Rumsfeld blasts Spain's decision to sell planes, boats to Venezuela

Rumsfeld blasts Spain's decision to sell planes, boats to Venezuela

April 5
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MIAMI - (KRT) - In a comment likely to further chill the already cool U.S.-Spanish relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday criticized Madrid's recent decision to sell military planes and boats to Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.

"I personally think that Spain is making a mistake," Rumsfeld said in a wide-ranging telephone interview with The Miami Herald.

...

"I guess time will tell. The problem is that, if one waits till time tells, it can be an unhappy story," he said.

...

Asked whether there is any evidence that Chavez may turn over these rifles to Colombian rebel groups, Rumsfeld said, "I don't have any evidence. ... All I said was, I asked a question, what in the world is the threat that Venezuela sees that makes them want to have all those weapons?"

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/11318736.htm

his tone is basically that of a mafia don (no pun intended). Rummy is basically saying "Nice country you got there, Zapatero. It would be a shame it something happened to it."
Just like in the mafia movie.

Is he serious?

Really, what in the world??

(also, nice plant question by the "reporter", too)

"THEM GAWD-DAMN DEIGOS, DON'T THEY KNOW WE'RE TRYING TO INVADE VENEZUELA."
Jesus these people are sick.

That's Chavez' business..what makes it necessary for you to have all those weapons?

You have a habit of invading oil producing countries.

dammit we need to invade those pesky venezualans immediately. They have no right!

p.s. how much have we given their neighbor columbia for military equipment purchases this year alone?

and everything is just peachy. Maybe Venezuela sees Osama bin Laden as a threat, because you know...the world changed after 9/11...and given the fact he is still out and about they may need to defend themselves against him should he decide to attack Venezuela. Because you never know when, or where the terrorists will strike, so we all have to always be prepared and on heightened alert. (sarcasm off)

Who sold ther nerve gas to Sadam waaay back in 1982 or so???

rummy thinks he is weapons master...

bushniz as usual for the ole gang..
sadam our enemy..sadam our asset..
Who else would give up his country in a quikie invasion?? Wait don't answer that!


http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/


Shaking Hands: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein:
The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82

Edited by Joyce Battle

All I said was, I asked a question, what in the world is the threat that Venezuela sees that makes them want to have all those weapons?"


Perhaps Venezuela sees the axis of evil: Bush, Rice, and Rimsfeld.

The threat Venezuela sees, and quite clearly, is of an invasion from Columbia, whether by a private rightist goon-squad, or by regular troops "responding" to some cooked-up "incursion" from Venezuela, sponsored and paid for by the United States....

:wow:


Columba's got a goon squad alright.

have no offensive capability. (The rifles are being purchased from Russia.)

Or maybe that's not the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing is Rumsfeld is still Secretary of Defense.

First you have them buying almost three times the amount they need and then to top it off they are Russian when the army till this point is armed with Western weapons. So basically they are adding a totally new caliber to their supply chain that is incompatible with any of the other weapons they have.

AK-74 style weapons in 5.56mm NATO these days. Maybe that's what they're buying. Anyways, Chavez has announced that he intends to establish a reserve force of 1.5 million soldiers/guardsmen, who would need some rifles in case of mobilization.

their boots. And then when Rumsfield ****s up the Iraq invasion plans with his 'new assumptions' and the war is a mess....he blames Turkey.

Yeah - I'd want to be an allie.


Allie this Rumsfield.:kick:

these usual suspects LACK any class at all..liars,cheats,frauds, deceivers, murderers ,war mongers..

these are the credentials of the busheviks and the neo-conthradals

scary because I was actually stalked by a sociopath.. but on new meds and I was not caught up in the fear at all. I loved the structure of that movie. How it built & built. But I already knew the ending. The actor who played him is always the ringer.

If it weren't for W and Rummy being such asses towards Venezuela, maybe they would have made these sales (presuming their wares are better than Spain's).

corporate wars.

credibility anywhere in the world?

From a recent Tom Engelhardt news letter

And, the money thing aside, here's the rub -– one of them anyway: Sometimes the only effective defense against the highest tech levels of warfare turns out to be the lowest levels of the same. Remember the salutary tale of the wonderfully named Marine General Paul Van Riper (okay, it's not Ripper, but close), who commanded the enemy "red army" in the military's Millennium Challenge 02 war games in 2002? These maneuvers involved a war in a fictitiously named Persian Gulf country that resembled Iraq." The games were carefully scripted to prove the efficacy of a Rumsfeld-style high-tech army. Unfortunately, Gen. Van Riper stepped outside the script and using such simple devices -- the sort now undoubtedly being employed by the Iraqi insurgency -- as "motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to Red troops, thereby eluding Blue's super-sophisticated eavesdropping technology," he trumped the techies. "At one point in the game, when Blue's fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, ‘refloated' the Blue fleet, and resumed play.)" He was reprimanded and finally quit in protest. But someone -- with the last couple of years in Iraq in mind -- should have paid the man some mind.

Perhaps that's why our Secretary of Defense, responsible for sending those F-16s to Pakistan, has been in a panic over the fact that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government recently bought 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles. Little Venezuela's purchase of 1940's-era-design rifles has Rummy in a tizzy; and, for all the high-tech goodies at his command, not without reason. The insurgency in Iraq has demonstrated that a relatively small force of lightly armed insurgents in an area roughly the size of California can bog down, stretch to the limit, and effectively counterbalance for two years the might of the U.S. military, despite its trillions of dollars worth of satellites, armor, artillery, air power, futuristic weapons, and old-fashioned bullets. (my emphasis /jc)

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2298

There ya go Rummy, you contemptible old fart, that's why Venezuela figures it needs 100,000 AK 47s (not that I believe for one minute you didn't know this already).

The US funds an attempted right-wing coup in Venezuela through various groups, and Rumsfeld complains that Venezuela is up to no good buying fighters and helicopters from Russia.

US-backed groups try mightily to subvert the recall election, and Venezuela buys 100,000 rifles from Russia. Rumsfeld wonders publicly about why could they possibly need them.

US State and Defense officials, including Rumsfeld, make vague claims that Venezuela is supporting FARC-EP rebels in Colombia, and Venezuela buys patrol boats from Spain.

The first part of this is that Venezuela isn't buying American-made M16s, Blackhawks and F-16s and Austal patrol boats.

The second part is that every veiled threat from the US generates a new defensive military purchase by Venezuela from some country other than the US.

If Rumsfeld can't figure the reasoning behind it all, his IQ must be dropping daily....

but he also knows a lot of the American people are stupid (as they proved in the last election), so I think he's asking the question for their benefit. Just a little more propaganda for the masses.

Chavez is driving Rummy nuts!!!

If other countries, threatened by takeover by the US, are allowed to have weapons, then how will Rummy's grand vision of a smaller, tighter army EVER work?

Chavez is stockpiling weapons of killing-a-little-at-a-time because these are what work against the American mechanized killing machine in the arena of modern warfare, which, I am sad to say, is quagmire....

I'm so old, I remember when the THREAT of US force kept peace in the world.

Now, the world has seen, on their TVs every day, that even if you DO comply with international law, and the UN -- the US is STILL going to invade your ass, overthrow your government, and kill your people by the tens of thousands. So where's the incentive to cooperate anymore? You better believe we are in a post-Cold War age -- and what a mess they have made of it.

The stupid assholes have destabilized the fucking planet. Anyone see a happy outcome to any of this stuff in the foreseeable future, because I sure do not....

Eisenhower's final gift to America was to warn us about the bastards who make money off of eternal war and suffering -- how prescient the great general was, and Ike, I weep at how idiots have thrown away your accomplishments with both hands....

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no, wait, i meant the SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY. hey condi, got those boots handy?

"what in the world is the threat that Venezuela sees that makes them want to have all those weapons?"

Waht? Youdon't want 'em armed when we come for their oil? haha Too bad. US isn't the only country ready to make a buck off of US hostilities.

What an idiot!

Julie

the rest of the world knows what you warmongering assholes are up to and realize all you Understand is force.

He does that (code talk) a lot imo. He's got mercenaries operating worldwide. He's a war criminal and a neo-conservative traitor.

I think he was behind the stand down of the USAF and the "coincidental" gaming exercises on September 11, 2001. LIHOP looks more and more like MIHOP when you look at Reichmarshall Rumsfeld.

He should be prosecuted.

Here's a typical bit of Miami "exile" writing, done to regale the right-wing Miami Cuban and Venezuelan Miami Herald readers, by their arch-@$$####, Andres Oppenheimer:

Posted on Wed, Apr. 06, 2005

VENEZUELA

Rumsfeld slams Spain over sale of weapons

In an exclusive interview with The Herald, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld criticized Spain's sale of weapons to Venezuela, the toughest comments yet from the Bush administration about the sale.

By ANDRES OPPENHEIMER

aoppenheimer@herald.com

...FEAR OF ARMS RACE

...Rumsfeld's comment came amid a political storm in Spain over the weapons sale. Aznar said during a recent visit to Miami that the sale to Chávez is ''profoundly irresponsible,'' because it could trigger an arms race with neighboring Colombia.

Former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana, who lives in Spain, also denounced the sale, saying that patrol boats would be deployed in the Gulf of Venezuela, the focus of an unresolved border dispute between Venezuela and Colombia.

Spanish government officials deny that the deal with Venezuela could ignite an arms race. They note that Rodríguez Zapatero visited Colombia immediately after Venezuela, and that he donated three military planes to that country.
Rumsfeld also reiterated his concerns over Russia's sale of 100,000 Kalashnikov-style assault rifles to Venezuela -- a sale far larger than the one by Spain. Rumsfeld said, ``You have to ask the question, what are they going to do with them?''

U.S. officials, noting that the Venezuelan army has only 35,000 troops, say the purchases could help Marxist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia, or other violent groups in the hemisphere.

Asked whether there is any evidence that Chávez may turn over these rifles to Colombian rebel groups, Rumsfeld said, ``I don't have any evidence . . . All I said was, I asked a question, what in the world that Venezuela sees that makes them want to have all those weapons?''
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/11320427.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These people are so damned ignorant. They just might swallow, due to their mental impairments, that the Venezuelan government will swing its focus from making the desperately needed changes WITHIN the country, and start getting grabby, and violent, just like _{American right-wingers.}

What threat? We tried to overthrow him TWICE and that asshole says, what THREAT?

God, we're being ruled by human garbage.

satisfy our agenda which is to take you over - you cannot buy, sell, build, or develop weapons if it is not part of our plan to rule you.

WE'RE the threat, you frickin' moron! I really hate that guy.

Rummy knows very well that we're the threat. He should know that not everyone in the world is as clueless as most Americans. They saw the coup to overthrow Aristide and they see Chavez as next on the 'let's not let leftists get a foothold so they won't threaten the ruling class' list.

Who'd a thunk it...only the U.S. can sell military hardware to another country.