[southnews] Target Venezuela!
 
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:46:20 -0500 (CDT)


U.S. is now seeking to have Venezuela declared "a state sponsor of 
terrorism."

Target Venezuela!

by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, March 13, 2008

Just days after president Hugo Chavez affirmed at the Rio Group summit 
that "our government only wants peace," the U.S. is now seeking to have 
Venezuela declared "a state sponsor of terrorism."

McClatchy News reported Monday,

    The Bush administration has launched a preliminary legal inquiry 
that could land Venezuela on the U.S. list of nations that support 
terrorism, following reports of close Venezuelan links with Colombian 
rebels, a senior government official has confirmed. (Pablo Bachelet, 
"U.S. May Add Venezuela to List of Terrorist States," McClatchy 
Washington Bureau, Monday, March 10, 2008)

In other words, the U.S. State Department is using Uribe's "dodgy 
dossier" as a pretext for sanctions and embargoes against the Bolivarian 
republic. If implemented, such restrictions would severely limit the 
ability of U.S. firms to do business with Caracas while making it nearly 
impossible for Venezuela to export oil to the United States or import 
vital spare parts necessary to keep the economy going.

Under onerous rules now being considered, the Treasury Department's 
Office of Asset Control could potentially freeze Venezuelan financial 
assets in U.S. banks. Such aggressive action by the Bush administration 
would "make the economy scream," the infamous order given by Richard M. 
Nixon to the CIA in the run-up to the violent putsch that overthrew 
Chile's democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, on 
September 11, 1973.

The McClatchy report continues,

    The legal review comes after Colombia captured four computers 
belonging to a guerrilla leader in a March 1 raid into Ecuador. The 
documents suggest the Venezuelan government was in the process of 
providing $300 million to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or 
FARC.

As investigative journalist Greg Palast reported after actually 
reviewing the documents, there is no mention whatsoever that the 
Venezuelan government was "in the process of providing $300 million to 
.. FARC."

Commenting on the crisis, U.S.-Venezuelan attorney Eva Golinger wrote 
Tuesday,

    Over the past year, the U.S. State Department has classified 
Venezuela as a nation "not collaborating" with either the "war on drugs" 
or the "war against terrorism". The Pentagon and the intelligence 
communities released reports earlier this year citing Venezuela as a 
"major threat to U.S. national security" and have proposed beefing up 
military presence in the region. The White House and Congress have 
increased USAID and National Endowment Funding to opposition groups in 
Venezuela in an effort to rebuild ailing conservatives that favor a U.S. 
agenda. International media portray Chavez as "public enemy #1" and the 
leader of a Latin American "axis of evil" that is threatening regional 
stability. ("The Peacemaker," Venezuela Analysis, Tuesday, March 11, 2008)

With this in mind, Bill Conroy at The Narco News Bulletin is reporting 
that CIA and Pentagon corporate cut-outs have exported at least 11 
aircraft to Venezuela since 2003, four of which have subsequently been 
linked to cocaine planes seized by Mexican and Central American 
authorities. Conroy's extensive investigation into the mysterious 
aircraft and even dodgier companies have led him to conclude that the 
planes are linked "to an elaborate covert intelligence operation." 
Conroy reports:

    The covert program, law enforcement sources contend, likely involves 
the CIA and components of Defense Department intelligence agencies, and 
is focused, in part, on penetrating, or even propping up, 
narco-trafficking groups in Venezuela. That country's outspoken leader, 
Hugo Chavez, is regularly demonized by U.S. policymakers for, among 
other things, supposedly allowing his country to become a haven for 
narco-traffickers. ("U.S. Cocaine-Plane Invasion Spooks Latin America," 
The Narco News Bulletin, March 11, 2008)

The Narco News investigation dovetails with one that Florida-based 
journalist Daniel Hopsicker has been reporting for nearly two years when 
the first plane was seized on the Yucatan peninsula by Mexican 
authorities in April 2006, carrying some 5.5. tons of cocaine.

Conroy and Hopsicker have both reported that the operation, code-named 
Mayan Express, appears to prioritize intelligence goals over law 
enforcement. Multi-ton loads of cocaine may have been allowed to flow 
freely into the United States as Washington's "drug warriors" looked the 
other way, a classic sign of a sanctioned intelligence operation.

Two of the aircraft identified in their reports, a Gulfstream II jet 
(tail number N987SA), which crashed in Mexico last September with a 
payload of some four tons of cocaine, and a Beech 200 (N391SA) seized in 
Nicaragua "with the false tail number N168D," have been linked to the 
CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, according to Council of Europe 
investigators.

In a prior interview with Conroy, attorney Mark Conrad, "a former 
high-level supervisory U.S. Customs agent who has an extensive 
background in the intelligence world," told Narco News,

    "Even though it looks as if you are unraveling odd connections you 
may be only seeing a small part of what is going on -- or you may be 
seeing what you are expected to see, missing something else.

    "My guess -- and that is all that it is -- is that this has 
something to do with operations in Venezuela -- either to finance ops, 
or to divert attention from Agency ops in Venezuela to destabilize 
Chavez. ... It is not in the U.S. interests for Chavez to create another 
Cuba on some of the largest oil field reserves in the world." [emphasis 
added]

Before the December 2007 constitutional referendum which the Chavez 
government lost, Golinger reported that Venezuelan counterintelligence 
obtained a CIA memorandum from the U.S. Embassy which revealed extensive 
CIA/Pentagon plans to destabilize the country. Code-named "Operation 
Pliers," the memo was dated November 20, 2007. Golinger wrote,

    Operation Tenaza has the objective of encouraging an armed 
insurrection in Venezuela against the government of President Chavez 
that will justify an intervention of US forces, stationed on the 
military bases nearby in Curacao and Colombia. The Operation mentions 
two countries in code: as Blue and Green. These refer to Curacao and 
Colombia, where the US has operative, active and equipped bases that 
have been reinforced over the past year and a half in anticipation of a 
conflict with Venezuela. [emphasis added]

    The document confirms that psychological operations are the CIA's 
best and most effective weapon to date against Venezuela, and it will 
continue its efforts to influence international public opinion regarding 
President Chavez and the situation in the country.

    Operation Tenaza is a very alarming plan that aims to destabilize 
Venezuela and overthrow (again) its legitimate and democratic (and very 
popularly supported) president. The plan will fail, primarily because it 
has been discovered, but it must be denounced around the world as an 
unacceptable violation of Venezuela's sovereignty. ("CIA 'Operation 
Pliers' Uncovered in Venezuela," Venezuela Analysis, November 28, 2007)

While "Operation Pliers" may have failed back in December, the CIA has 
been ratcheting up tensions ever since, as the March 1 U.S.-Colombian 
attack on Ecuador clearly demonstrates. Since its failed April 2002 coup 
against the socialist government, the United States, working through a 
multitude of fronts--from the CIA, the American Center for International 
Labor Solidarity, the International Republican Institute to the National 
Endowment for Democracy--have poured millions of dollars into Venezuela, 
funding a broad campaign of subversion and violence.

Utilizing assets such as Szmate, Accisn Democratica, Comando Nacional de 
la Resistencia and media outlets such as Globovisisn, RCTV and the 
Interamerican Press Society, Washington and their far-right allies are 
planning a "Pinochet option" to topple the democratically-elected 
government of Hugo Chavez.

Despite on-going attacks by Colombian far-right narco-trafficking 
paramilitary gangs such as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) and 
Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles) in the Venezuelan state of Tachira, 
analysts believe that the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia is being used by the 
Bush and Uribe regimes as part of a military "pincer" movement against 
Venezuela.

Tachira's governor, Blanco la Cruz, told the Australian socialist 
journal, Green Left Weekly that,

    "The zones that suffer this problem most intensely are [the area] 
south of Lake Maracaibo in Zulia, Alto Apure, and, obviously, Tachira. 
In these states, the paramilitaries, helped by the Colombian government, 
have taken control of various areas, buying up farms with the money from 
extortion, kidnapping and, principally, drug-dealing." (Jim McIlroy & 
Coral Wynter, "Venezuela: Guns, Drugs and Thugs: The threat from Plan 
Colombia, Number 684, September 20, 2006)

If the United States determines that Venezuela "has ... crossed the 
threshold of state sponsor of terror," according to an "unnamed 
official" cited by McClatchy News, full-blown U.S. sanctions would usher 
in a state of savage economic warfare as a prelude to a U.S. invasion 
and occupation of Venezuela and its strategic petroleum resources.

Additional documentation of U.S. destabilization operations against 
Venezuela can be found at Venezuelafoia.info

 Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8322