- How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that
overthrew Hugo Chavez?
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- Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
That's what it's always done and there's no reason to think that tomorrow
morning will be any different.
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- Consider Chavez's crimes:
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- Branding the US attacks on Afghanistan as "fighting
terrorism with terrorism", he demanded an end to "the slaughter
of innocents"; holding up photographs of children killed in the American
bombing attacks, he said their deaths had "no justification, just
as the attacks in New York did not, either." In response, the Bush
administration temporarily withdrew its ambassador.
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- Being very friendly with Fidel Castro and selling oil
to Cuba at discount rates.
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- His defense minister asking the permanent US military
mission in Venezuela to vacate its offices in the military headquarters
in Caracas, saying its presence was an anachronism from the cold war.
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- Not cooperating to Washington's satisfaction with the
US war against the Colombian guerrillas.
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- Denying Venezuelan airspace to US counter-drug flights.
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- Refusing to provide US intelligence agencies with information
on Venezuela's large Arab community.
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- Questioning the sanctity of globalization.
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- Promoting a regional free-trade bloc and united Latin
American petroleum operations as a way to break free from US economic dominance.
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- Visiting Sadaam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gaddafy in
Libya.
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- And more in the same vein which the Washington aristocracy
is unaccustomed to encountering from the servant class.
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- The United States has endeavored to topple numerous governments
for a whole lot less.
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- The Washington Post reported from Venezuela on April
13: "Members of the country's diverse opposition had been visiting
the U.S. Embassy here in recent weeks, hoping to enlist U.S. help in toppling
Chavez. The visitors included active and retired members of the military,
media leaders and opposition politicians.
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- "The opposition has been coming in with an assortment
of 'what ifs'," said a U.S. official familiar with the effort. "What
if this happened? What if that happened? What if you held it up and looked
at it sideways? To every scenario we say no. We know what a coup looks
like, and we won't support it."
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- Right. They won't support a coup. So what happens when
a coup occurs which they want to support? Simple. They don't call it a
coup. They call it a "change of government" and say that Chavez
was ousted "as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people."
Veritable grass-roots democracy it was.
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- Opposition legislators were also brought to Washington
in recent months, including at least one delegation sponsored by the International
Republican Institute, an integral part of the National Endowment for Democracy,
long used by the CIA for covert operations abroad.
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- Overthrowing a man such as Hugo Chavez, guilty of such
transgressions, was a duty so "natural" for the CIA that the
only reason it might not have been intimately involved in the operation
would be that the Agency had been secretly disbanded.
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- William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military
and CIA Interventions Since World War II and "Rogue State: A Guide
to the World's Only Superpower" Blum can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
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- http://www.counterpunch.org/
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