[narconews] Giordano: US-Venezuela Relations Rock the US Presidential Campaign
 
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:31:27 -0500 (CDT)


July 26, 2007
Please Distribute Widely

Dear Colleague,

The most recent US Democratic Presidential debate (YouTube-CNN) on
Monday brought the first major disagreement between front-runners:
whether, as president, they would meet with the leaders of Venezuela,
Cuba and other US-shunned countries.

Narco News Al Giordano writes that Senator Hillary Clintons
calculated unwillingness to hold such diplomatic meetings, and her
chief rival Senator Barack Obamas insistence that it must be done,
have heated up the Democratic primary campaigns while attracting the
attention of the rest of the world to the 2008 US presidential contest:

One of those questions came from Stephen Sorta of Diamond Bar,
California. He asked the candidates whether, as the next US
president, they would be willing to meet separately, without
precondition, during the first year of your administration with the
leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to
bridge the gap that divides our countries.

Three candidates  luckily, the three frontrunners  answered.
Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) said yes. Senator Hillary Clinton
(D-New York) said no. And former Senator John Edwards (D-North
Carolina) said maybe, sort of, perhaps.

All the reported 3,000 YouTube video questions, including that by
Stephen Sorta, were made available to the public  and thus to the
candidates and their chief strategists  prior to the debate. The
larger campaigns, like those of Clinton, Obama and Edwards, had the
ample staff resources to vet them and prepare scripts for their
candidates as to how to best answer them. The behavior by Penn and
Clinton during and since the debate strongly suggests that this was
their plan all along to try to paint Obama as inexperienced. But they
didnt count on the fact that the American public itself is tired of
the way its own government has made a mess of its foreign policy, and
that fatigue isnt necessarily restricted to the Bush administration,
but also may include the Clinton administration before it, when US
President Bill Clinton refused to meet with the leaders of the
countries in Sortas video question.

Read Giordanos full report on the issue, as well as other news from
Latin America, online at Narco News:

http://www.narconews.com

 From somewhere in a country called Amirica,

David B. Briones
Webmaster
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
webmaster@narconews.com

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