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I am thinking each of them through. I most certainly do not want to be wrong on such a matter, and I will admit it, if I am convinced that I am wrong. Or, rather, I DO want to be wrong, in the respect that I don't want another oil war, God knows. But am I wrong in thinking that another oil war is being planned and may well be executed?
In general, you mistake me if you think that I am predicting that such a war is imminent. I cannot know what the Pentagon has in mind as a time-line. All I can know is the news that we are permitted to know and I can only judge that information on the basis of my experience, having lived through several (too many) U.S. wars, knowledge of recent and past history, and considerable experience at reading between the lines of corpo-fascist news stories and U.S. State Department propaganda.
You broadly attack my analysis on the basis that Colombia is not Vietnam, and South America is not Southeast Asia. But you don't entertain the possibility that Pentagon war planners may not be making any such distinctions, in their mortification at having been defeated by "little brown people in straw hats and sandals" and their desire to fight that war all over again, with all their new shiny toys. Pentagon dense-headedness does not really change.
I don't mean this comparison to Vietnam as an exact, one for one analogy. Of course they are different regions, countries and circumstances, but there are also haunting resemblances. My analogy is mainly intended for those who scoff at the idea of a Pentagon war plan against Venezuela by ignoring what I've said about it, and calling it an "invasion"--a la Iraq--which they say is a ludicrous idea, and by inventing predictions by me that such an "invasion" is about to happen. It took the CIA more than a decade to turn the anti-colonial war in Vietnam--led by independence hero Ho Chi Minh--into the civil war of the early 1960s, and then to escalate it into a U.S. war against "international communism" (ignoring the fact that, if the U.S. had permitted UN-run elections in Vietnam in 1954, Ho Chi Minh would have won, hands down; the Vietnamese people would have freely, democratically chosen a communist government).
The haunting resemblances include a long civil war (within Colombia), along political lines (right vs left, rich vs poor), U.S. funding of a corrupt, fascist government, the long stealthy buildup of U.S. forces in the region (so like Vietnam), use of the "war on drugs" very like the "war on communism" as the excuse for greatly increased militarization of existing circumstances, re-use of the "war on communism" (the main covering flag of the war on Vietnam) to stir up rightwing forces in the region (and here), difficult jungle terrain, the drug trade background, U.S./Colombia sabotage of any peaceful resolution of the internal conflict (the CIA had Diem assassinated when he began talking of a peace accord with North Vietnam; the U.S./Colombia dropped ten 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on the FARC guerrilla hostage release and peace negotiator, Raul Reyes, in 2008, amidst international efforts to end the Colombian civil war), use of a client state (recipient of $7 BILLION in U.S. aid) to carry out U.S. plans (I'm sorry but $7 BILLION in aid makes you a U.S. client state--the U.S. does NOT give out such aid without demanding obedience in return); widespread corruption and massive human rights abuses by the client state because it really does not represent the poor majority and requires violent repression to stay in power--and armed rebellion by local leftist groups which Colombia and the U.S. would have us believe are allied with a leftist "dictator" next door (Uribe's recent accusation that Venezuela is "harboring" FARC guerillas).
Venezuela is not North Vietnam. And Hugo Chavez is not Ho Chi Minh. But the aim of current CIA propaganda is to make it look that way. The underlying brainwash is that people would never freely choose a communist or far leftwing government. In Vietnam, they would have chosen communism. In Venezuela, they HAVE CHOSEN a far leftwing government--freely, democratically, and with an election system that is far, FAR more honest and transparent than our own. Yet the CIA "meme"--spread throughout the corpo-fascist press--is that Chavez is a "dictator," in the teeth of the facts, including statements like this, by Brazil's president, Lula da Silva: "They can invent all kinds of things to criticize Chavez, but not democracy!"
So, WHY this intense psyops/disinformation campaign to create a bogeyman "dictator"--with the latest fillip being that the bogeyman "dictator" is "harboring" Colombian "terrorists" in Venezuela? This charge is baseless. Its "evidence" is on a par with Colin Powell's "evidence" of WMDs in Iraq. Is the purpose for demonizing Chavez and now charging him with supporting "terrorists" merely political, or is it pre-war psyops?
I really don't know for sure. But meanwhile, the U.S. reconstituted the 4th Fleet in the Caribbean (mothballed since WW II), began illegal spy flights over Venezuelan territory from U.S. bases on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast (on the Caribbean), beefed up its bases in Panama, has started military maneuvers recently in demilitarized Costa Rica, secured its military bases in Honduras with a rightwing coup, and signed a secretly negotiated military agreement with Colombia, permitting U.S. military use of at least seven Colombian military bases, U.S. military use of all civilian infrastructure in Colombia and included a provision for total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and U.S. military 'contractors' (of which there are said to be 1,500 at present), no matter what they do in Colombia. Also, as Eva Golinger discovered, there is a USAF document laying out the reasons for all of this: "full spectrum" U.S. military activities in Latin America, for dealing with drug trafficking, terrorists and "countries hostile to the U.S."
As for the Colombian military being ill-equipped and scattered all over the country chasing FARC guerillas (and slaughtering trade unionists, human rights workers, community activists, teachers, journalists, peasants farmers are other peaceful opposers of the fascist government), it's interesting what the Ecuadoran military said about the Colombian military attack on Raul Reyes' camp (just inside Ecuador's border): that the Colombian military is not capable of delivering 500 lb "smart bombs" and that this attack must have been aided by the U.S. military (probably a pilot, plan and bombs out of the U.S. military base at Manta, Ecuador, which has since been evicted by Ecuador's leftist president). This is just like Vietnam--the South Vietnamese army being trained and equipped by the U.S. military, amidst vast corruption within the local military and government, and thus, the U.S. military provides them with "backup" and the conflict becomes a U.S. war.
There are differences from Vietnam, some of which may help prevent such a war in South America--for instance, the strength of the leftist democracy movement throughout Latin America--a movement whose time has come--and the new spirit of cooperation among Latin American countries aimed at formation of a Latin American common market. But there is rather strong evidence that the U.S. response to this movement is following old, "anti-communist" lines--of funding and arming rightwing forces, lies, disinformation, psyops and sabotage, fomenting chaos and destabilization, and trying to thwart genuine populist movements and majority will for social justice and independence. This policy ever holds out war as the "solution" if it cannot achieve U.S. corporate ends by other means. It is a policy of bullying and intimidation. War is its other hand.
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