it's only reasonable for Hugo to arm the country to defend against the imminent invasion by the U.S.

As far as I know, the US has been involved in almost every coup d'état in Latin America since the 1950s. And is, by far, the most belligerent nation in the contemporary world.

Also, considering that US media war propaganda satanazing Hugo Chávez for longer than a decade, and the building of 8 military bases in the neighbor country of Colombia, why shouldn't Chávez consider that as a real possibility?

Really, I see no reason.

s

Here they are

even if the agreement had gone through, and it didn't, the US was not building new bases in Colombia. they were going to use existing bases.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/colo-a21.shtml

a correction on the excerpt below. The US military was shut down from operating in Manta because the lease was not renewed. the airbase continues to function as an Ecuadorian base as it has in the past.


Colombian high court rejects US bases agreement
By Bill Van Auken
21 August 2010
Colombia’s high court ruled Tuesday that a treaty allowing the US access to military bases in the country is unconstitutional because the former government of right-wing President Alvaro Uribe failed to submit the pact to the national congress for approval. The decision has left the Obama administration as well as the new government of Uribe’s successor, President Juan Manuel Santos, scrambling to salvage the pact.

The agreement, signed by then-Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez and the US ambassador in Bogotá, William Brownfield, at the end of October 2009, allowed the US to use seven Colombian military bases and airports, supposedly to prosecute Washington’s wars on drugs and terrorism. The deal granted the US access to the facilities for 10 years, allowing the presence of up to 800 American military personnel as well as 600 private security contractors.

However, the deal, whose full contents have never been made public, sparked widespread condemnations in the region. The left-nationalist government of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela charged that the bases would be used to prepare a US invasion of his country, an accusation echoed by the government of President Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Chávez froze trade relations with Colombia in response. Bolivia and Argentina also condemned the pact.

The Brazilian government, which has cemented close ties to Washington, also voiced its displeasure with the accord, suggesting that the US was attempting to use military might to shore up its position throughout Latin America. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called upon Uribe to make public the contents of the agreement and to guarantee that the US forces deployed at the new bases would be allowed to operate only “inside Colombia and not on the borders of other countries.”

Opposition to the plan was heightened by the release of a Pentagon document that suggested one of the bases, an airfield at Palenquero, was intended neither for counter-narcotics nor counter-terrorism operations, but rather to provide the US military with the capacity to conduct “strategic airlifts” of troops and tanks directed to all parts of the South American continent. The document argued that such a facility was necessary in “a critical region where security and stability are under constant threat from governments hostile to the United States.”

While both Washington and Bogota suggested that the base agreement had been necessitated by the decision of the Ecuadorian government to shut down a US air base in the Pacific coastal city of Manta, critics of the deal pointed out that none of the Colombian air bases were located on the Pacific, which is the main route for drug trafficking.

The other US installations include air bases at Malambo and Apiay, naval bases at Cartagena and Bahia Málaga, and army facilities at Tolemaida and Tres Esquinas.

This week’s ruling by Colombia’s Constitutional Court found that Uribe had violated the constitution by not treating his deal with Washington as an international treaty requiring congressional debate and approval as well as review by the court itself.

then there's nothing to discuss.

I'm not relying on faith, but in facts.

response to your theory of 'US bases in Colombia' by Bacchus4.0 and then tell me where your 'facts'
are.

US intended to establish several bases in Colombia. That is threat enough. The fact they couldn't is a secondary issue.

Do you really believe that, after seeing what happened to Iraq, there is one single oil producer country in this world not worried about US energetic, strategic and military policies as a potential threat? Excluding the Western allies, of course.

Brazil is a traditional ally of Washington and even though it's currently pursuing an independent foreign policy, both countries continue to have good relations. Well, Brazil is currently building three nuclear submarines and intends to buy some hundreds of jets. The official explanation given to the military spending is protecting its oil reserves. Protecting from who? Could you guess?

Now, if Brazil was a targget of media war propaganda, being "satanized" by the American press... believe me, it would be building nuclear bombs right now.

the rapid rate of increase of arms imports cannot be justified by stating that the US has built military bases in Colombia when the fact is the US has not, and all indications are they will not.

justification is needed. Or, do you have different rules for the US than for other sovereign, especially oil-producing sovereign nations?

Should the US get rid of some of its weapons considering no other government is threatening it, no other government has backed an attempted coup against our government?

Good for Venezuela, they know there is a huge threat to their sovereignty is and are correct to arm themselves until that threat is removed.

to carry that out aren't you?? the only coup that would occur in Venezuela is the auto-coup if Chavez loses the election.

were part of the reason it failed, along with the people who didn't like the idea of a foreign nation kidnapping and removing their democratically elected President from office. Just ten years ago.

I don't think Chavez has anything to fear from the Venezuelan Military or from the Venezuelan people. What he, and other South American leaders who have been elected by their own people, have to fear is more of the same tactics used by the Western powers to install Dictators who will be more cooperative as far as handing over their country's resources to the control of Global Corporations.

THEY know who their enemies are. They've had eons of history, right up to today, to educate them.

So the answer is no, arming their military can only make them and their chosen government, safer.

I see no connection between the importation of the arms and being safer. despite repeated claims including by CHavez, no-one is threatening to invade. and a coup could only be performed with the help of factions of the military who I assume are the ones who decide where those imported weapons go. any military faction would have access to weapons already.

and if he has no fear of the Ven military as you said, there is nothing to worry about. Chavez is the head of the government though; he can waste money as he chooses.

would never catch up with the US in that department. It's astonishing how much people here in this country care about what the people of Venezuela do with their country.

As for the murder rate, try living in DC's poorest section or Chicago's, or any number of US cities where people die every day in the crossfire from the failed drug war, or for other reasons.

You're not seriously criticizing some other country for what possessing weapons with a straight face, are you? This country has more weapons on the street, in the military, in the hands of our so-called civilian police departments, than all the rest of the world put together!

In the year 2000, no one would have expected the US to back a coup against a duly elected president of Venezuela, because there was no reason for it. But, they would have been wrong, wouldn't they? Same thing with Haiti, and Honduras.

So to say that any of these countries have no need to fear a coup, is like going back a decade and then being proven wrong. All of them and a lot more have every reason to fear a coup backed by this country. So did Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, and a whole host of other countries. It's what we do. WE are viewed as the biggest threat to world peace by many people of the world.

A majority of the world's people are sure not worried about Venezuela attacking them. But they are worried, considering we are currently in the process of doing it, about the US.

Leave Venezuela to the people of that country. The only reason for the propaganda against it in our media and among our politicians and their operatives, is because of its resources.

Venezuela (or Brazil) is not just far-fetched - it's silly. US using Colombian bases to assist the Colombian military in their war on the narcos (and yes, guerrillas too) is one thing. Having a base in Colombia - doubtful. And, BTW, have you considered that Venezuelan oil is the least desireable of all the different oils on the market? It's thick sludge that's very hard to refine and doesn't make really good gas. Hardly a reason to invade.

Other Latin American governments would not recognize our newly installed government, so the coup failed and Hugo Chavez returned to power in a few days.

April 2002. Had Bush written all over it

(which I personally do not agree with), that does not equate to the hysterics of some who insist that the US has plans to invade Venezuela.

unbelievable.

The US spends HALF, only HALF, of the world's military budget.

That is reason enough for any country to be worried without being labeled as paranoid.

If you have the American press/war propaganda machine attacking you... that's a more than justified reason to rise military spending.

serious inflation and shortages Fearless Leader invested 5 billion (with a b) dollars in obsolete Russian arms, particulary thousands upon thousands of obsolete AK 47's. (Hint: he's not arming the Venezuelan armed forces, but rather getting small arms in large quantities to his 'Bolivarian Militias', his personal army.

the US would knock out Venezuelan military and strategic installations with drones, planes, and missles.

plans are and always have been to install far right wing dictators who will do the dirty work as they have in the past, of selling out their countries' resources. They don't have to invade with an army, they use proxies to that work in the S. America. Or are you unaware of the history of South America and the US, pretty recent history.

The good thing is that now South American nations have taken back their countries, elected the leaders they choose, and are currently after many decades, prosecuting the traitors who collaborated with foreign governments against their own people. A bit late, but better late than never.

and am well aware of US history there, both real and imagined. My answer was to the assertion that the U.S. is establishing 'US bases in Colombia', presumably to invade Venezuela. I said I thought that was foolish. I still do.

facilities as part of an existing (Colombian) military base and building your base in somebody's country.

the time and money being spent in all of these other countries where we are not doing any good, just arousing more anger at the US. We need to shut down bases around the world, rather than build more of them. Leave other countries alone. They are perfectly capable of solving their own problems, as we have seen in other South American nations once they got rid of US backed dictatorships.

sovereign nation, I fail to get your point. If anyone tried to do that to our President, what do you think we would do? Wait, we spent trillions on arms and used after a terror attack against two countries whose governments had nothing to do with it.

Can you explain why you think any sovereign country that has been subjected to an attempted coup backed by a powerful foreign nation would not have the right, no the DUTY, to sufficiently arm itself against such an attack in the future?

I think Venezuela has been less than diligent in arming itself against its enemies, one of which is clearly the US. The government of Ven has an obligation to defend itself.

is 'defending Venezuela against the US', then I can't help you. As to defending against attempted coups, these are not a novelty in Venezuela, starting with the failed coup led by Fearless Leader some years ago. As Pogo said, "we have met the enemy and he is us".

countries have experienced assassinations and coups of their governments, and in recent times, that is not a practical desire at this point.

The US needs badly to get all of its agents, troops, bases, mercenaries, undercover CIA operatives etc out of other people's countries and start fixing all that is wrong with this country. Going around the world killing people sure doesn't benefit anyone.

Our policies towards Venezuela under the Bushes were no surprise, that gang always believed those people had no right to manage their own affairs and needed specially chose dictators who would take orders from DC to rule over them. But what is so disappointing is that those policies have not changed.