Venezuela ends military exchange program

[Neil D]

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By Christopher Toothaker

ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez's government has unexpectedly ended a military exchange program with the United States, the U.S. Embassy in Caracas announced yesterday.

Venezuelan officials could not be reached immediately to confirm the termination of the program that began exchanging U.S. and Venezuelan military personnel 35 years ago.

"Giving no explanation, the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela abruptly ended U.S. military participation in the bilateral exchange program," the embassy said in a statement.

"The U.S. Embassy regrets this unexpected action. The U.S. government hopes to maintain the historical fraternal relations between the two military forces."

An embassy official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there are four U.S. military instructors in Venezuela and roughly 90 Venezuelan military personnel in the United States.

The American officers in Venezuela "were basically told to leave the Venezuelan military institutions and bases where they were," the official said in a telephone interview. "We have no explanation as to why this was done."

Venezuela is the United States' fourth top oil supplier, but relations between the two countries have soured in recent years. Mr. Chavez accuses the United States of backing a short-lived coup against him in 2002, and last month warned he would cut off oil shipments to the United States if the United States supports any attempt to force him from office.

The statement yesterday came one day after Venezuela's vice president downplayed concerns expressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over Mr. Chavez's decision to buy 100,000 assault rifles from Russia.

"This [purchase] is part of our effort to re-equip the Venezuelan armed forces, which has the same rights as any army," said Jose Vicente Rangel. He added that Venezuela was growing tired of hearing Washington repeat its concerns regarding Venezuela's acquisition of the Kalashnikov rifles.

Mr. Chavez denies that the purchase of the rifles will lead to an arms race with his Latin American neighbors. [/]

Do you think that they are mad because of this.....

Quote:

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[:"green"] Otto Reich

Otto Reich

from the book Robbing Us Blind (book) - Steve Brouwer - p179

In the 1980s, Otto Reich was chief of a department in the State Department that was ; called the Office of Public Diplomacy and staffed with CIA and Pentagon "psychological ; warfare" specialists. The function of the operation was to fool the American public about the nature of the conflicts in Central America by disseminating false information, discrediting reporters whose work the Reagan administration did not like, and using other means of mist leading propaganda. In short, the Office of Public Diplomacy was in the business of producing disinformation of the kind that is generally used to mislead an enemy during conventional warfare, except that during the unconventional and illegal Contra war it was being used to lie to journalists, Congressional committees, and the U.S. people. Reich "helped plant stories and opinion pieces praising the Contras in U.S. newspapers. It wasn't just the stories that were phony, so were the authors. Reich's office wrote them all." Congress, once it uncovered the illegal operations of this office, closed it down and Otto Reich barely avoided indictment.

Otto Reich was sent off as Ambassador to Venezuela after the Contra war, where he was able to secure the release of the jailed Cuban exile terrorist, Orlando Bosch. This man had been jailed for eleven years for his role in the worst instance of airline terrorism in the Western Hemisphere (up until September 11, 2001, that is). This was the bombing of a Cuban plane which killed all 73 civilians on board in 1976. The U.S. Justice Department had evidence of Bosch's involvement in more than 30 other terrorist acts, some of them committed within the United States, including a rocket attack on a Polish ship in Miami. With the help of Otto Reich and Jeb Bush, who was busy ingratiating himself with right-wing Cuban Americans in Florida, Bosch was pardoned by George Bush I in 1992.

In 2001, Reich rejoined the Bush Gang by taking over the Latin American desk at the State Department for just one year. The Administration used a special loophole that allowed for his temporary appointment without getting the approval of the Senate. This was because many Senators, such as Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, would have grilled him about his past activities and opposed his formal nomination. When the one year term expired, Reich was immediately appointed as a special Latin American envoy to the National Security Agency, another post that does not require congressional approval. This allowed him to keep pursuing his major preoccupation, which was the same as Abrams'-to overthrow regimes and control oil. The only difference was that Reich was assigned to raid and plunder in the Western Hemisphere (not the Middle East), where he was overseeing the destabilization of the government of Venezuela, the biggest American oil producer. He was also seeking to oust President Chavez, the democratically elected leader who was detested by the Bush Gang for his obstinacy and independent thinking, particularly on the issue of using Venezuela's vast oil revenues. Chavez had stated that he wanted to use the country's oil wealth to serve and educate the poor, who form the vast majority of the country's population.

Reich regularly met with Chavez's upper-class opponents in Washington to contemplate strategies, one of which was a constant barrage of attacks from the Venezuela's press and television, almost all of which are controlled by a right-wing business oligarchy. A military coup was engineered by the oligarchy in April 2002 after repeated consultations with Washington, but it failed. Then, in December of 2002, a large scale petroleum strike was engineered by state oil company executives in concert with a commercial business shutdown planned by the oligarchs and the rest of the upper class. Both actions failed to dislodge President Chavez. As of the spring of 2003, the Venezuelan upper class had failed in their coup attempts. The plots that Reich had helped initiate were as ill conceived as the Iran/Contra scandal and ended up as fiascos. The business shutdown in December hurt the middle class more than the poor, while the sabotage of the oil industry nearIy wrecked the economy and cost the country many billions of dollars. The oil shutdown also helped push the price of oil sky-high as the U.S.A. and the world braced for war in the Middle East. [/]

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Nah, it couldn't be.....could it?