Is the US plotting to murder Venezuela’s president?

[Say_What]

<clips>

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez cancelled a planned trip last month to the United Nations General Assembly’s opening debate, explaining that he did so because of a potential threat on his life. His government’s intelligence agencies had reportedly warned of a plot backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to sabotage his plane in flight from Caracas to New York City. He and others had also raised concerns about Venezuelan anti-government terrorists conducting military training on US soil.

The US media has barely reported the Venezuelan president’s security concerns; and when it has, it generally attempts to portray the charges as an indication that Chavez is unstable or suffering from paranoia.

Chavez’s concerns, however, are hardly far-fetched. While he has won two consecutive popular elections by the largest popular margins in Venezuelan history, he remains in office today thanks only to the failure of an April 2002 coup attempt carried out with the barely concealed backing of the Bush administration. Those who carried out the coup were the recipients of US funding, including government money funneled through the AFL-CIO union bureaucracy and its international front, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity.

The military-businessmen’s regime that briefly seized power held Chavez incommunicado on an island of the Venezuelan coast for two days while deciding his fate. Washington welcomed the coup and then backtracked after mass opposition in the streets of Caracas made the new ruling junta’s position untenable.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/oct2003/vene-o08.shtml

[SharonAnn]

1. Yes, or whatever it takes to remove him.

The powers that be that tried to overthrow him previously (supported by the USA) haven't gone away. They're just laying the groundwork to trying again.

The oil companies want control of Venezuela and they want to take as much money as they can from the sale of the oil. They do not want a fair share of it to go to Venezuela's people.

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. US and Israel have decreed that they will murder whom they choose

I don't know if I would call it a plot.

[teryang]

3. That's a rhetorical question, right? n/t