U.S. exploring taming Chávez (Oligarchs Daily)

[Say_What]

One of the things being considered is a smear campain against Chavez---well, duh, they've already started that years ago. Another is trying to get other LatAm countries to try and isolate Venezuela and none of the countries will sign up for that--this is probably the most worrisome thing for the Bushistas--and this years elections in Chile and Mexico where the front runners are both socialists may prove to be Tio Sam's undoing.

Anyone wanting to campare what happened in Allende's Chile to what the Bushistas are doing now will find many similarities...

<clips>

With President Bush personally firing off questions, his administration is carrying out a top-to-bottom review of U.S. policies toward Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his leftist ''revolution,'' U.S. officials say.

One option already on the table is to create a multiagency task force of a type usually reserved for critical issues. Others include campaigns to highlight allegations of graft in Chávez' government and persuade his Latin American neighbors to help rein him in, the officials added.

With Chávez appearing increasingly belligerent toward the Bush administration in recent months, ''a chain reaction has been started to review what are the options on Venezuela,'' said Miguel Diaz, with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

PLAYING IT DOWN

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher seemed to play down the reports of a broad policy review on Venezuela, telling reporters Monday: ``We're always assessing our policies. We're always looking at the situation.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11166109.htm

[Spazito]

1. Chavez strikes me as a very smart man...

he is building alliances in Central and South America, Russia and China. The only country that seems concerned about Venezuela is the US and we all know why that is, oil yet again.

[stevedeshazer]

2. When Chavez is elected, it's a leftist revolution

When Bush is selected, it's a man date.

:wtf:

[Barrett808]

3. The oil factor in Bush's 'war on tyranny'

The oil factor in Bush's 'war on tyranny'
By F William Engdahl

In recent public speeches, President George W Bush and others in the US administration, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have begun to make a significant shift in the rhetoric of war. A new "war on tyranny" is being groomed to replace the outmoded "war on terror". Far from being a semantic nuance, the shift is highly revealing of the next phase of Washington's global agenda.

In his January 20 inaugural speech, Bush declared, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" (author's emphasis). Bush repeated the last formulation, "ending tyranny in our world", in the State of the Union address. In 1917 it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy", and in 1941 it was a "war to end all wars".

The use of tyranny as justification for US military intervention marks a dramatic new step in Washington's quest for global domination. "Washington", of course, today is shorthand for the policy domination by a private group of military and energy conglomerates, from Halliburton to McDonnell Douglas, from Bechtel to ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, not unlike that foreseen in president Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 speech warning of excessive control of government by a military-industrial complex.

...

What is striking is just how directly this list of US "emerging target" countries, "outposts of tyranny", maps on to the strategic goal of total global energy control, which is clearly the central strategic focus of the Bush-Cheney administration.

(more)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC03Dj02.html