Rumsfeld says Venezuelan democracy threatened by Sunday's vote

Source: AFP


WASHINGTON (AFP) — Former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Sunday that a constitutional referendum in Venezuela threatened to completely destroy the country's democracy and called President Hugo Chavez an "aspiring despot."

"Today the people of Venezuela face a constitutional referendum, which, if passed, could obliterate the few remaining vestiges of Venezuelan democracy," Rumsfeld wrote in an essay published in The Washington Post.

Venezuelan voters were to decide Sunday whether to give Chavez wider powers, including limitless re-election, in a referendum seen as too close to call.

But Rumsfeld said the Venezuelan leader, a close ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro, in fact is trying to dismantle Venezuela's constitution, silence its independent media and confiscate private property.



Read more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ivHEbqeYJsBnuhOnJjhxmzityQ_w

That takes a pair.

And this proves it.

:eyes:

or..is that a known, known...or an unknown known...or an unknown unknown?

telling us how bad Chavez is and the idiot people here do no investigating of their own....but believe what they hear on the corporate, All five big republican contributors to the only five television news organizations left in our country....that continue to regurgitate whatever BushCo says about Chavez and these stupid cocksuckers keep repeating theirs & Bush's idiocy here.

who has single-handedly ruined democracy as we know it, will Rumsfeld be selling him weapons?

Although I generally like HC, I'm not in the "cult," either -- not everything he does or says is automatically good or even defensible. I'm still waiting, albeit hopefully, to make a final judgment.

However, saying that an election could "destroy...democracy" is just plain dumb. Our own country has only had a presidential term limit for 50 or 60 years -- so 75 percent of the time, we mostly did just fine. Hell, the South seceded with a democratic vote, but that didn't let anyone stop the North from disagreeing.

The only media Chavez silenced was a TV station that called for a military coup (how democratic is that?), and maybe everybody paying their fair share IS democracy?

n/t

no term limits there either.

last i heard their democracies were working pretty well.

funny how we hear nothing about all the other components of the referendum, mostly empowering the poor. how odd.

I hope the French secret service kidnaps Rummy and prosecutes his sorry ass, since Bush announced today that US
can kidnap people deemed criminals in other countries.

Looks like the tide is turning against your kind, eh Rummy?

as opposed to a military coup where opposition leaders are arrested, tortured, and killed by being thrown out of helicopters into the ocean:

Almost immediately after the military's seizure of power, the junta banned all the leftist parties that had constituted Allende's UP coalition. All other parties were placed in "indefinite recess," and were later banned outright. The dictatorship's violence was directed not only against dissidents, but also against their families and other civilians.

The Rettig Report concluded that 2,279 persons who disappeared during the military government were killed for political reasons, and approximately 30,000 tortured according to the later Valech Report, while several thousand were exiled. The latter were chased all over the world in the frame of Operation Condor, a cooperation plan between the various intelligence agencies of South American countries, assisted by a US communication base in Panama. Pinochet believed these operations were necessary in order to "save the country from communism"<8>.

Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn. Some of the most famous cases of human rights violation occurred during the early period: in October 1973, at least 70 people were killed by the Caravan of Death, to which Manuel Contreras, later head of the DINA intelligence service, participated. Charles Horman, a US journalist, "disappeared", as did Víctor Olea Alegría, a member of the Socialist Party, and many others, in 1973.

from Wikipedia

Seeing as up is down, black is white with him, bad means good, imo.

his creepy opinions are not worth shit.

well i mean he thinks he does..didn't he tell us he was bringing democracy to iraq?

I thought so..

how many is he responsible for their deaths?? oh yeah over a million human beings wiped off this planet for his type of democracy..silly me..i thought that was murder he was responsible for..

blood dripping from Rummys hands = democracy.

well that killer and i have a different idea of democracy.

and always have and always will.

shut the fuck up rummy you cold blooded killer!

fly

he helped trash our democracy. This guy should not be allowed to ever communicate with the general public again.

in the Bush administration's war against Chavez. Rumsfeld as a former high profile member of Bush's inner circle,but who is now a private citizen,starts the ball rolling. Expect to hear from a few more like him in the next day or so. Once the pot has been stirred then Swingin' Dick will give a speech followed immediately by one from Smirk. The propoganda war will be on and who knows what will happen if Chavez has the balls to cut off Venezuelan oil to the U.S. If that happens I'm sure the Decider will decide. Stay tuned and if you got religion,pray.

lame-ass press stops quoting him?

payments stop coming in.

Somebody in the Old Nazi's Home needs to tranq von rumsfeld.

"aspiring despot?" Yeah, takes one to know one Rummy. :mad:

I mean, we all remember the phrase "It takes one to know one." from our childhood.

Who else knows more about despotic ambitions than anyone associated with scrubco?

On a serious note (sort of): Why does anyone care what this dottering old fool thinks. He's been wrong on EVERYTHING for years now.

hmmmmmmmmm.

now what administration has been doing that ?

his gang of cohorts. Venezuela is not the US and we have no right to stick our noses into their business. For Pete's sake, I feel like our government is out to run the world.

Oh yea, I just remembered, they are.

in there and he's describing bUshica.

Or should it be vice-versa?

When he looked up his distant Rumsfeld relatives in Germany, I read that they gave him pure shit for his policies. If his own kin can't abide him, why should anyone else?