Venezuela, Frustrated by the U.S., Turns to Containment

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After years of vitriolic rhetoric on the part of United States leaders, the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has decided on a policy of containment of the U.S. "We recognize the U.S. government as having been elected through a fairly democractic process, despite unanswered questions as to the validity of the last two presidential elections," said a high-ranking Venezuelan foreign ministry spokesperson, speaking on background, "and we look forward to having the U.S. play a constructive and mature role in the development of the Americas."

Venezuelan political and military experts have long been dismayed by the fiery populist language of U.S. president George W. Bush, a man not known for subtlety of analysis. Using concepts of class struggle and religious fundamentalism, Bush in his first term of office brought about a sharp division of his nation into separate and competing blocks of "red" and "blue" states, generating a wide arc of instability stretching from the East to the West coast, and reaching as far as Hawaii in the Pacific and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean.

The experts concur that Mr. Bush has championed policies that favor the rich--whom Mr. Bush refers to as "our base"--for electoral as well as ideological reasons. They also point to a growing lack of democratic rights within the U.S., justified by Mr. Bush on the grounds of national security. "It's true that Bush adroitly works through apparently democratic processes, aided by Washington grey emminence Karl Rove and a compliant Congress and Supreme Court, but the content of what he does is profoundly undemocratic. We are concerned about the direction of the country," pointed out political scientist Edgardo López Matas, of the Caracas-based think tank Venezuelan State Enterprise Institute.

Military leaders, on their part, express their concern about the unrestrained arms buildup by the Bush administration, noting that ideologists within the latter openly discuss their plans for world domination based on overwhelming military superiority. A study produced by members of the Venezuelan Defense Advisory Council has questioned the need for large-scale U.S. increases in the production of equipment such as small arms, personnel carriers, military communications gear, and helicopters, poiting out that these are likely to be distributed around the region, provoking a dangerous arms race, as well as ending up wih illegal groups, threatening elected governments in the Southern Hemisphere.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1410

friend who is PR and dabbles in linguistics. I am going to read it again.

If I am not mistaken, the lines have been drawn. And the brains are south of us.

I'd say east as well. Please let us know what your friend thinks. :-)

Turned Bush* adminstration quotes back on them, one after the other. Except that the shoe fits this way.