Reply #40: Bill Clinton didn't underwrite a coup against Chavez, did he?

[Judi Lynn]

There may be a few subtle differences!

Could you offer a link bearing out your inplication President Clinton disliked Hugo Chavez? A quick dive into google didn't provide anything like that for me. Not wanting to spend too long rummaging around, I could only find a couple of quick references in passing:

Chavez also met with U.S. President Bill Clinton, spoke at the Brookings Institution think tank and addressed leaders of the Organization of American States.

He said the impetus for reform in Venezuelan society is the result of "a powerful internal force, like a volcano, that has been maturing below the surface."

"It is an absolutely democratic and legitimate process, from beginning to end," he said.


'We are more confident about him'

Clinton's special envoy for Latin America, Kenneth MacKay, who attended the meeting between Chavez and Clinton, said that "we are more confident about him," although the jury was still out on the direction Venezuela was taking.

Analysts said the Clinton administration appears to be willing to give Chavez a chance.
(snip/...)

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9909/22/chavez /

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the White House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of oil. It was a 'Goldilocks' plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel.

But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three top oil industry lobbyists.
(snip/...)

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0816-03.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Arturo Valenzuela, the Latin America national security aide in the Clinton administration, accused the Bush administration of running roughshod over more than a decade of treaties and agreements for the collective defense of democracy. Since 1990, the United States has repeatedly invoked those agreements at the Organization of American States to help restore democratic rule in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala and Peru.

Mr. Valenzuela, who now heads the Latin American studies department at Georgetown University here, warned that the nations in the region might view the administration's tepid support of Venezuelan democracy as a green light to return to 1960's and 1970's, when power was transferred from coup to coup.

"I think it's a very negative development for the principle of constitutional government in Latin America," Mr. Valenzuela said. "I think it's going to come back and haunt all of us."
(snip/...)

http://www.pepeace.org/current_reprints/08/US_Seen_As_W...