U.S. rules out military action against Venezuela

Source: AFP

http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/244019/us_rules_out_military__action_against_venezuela/

The United States on Monday ruled out military action against Venezuela after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to cut off oil supplies to the US if it backed a Colombian attack.

"As we have stated in the past, the United States has no intention of engaging in military action against Venezuela," Virginia Staab, a State Department spokeswoman, told AFP.

"The United States has long enjoyed a mutually beneficial energy relationship with Venezuela, and we wish to see that relationship continue," she said.

Importing 1.4 million barrels of oil a day, the United States is the main oil consumer of Venezuela, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and South America's largest oil producer and exporter.

(...)



Read more: http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/244019/us_rules_out_military__action_against_venezuela/

:rofl:

:toast:

they can't blame the US anymore

guess all they're left with is Colombia and maybe Costa Rica

We were going to attack, but Chavez outsmarted us and learned of our plans so now we have to back down. He sure is one smart fellow.

I think you are, but it's so fucking hard to tell on DU these days...

another nation that has done nothing to warrant an attack is scary.

And also an indication of how sick this country is in its policies.

now rendering reasons for such policies BS and indefensable.

Chavez is no threat to Israel! That option was never even in the room, let alone on the table!

Whether the United States would back up Colombia in the event uribito launches an attack (which Chavez implied).

Btw, speaking of uribito, be on the lookout this Wednesday for when alvarito's chief of staff (Moreno) is scheduled to testify before the Supreme Court on DASgate. It could be very BAD news for Mr. 82.

:hi:

:hi:

In case you haven't noticed, Chavez moved his troops to the border. Colombia has refused to do the same. Chavez is talking war. Colombia is talking peace.

Good for the little dictator.

Last week, Chavez said the U.S. military would not dare to enter Caracas, but that would not prevent snipers from trying to take him out when he goes on his trips outside the capital.

against another US backed coup, as in "The Revolution Will Not be Televised"...a kind of "bin there done that" and it didn't work.

"There are no plans on my desk for an attack on Iraq."

isn't it just possible that Washington was merely responding to Chavez's unprovoked statement about 'not supplying oil to US in case Colombia invades'? Although I understand that paranoids have enemies sometimes too, as Sigmund Freud once observed "sometimes a cigar is only a cigar".

There is no reason for the USA to take military action.
The USA has a good business relationship with Venezuela. Venezuela sells oil and the USA buys the oil. Chavez is very well aware of that.
The bad relations between Venezuela and Columbia is the business of those two countries. The USA need not have an opinion regarding that matter.

US funding the Colombian military in order to mess with Venezuela (and Ecuador and others). It's a triangle.

While relations between Colombia and Venezuela arguably have been damaged by US funding to Colombia, you are dealing with cultural differences which date back to the days of Bolivar. There has always been a love-hate relation particularly between Colombia and Venezuela and, to a lesser extent between Ecuador and Colombia due to a whole series of historical reasons and considerations. To ascribe this just to US actions with Colombia is oversimplfying the issue to the point of absurdity.

If I feel the need to write a dissertation, I'll be sure to let you know. :)

confuse me with any facts".

yes, that is Venezuela doing the raiding not Colombia. it is Venezuela that is militarizing the border, not Colombia.



http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=360878&CategoryId=12393

BOGOTA – Small farmers in a rural area of the northeastern Colombian province of Norte de Santander denounced a raid by armed police from neighboring Venezuela, saying the officers fired several shots in the air.

“They entered firing shots into the air, passing alongside some houses and a small school with children,” Jose Jesus Rendon, a peasant leader in San Faustino, a hamlet some 600 meters (2,000 feet) from the border with Venezuela, told Caracol Radio on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s incident sparked panic among local inhabitants, Rendon said, adding that the Venezuelans returned to their side of the border after a discussion with police in San Faustino.

Several violent incidents have occurred along the border since Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez froze relations with Colombia almost one year ago.

Pick your choice:

"No, it never happened"
"No, the nasty evil Colombians wandered over the border and enticed the heroic Venezuelan police into chasing them back into Colombia"
"No, you can't believe it because XXX is the source"
"No, because Alvaro Uribe is satan's spawn and besides that it was all a CIA plot anyway"
"No, fire bad, Colombia bad"
"No, (fill in the blank with your conspiracy theory of the day)________________________________

..."No, it's a mistranslation".

And why are we building new ones as if there is a fire sale?

I'd hold off on the "flash" until you can verify. :shrug:

if Hugo gets desperate enough and actually starts a war with Colombia, the US intends to help it defend itself. After all, you don't think he wants to let that $5 billion in Russian armement go to waste.

in arms buys. But, nice try.

but for a population the size of Venezuela, $5 billion in armaments is a very telling acquisition. Chavez very well knows that he (like most Venezuelan leaders) holds office only at the sufferance of the Venezuelan Armed Forces. If he doesn't keep them happy he's toast.

:shrug:

:hi:

to defend us from ? Hugo Chavez has a big mouth but I don't think he can bite us from there. lol

:hi:

you don't have a big mouth?

or maybe it's big fingers since you post so much of your drivel on here

Source: El Universal

Washington rules out military action against Venezuela

Western Hemisphere The United States rules out any military action against Venezuela, said Virginia Staab, a US State Department spokeswoman, after Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez threatened to cut oil supplies to the US if Washington supports an attack against the South American country.


Read more: http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/07/26/en_pol_esp_washington-rules-out_26A4249211.shtml

---

The US News is not picking this up.

about what the U.S. is up to, because that's what they're told to do. They are not privy to the Pentagon's and associated war profiteers' plans, or even to the State Dept's real intentions and plans--let alone the plans of the CIA and other secret agencies. They say WHAT THEY ARE TOLD TO SAY.

So this denial is absolutely meaningless. And flak-catcher gov't spokespeople aren't the only ones who don't have a clue what might be "on the table." We, the people, are also kept clueness until the war plans, that we are paying for, are unfolded with an orchestration of lies and propaganda, which we also pay for.

One of my greatest concerns about the Pentagon's sneaky military buildup around Venezuela is that there is a plan to trigger this war that will box Obama in and give him no options. The Pentagon has a couple of thousand U.S. soldiers and military 'contractors' in Colombia, with total diplomatic immunity for all of them, no matter what they do in Colombia, and also recently got signed (by Uribe) use of at least SEVEN military bases in Colombia and use of all civilian infrastructure. Think this through. If warmongers in the Pentagon want to start a war, what they may do is embed some of these U.S. troops and/or 'contractors' with the Colombian military in creation of an incident on the Colombian/Venezuela border in which U.S. soldiers or 'contractors' get shot or killed (or a manufactured incident, like the "Gulf of Tonkin"--an invented attack). Would Obama stem the tide of rightwing cries for retaliation? Could he, if he wanted to?

This bullshit Colombia is slinging about FARC guerillas in Venezuela is just such a trigger mechanism. And I imagine that that is why Chavez has reacted the way he has. He's a former military man, and surely recognizes a "Gulf of Tonkin" in the making when he sees one.

Another concern is the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines all over the U.S., with the code owned and nearly totally controlled (80%) by one, far rightwing corporation, ES&S (which just bought out Diebold), with virtually no audit/recount controls. The war profiteers have the capability--the EASY capability--of yanking Obama and installing a warmonger president, if Obama presents an obstacle to their plans. (Chavez called Obama "the prisoner of the Pentagon"--a charitable statement, if Obama is actually on board for Oil War II, and our tragedy if he is not.)

It appears to me that China and Russia are protecting Iran. They are why the U.S. has not attacked Iran. Who is protecting Venezuela, which controls the biggest oil reserves on earth (twice Saudi Arabia's)? Venezuela's oil must look like easy pickins to our thirsty war machine. The psyops against Chavez have been growing in intensity--worse now than ever--and they look like pre-war psyops to me. Why is our war machine funneling $7 BILLION of our tax dollars into a country with the second worst human rights record on earth, where thousands of union leaders, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, peasant farmers and others have been murdered by the Colombian military and its death squads, and some 5 MILLION poor Colombian farmers have been displaced? Why? For Hillary's "free trade for the rich"? Is that what all these billions in military aid, and widespread carnage, and U.S. military occupation of Colombia, are FOR? Or is the plan to use the extremely corrupt Colombia government and military as a front--as the U.S. did with the South Vietnamese government and military--going forward?

I don't know, but I am very, VERY concerned.

Just because I don't like some of his policies/behavior, it doesn't mean I want to see traitorous war profiteers force the US into war with him when he's done nothing to us. We can't afford it.

I also don't much like supporting Colombia, for the reasons you mention.

The Salvation Army? :shrug: :(

and that our need to topple Fearless leader far surpasses any strategic considerations we might have, say in Afghanistian, Iraq, the Middle East and Korea, to name a few. Our secret weapon is Chuck Norris - he and a few well-trained militiamen are ready to go in and take Chavez out and a nod from Colombia.

It was called "Delta Force..." ;)

Graph of oil prices from 1861–2007, showing a sharp increase in 1973, and again during the 1979 energy crisis. The orange line is adjusted for inflation.

...but then, the Sauds are friends and business partners of the Bush Family. I guess it pays to know low friends in high places...