I don't think we are going to be able to sneak up on Chavez

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6524745&cKey=1141579230000

Chavez drills military and civilians to repel invasion

By Patrick Markey

MACARAO, Venezuela (Reuters) - At a rural military base on the outskirts of Caracas, Venezuelan officers have started classes in unconventional warfare to repel an invasion left-wing President Hugo Chavez warns Washington may attempt.

Snipers draped in foliage and civilian reservists armed with knives, catapults and handguns crawled out of a hidden tunnel in a demonstration as instructors lectured on resistance tactics.

Captains, lieutenants and majors strained behind a cordon to make out another soldier camouflaged inside tree perch as he fired a bow and peppered a uniformed dummy target with arrows.

"If no one comes, then that's fine, we can continue as the free and sovereign country we are, but we cannot permit that any foreign force tries to invade," instructor Lt. Col. Antonio Benavides said as gunfire cracked from a firing range during the weekend training.

[Wetzelbill]

1. you know, he seems a little wild and untamed

but that guy is seriously sharp. He's well prepared on everything. Very articulate and a total survivor. You get this image of him, even the non-corporate media, as a bit of a firebrand, but he's much more savvy than he gets credit for. He's nobody's fool. If he was just a fiery rhetorical sort of guy alone, there is no way he'd have stuck it out this long. He'd have been in exile like Aristide in Haiti ended up.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

2. The only "we" that wants to sneak up on Chavez are the NeoCons.

[ooglymoogly]

4. we indeed!

[NNN0LHI]

5. He cuts the oil off and that "we" may well go well beyond the neocons

A lot of Americans will go Road Warrior if that happens I think.

Don

[bahrbearian]

3. Venezuelans will fight for Chavez,not like the Iraq's for Saddam.

[kenny blankenship]

6. There is a problem in being too prepared

yeah, they're gunning for him no question about it. But, if they succeed in driving him into a paranoid focus on Yanqui subversion and assassination plots, his priorities will shift so exclusively to "preparedness" and national security that he may well come to be resented by the very people whom he hopes to benefit.
Basically they hope to run Contra- Counterrevolution Number Two on Venezuela. If they can't win outright by pushing him out or killing him, they can make life so miserable and edgy that even the ordinary people who benefit from Chavez's "Bolivarian" government will eventually feel relief by his removal.

[realFedUp]

7. The Santa of the Tropics

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-munoz5mar05,1,6844925.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

The Santa of the tropics
By Sergio Munoz, Former Times editorial writer SERGIO MUNOZ is a contributing editor to the paper. His weekly syndicated column in Spanish appears in 20 newspapers in 12 countries.
March 5, 2006

AFTER SEVEN years as president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez's brand of populism has produced social catastrophe and economic disaster for Venezuelans, including the poor he champions.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenue — $49 billion last year alone — and social spending that includes free medical services, the country's poor are poorer, schools have not improved and the general standard of living has declined, according to a recent United Nations Human Development Report.

But even as things get worse in Venezuela, Chavez is engaged in an extraordinary effort to increase his influence elsewhere in the region, seeking to transform himself into a continental caudillo at a time when Washington is largely uninterested in Latin America. Toward that end, he has used his country's vast oil wealth to launch what he calls a "Bolivarian Revolution" throughout the region.

snip

• Chavez has bought debt in Ecuador, Argentina and elsewhere in the region. When Argentine President Nestor Kirchner said last year that he would pay off his country's $9.8-billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, Chavez bought $2.1 billion in Argentine bonds to help finance the payback.

continued

[NNN0LHI]

8. Have a link that can be trusted about such stuff?

Los Angeles Times was part of the Iraq WMD debacle. Fool me once...

Don

[realFedUp]

9. this was an editorial...an opinion piece...not news. nt

[EFerrari]

10. Sounds like a load to me. I'm being gifted with some

copies of La Prensa today, Don. I'll see what is being said locally and post it here.