahmadinejad will meet various leaders including President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador - both fiercely anti-American.

Venezuela has been a strong ally of Iran in its controversial pursuit of a nuclear power programme.

The trip will also include visits to Bolivia and Nicaragua...cont'd

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6258243.stm

[neoblues]

1. "What? We can't allow that..."

That'd be the first part of the Republican/Conservative response. Alas, we are not really the masters of the earth and nobody out there in the real world wants to do exactly what we want them to. It's funny how all those countries seem to have a mind of their own...

[BayCityProgressive]

2. FOR GOD'S SAKE

THEY ARE NOT "FIERCELY ANTI-AMERICAN!!!!!!!!". They are against US free trade and colonialism. Chavez sends the poor cheap heating oil in the US and has said many times that he didn't mind dealing with Clinton and likes the American people.

[neoblues]

4. Apparently you didn't understand what I wrote...

The "subject" title was what Republicans would think. To be puzzled that other countries do things that might not be to our advantage (have a mind of their own) merely points out that often, many Americans don't get it that not everybody thinks as we do but are also capable of thinking for themselves.

Also, I didn't say a thing about anti-Americanism and nothing about their attitudes towards the fact our rather selfish foreign policies. Nor did I say anything against Chavez, who does seem to help the poor (which is so much more than can be said of our own "President".

[BayCityProgressive]

6. I was directing my rant at the main story not you. Sorry

for the misunderstanding

[Buck Rabbit]

3. Ahmadinejad and Chavez plan to throw babies from incubators.

The empty incubators will be used as crates to ship arms to the Al Sadr.

The only solution is to nuke everyone in South and Central America and let god sort them out.

I'm series about this !!!111 It's hugh and we can't let it happen !!11!!!@!!

[HuffleClaw]

5. any nation which fails to kowtow to the US OILigarchy is 'fiercely anti-american'

what bullshit spin.

[Judi Lynn]

9. It really gets old, doesn't it? Where do all these "fiercely anti-American" guys hide

when Democrats have the upper hand? You just don't hear much about them until some hallucinating, scheming, power-mad, delusional, war-industries-loving, right-wing chickenhawks worm their way into the driver's seat.

[BayCityProgressive]

10. actually

Lyndon Johnson and Clinton viciously attacked the 3rd world...

[Judi Lynn]

11. You're right, they had unpleasant records. However, they pale by comparison

to what the right-wing, mindlessly agressive right-wingers have done.

Johnson had the grace to give up.

I think Clinton did some irrational things he might have reconsidered had he had the luxury of NO WHITEWATER, and NO GIRLFRIEND POSSE, or had been treated with the same bowing and scraping subservience extended to MEpublican Presidents.

[Judi Lynn]

12. I'm including, at no expense to you, the reader, an article I just found

on U.S. participation in a hideous era in Latin America, almost exclusively relating to right-wing U.S. Presidents, including _{George H. W. Bush} in his CIA capacity:

Operation Condor: Deciphering the U.S. Role
by J. Patrice McSherry

According to recently de-classified files, the U.S. aided and facilitated Condor operations as a matter of secret but routine policy.

In mid-April, 2001, Argentine judge Rodolfo Canicoba issued path-breaking international arrest warrants for two former high-ranking functionaries of the military regimes of Chile and Paraguay. These two, along with an Argentine general also summoned by the court, are accused of crimes committed within the framework of Operation Condor. Judge Canicoba presides over one of several cases worldwide investigating abductions and murders linked to Condor, a shadowy Latin American military network created in the 1970s whose key members were Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru
and Ecuador. Condor was a covert intelligence and operations system that enabled the Latin American military states to hunt down, seize, and execute political opponents across borders. Refugees fleeing military coups and repression in their own countries were "disappeared" in combined transnational operations. The militaries defied international law and traditions of political sanctuary to carry out their ferocious anticommunist crusade.

The judge's request for the detention and extradition of Manuel Contreras of Chile, former chief of the gestapo-like Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), and former dictator Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, along with his summons for ex-junta leader Jorge Videla of Argentina, represents another example of the rapid advances occurring in international law and justice since the arrest of General Pinochet in 1998. In effect, the struggle against impunity is being "globalized."

As human rights organizations, families of victims, lawyers, and judges press for disclosure and accountability regarding human rights crimes committed during the Cold War, inevitable questions arise as to the role of the foremost leader of the anticommunist alliance, the United States. This article explores recent evidence linking the U.S. national security apparatus with Operation Condor. Condor took place within the broader context of inter-American counterinsurgency coordination and operations led and sponsored by the Pentagon and the CIA. U.S. training, doctrine, organizational models, technology transfers, weapons sales, and ideological attitudes profoundly shaped security forces in the region.

Recently declassified documents add weight to the thesis that U.S. forces secretly aided and facilitated Condor operations. The U.S. government considered the Latin American militaries to be allies in the Cold War, worked closely with their intelligence organizations, and promoted coordinated action and modernization of their capabilities. As shown here, U.S. executive agencies at least condoned, and sometimes actively assisted, some Condor "countersubversive" operations.
(snip/...)

http://www.crimesofwar.org/special/condor.html

[Dover]

7. What they accomplished on their visit...>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2688278

[BayCityProgressive]

8. Good

I'm glad.