With less than eight months remaining before the 2008 US Presidential election President Bush is now running out of time to tame President Hugo Chávez and free up Venezuela's massive oil reserves to feed the floundering US economy.
Two days ago, instead of leaving the media attack to his lackeys Bush himself spoke out himself against Venezuela and its "links to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)", classified as a "terrorist organization" since 9/11. Bush accused Chávez of making empty promises in terms of social justice in the region, causing food shortages and having a "thirst for power", while trying to spread his influence in the region.
All these accusations come hard on the heels of the now resolved Colombia-Ecuador-Venezuela crisis with new evidence against Chávez allegedly found in the "miracle bomb proof laptops" supposedly recovered from the massacre of Raúl Reyes and 15 others while they slept, by invading Colombian troops on Ecuadorian territory on March 1st.
Washington's destabilization plan was scuppered after the Group of Rio Summit in the Dominican Republic on March 9th when diplomatic and commercial relations were reestablished between Colombia and Venezuela. Since then, this new onslaught against Chávez and the Venezuelan people has been launched as another phase of Plan Colombia/Plan Patriota. The objective is to place Venezuela on the "list of terrorist nations" composed to suit Washington's interests. As such, Venezuela would be added to Washington’s list of other countries, including North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Iran and Cuba.
Such an action would have grave consequences for commercial relations between Venezuela and the US, which is Venezuela's largest trading partner. The US receives around 13% of its oil imports from Venezuela. CITGO, Venezuela's US based oil company could be seized and Venezuelan assets frozen in the US and in other countries. Needless to say, US assets would also be seized in Venezuela and conceivably flights to the US and other nations suspended with diplomatic and commercial relations severed. This would mean that Venezuela's oil imports to the US would stop with unforeseeable and possibly disastrous consequences for US consumers.
This could well set the scene for US military intervention in Venezuela at some future date after lobbying other countries in the region to isolate Chávez as a "sponsor of terrorism". The impact on the Venezuelan economy would be devastating and the ultimatum would be something like "if Chávez resigns, all will return to normal". Or to use Bush's 2001 blackmailing phrase "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists".
So far the evidence against Venezuela being a terrorist sponsor is flimsy at best, as illustrated in Greg Palast's recent article $300 Mllion from Chavez to FARC a Fake This was borne out today by The State Department's Head of Latin America Affairs, Tom Shannon. Shannon who said that investigations of the laptop's contents were underway but the US government was "concerned" about Chávez's (alleged) links and/or support for the FARC, and no decision to place Venezuela on the "terrorism list" would be taken lightly.
This new attack comes just as the US corporate media is recognizing the fact that there could be a deep recession ahead in the US as the dollar continues to fall, oil has reached US$110/barrel, US consumer confidence is low, real inflation as opposed to "core inflation" is skyrocketing and up to 20 million US homeowners could be in danger of losing their properties in the next three to four years. Watch this video from CNN to hear evidence of these forecasts by so-called reputable analysts.
Just as the "Vote 2008" campaign has shifted attention from the continuing slaughter in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, the White House appears to have taken the decision to use the Chávez "threat" as a diversion from the looming financial meltdown already heating up in the US economy. Another “preventative war” is being justified as part of the "global war against terror", in a coincidentally oil producing region. It’s just the ticket to divert attention from domestic problems in "Fortress America" and keep a foothold in the US "back yard" after years of waning U.S. influence in the Latin American and Caribbean.
The feeding frenzy supporting the threat by Washington is apparent in the corporate media, once again at the service of the hawks and war mongers in the White House and State Department. However, the success of this Machiavellian plan, similar to the Iraq WMD fiction in the lead up to the invasion of that country, depends upon the support Chávez can garner from allies such as Brazil, Argentina, China, Russia and even France. Whether Washington would approach the OAS or the UN to legalize an invasion is an open question since it could just act in "legitimate defense" as it did in Iraq and as Israel does almost every day in Gaza.
In the event of any US aggression against Venezuela, Iran would probably halt oil exports and the world could be plunged into facing US$200+/barrel oil and widespread unrest in the Latin American region. The March 11 notice of the “ominous resignation” of Adm. William Fallon in the Middle East may signal an imminent US/Israeli attack on Iran which would also fit this mad master plan. Remember that an economy based on the success of the military-industrial complex needs wars and conflicts to maintain the growth essential to its capitalist economic model.
At the same time, this scenario is economically unsustainable for the developed world and therefore it appears more likely that the objective will be the destruction of the Venezuelan economy using sanctions as were used in Iraq in the 1990's. The first step on this road has already been taken with the Exxon-Mobil vs. PDVSA case now in the UK courts where an injunction has been placed on US$12 billion of PDVSA assets.
Washington's hope is that Chávez would be overthrown by a popular uprising as the economy sinks and a potential civil war would be the ideal excuse to intervene to protect oil supplies – which, according to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, really belongs to the US anyway and just happens to be under Venezuelan soil.
This latent aggression against the Bolivarian revolution is a continuation of the April 2002 coup and the oil industry sabotage of 2002-2003 and it all comes down to oil.
The US unquenched thirst for this source of energy, which late Venezuelan intellectual Arturo Uslar Pietri called the excrement of the devil, could set of a chain of events far beyond Latin America's regional borders, destabilize the world economy and polarize the developed northern hemisphere and the impoverished south, where the vast majority of human beings live. There is nothing more dangerous than a failing monster, thrashing out his death throes to deny life and prosperity to all those around him.
© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!
Additional Articles by Ramón Santiago