Castro refutes Chavez about Colombian bellicose intentions Spanish

http://elespectador.com/noticias/elmundo/articulo-218204-castro-desmiente-chavez-sobre-intenciones-belicas-de-colombia

El líder cubano Fidel Castro afirmó que no existe la "más remota posibilidad" de que Colombia ataque a Venezuela, pese a que su aliado, el presidente Hugo Chávez, dijo tener informes que advertían ese peligro, según una entrevista de televisión difundida este lunes.

The Cuban lider Castro affirmed that there does not exist the most remote possibility that Colombia would attack Ven, despite his ally, Chavez, said he had reports warning of that danger, according to an interview given Monday.

"No hay ni más la remota posibilidad de que Colombia ataque a Venezuela, primero porque no le interesa, segundo porque no puede, tercero porque no quiere, cuarto porque sabe que las consecuencias serían desastrosas", dijo Castro, en la entrevista con Venezolana de Televisión y Telesur, transmitida en Cuba.

"There is not the remotest possibility that Colombia would attack Ven, first, because they aren't interested, second because they can't, third because they don't want to, and four because they know the consequences would be disasterous." Castro said, in an interview with Venezolana de Television and Telesur, transmitted in Cuba.

For once I actually agrees with InFidel.

Never heard it? Phrase for something exceptionally unlikely to occur.
Still it must have happened so the Devil need to turn up the heat to defrost it.

InFidel - the guy's name is Fidel, it is hardly rocket science.

from the corpo-fascist press.

But you gotta wonder if it left out some context (or Castro didn't provide the context) and/or what was on Castro's mind when he said it. He could have meant it as a warning to Colombia, rather than as a prediction that they won't do it (i.e., telling them 'don't even think about it--it would be a disaster!').

You also have to wonder what these allegations from a U.S. client state and U.S. military-occupied country, Colombia, against Venezuela, are all about, if NOT setting up a pretext for attacking Venezuela. They did something similar, in what may have been a rehearsal, back in March 2008, with their bombing/raid on Ecuador's territory to blow the FARC's hostage negotiator (and 24 other sleeping people) to smithereens. In fact, it's quite difficult to put any other interpretation on it. Could be intended to give Venezuela's rightwing a "talking point" in the upcoming legislative elections, and/or to threaten/intimidate Venezuelan voters. Given the source--the filthy dirty outgoing pResident of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe--it could be just flak to cover his own crimes. The only thing that is really clear in this situation is that the allegations against Venezuela are bullshit--on a par with Colin Powell's presentation to the UN about the non-existent WMDs in Iraq. So why did he make them? It's not possible yet to say for sure. One unknown is Uribe's successor Manuel Santos (Uribe's Defense Minister during much of the Colombian military carnage against trade unionists, peasant farmers, human rights workers and others, over the last decade). He seems to have gone to CIA "Smile School"--has a new image and all and is said to be wildly popular in Colombia, though you take your life in your hands when you oppose these people in Colombia, so it's not possible to gage the accuracy of opinion polls and votes. I don't think he's said anything about FARC guerrillas in Venezuela. Obama's appointee as ambassador to Venezuela did, though--jumped right in there, even before he was confirmed, even before he got to Venezuela, to say that Venezuela is "harboring" FARC guerrillas. Such a diplomat!

Anyway, stay tuned, is all I can say.

so you can get all the appropriate context.

not sure why you keep repeating this nonsense. Venezuela's foreign minister said just a week or so ago Uribe was going to attack before he left office. it didn't happen. Chavez has been saying an attack is coming for years now, never happened.

these two key paragraphs in the article were not translated in the OP.

En la entrevista, realizada en el Palacio de la Revolución, Castro señaló que en el supuesto de que Colombia, con el apoyo estadounidense, tenga "las armas y la voluntad política" de atacar a Venezuela, tampoco podrán hacerlo porque no disponen de tiempo, por la inminencia de una guerra nuclear que, a su juicio, estallará si Estados unidos ataca a Irán.

In the interview in the Palace of the Revolution, Castro said that in the (alleged) event that Colombia, with U.S. help, has the "the weapons and the political will" to attack Venezuela, they also could not do it because they do not have the time, because of the imminence of a nuclear war, which, in his judgement, would erupt if the United States attacks Iran.

"Van a necesitar tiempo, pero no lo van a tener, no van a tener tiempo de hacer eso, nada, ni un 5% del tiempo que necesitan para llevarlo a cabo (...) Ellos piensan en usar las armas en el último recurso", consideró.

"They (Colombia and the United States) are going to need time, but they will not have it, they will not have time to do that, nothing, not even five percent of the time they need to carry that out ... They (are) thinking of using weapons as a last resort."

-------------------------

So what Castro said about an unlikely Col/Ven conflict was delivered in a much broader context, i.e. the warnings he has given lately about a possible U.S./Israeli attack on Iran.

Ataque de Colombia a Venezuela imposible

Fidel Castro comentó sobre la tensión entre Venezuela y Colombia tras la ruptura de las relaciones diplomáticas, luego que el representante colombiano ante la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA), Luis Alfonso Hoyos, presentara unas supuestas pruebas (basadas en mapas de Internet y fotos de archivo) donde acusaba a su vecino país de albergar a grupos irregulares en su territorio.

Ante este escenario, el líder cubano descartó un posible enfrentamiento entre ambas naciones hermanas.

"No hay ni la más remota posibilidad de que Colombia ataque a Venezuela". Las razones las resumió en las siguientes: "primero porque no le interesa, segundo porque no puede, tercero porque no quiere, cuarto porque sabe que las consecuencias serían desastrosas".



http://www.telesurtv.net/noticias/secciones/nota/76346-NN/fidel-castro-afirma-que-obama-puede-evitar-una-guerra-nuclear/

he is saying even in the assumption that Colombia, with the help of the US, had the political will and arms they still would be unable to do it because they lack time...

it is written in the subjunctive. while the comments I translated and Telesur posted were definitive. now its Castro's opinion of course, but he disagrees with Chavez nonetheless.

and he's betting on Iran. Chavez is concerned that it will be Venezuela, and the allegation that Venezuela is "harboring" FARC guerrillas will be the excuse. Chavez's is a reasonable fear, it seems to me, with SEVEN U.S. military bases now established on the other side of the border, with more on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast, the 4th Fleet in the Caribbean and so on. Iran may feel the same way, however, considering the horror they saw unfold right across their border, the bulk of the U.S. military in the Middle East and Israel's nukes pointed at them.

Castro's been studying the U.S. government for a lot longer than I have, or than Chavez has, for that matter. But I will say this anyway, because I think it needs to be said. How is it that the Bushwhacks did NOT attack Iran? I think they were restrained by our military brass--in coalition with Daddy Bush and his Iraq Study Group--of which Leon Panetta was a member--with one of Daddy Bush's motives being to rescue Bush Jr from retribution by the CIA for the outing of its WMD counter-proliferation team. Circa 2006. Rumsfeld is ousted. All the talk about attacking Iran goes away. So what happened (besides impeachment being taken "off the table")? There were some articles round about then, in CIA rags like the Atlantic Monthly, discussing the U.S. military's reluctance to nuke Iran, but I don't think they revealed the real reason--which is that they would be risking China and Russia coming into it, on Iran's side, with nukes.

Fast-forward to now. What has changed? Nothing. The risk is still Armageddon, quite literally. We are also seeing (announced yesterday) big Pentagon budget cuts, a drawdown in U.S. forces in Iraq, and, despite the latest "surge," open talk of withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The fact, remains, though, that our big war machine and the corporates' globalization machine require lots and lots and lots of oil. Where can it be gotten without risking Armageddon?

The key factor here may be the USGS study, some months ago, establishing that Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves on earth (twice Saudi Arabia's). "Easier pickuns" than Iran. No risk of Armageddon. And it's all set up: long psyops-disinformation campaign against Chavez, creating a bogeyman with which to put the U.S. public to sleep (a factor that I don't think Castro has considered--the diceyness of the U.S. attacking anybody, at this point; though the American people have no say in U.S. wars, I think our corporate rulers/war profiteers want a docile population; thus all the effort to demonize Chavez); the big U.S. military buildup in Latin America (with no discussion here); the secret U.S./Colombia military agreement; the FARC guerrilla thing set up back in 2008 (bombing/raid on Ecuador to blow the FARC hostage negotiator's camp to smithereens, which almost started a war then and there; concoction of the "miracle laptop" (later, laptopS) allegedly found in the blown out camp, for manufacturing "intelligence" that Ecuador's and Venezuela's presidents are "terrorist lovers"); and now, use of this very same debunked laptop crapola by Washington's outgoing tool in Colombia, Uribe, to infuse an excuse into the newstream for Colombia to attack Venezuela.

Colombia may be greatly outnumbered by leftist governments in Latin America, but it is not outgunned. It has the U.S. military behind it. The U.S. has already equipped and trained the Colombia military and armed it ($7 BILLION in military aid). They would be the vanguard, backed by U.S. high tech surveillance, bombers, perhaps a naval blockade of the Gulf of Venezuela, etc. And if a few of the U.S. soldiers or mercenaries who are in Colombia are embedded with Colombian troops going over the border, and get shot at, there's your "Gulf of Tonkin" with which to escalate U.S. participation.

ON PAPER, it might look like a pushover to our military planners. It wouldn't be--which I think is what Castro is saying (it would be a disaster for Colombia). In fact, I think the U.S./Colombia would lose. Nothing like democracy to inspire people to fight back. And that is what Latin Americans have been achieving for themselves. It would be a disaster for Colombia, and it would be a disaster for the U.S. in multiple ways. But when did considering the MOTIVATION of little brown people defending their independence ever stop Pentagon planners? The need and greed for oil is primary.

So those are my reasons for disagreeing with Castro. Our military planners think that the countries they would have to defeat in Latin America are pushovers, whereas Iran is well-defended. (Iraq was a pushover.) They also think that Iran's oil is more important to Russia and China than Venezuela's, and that China and Russia would not intervene. They would concede Latin America as our "back yard" so long as some trade deals can be worked out.

One more thing that I think is important is Santos--whom I think is more the Pentagon's tool in Colombia than even Uribe was. After the bombing/raid on Ecuador in 2008, and under pressure from Latin American leaders, Uribe apologized and promised never to do such a thing again (violate an international border to go after a FARC camp). Santos, however--who was Defense Minister at the time--said that HE would not hesitate to do it again. He would not apologize. He would not care one whit what other Latin American leaders think. He is currently playing things close to his chest. But I think we should remember what he said.

As for the temper of other leaders: Chavez has gone out of his way to avoid a conflict with Colombia throughout his tenure as president. (Lula da Silva called him "the great peacemaker" after the Ecuador incident). He will not shoot back unless his is pushed to the wall (which a cross-border incursion into Venezuela might do). Obama may not want such a war, but I don't think he has the power to stop it, faced with a "Gulf of Tonkin" or "Bay of Pigs" scenario. And our corporate rulers/war profiteers may just wait him out, if he is any kind of obstacle. Just two years to go, and they have control of the voting machines. Or, they may use such a war to destroy his presidency and even to end our democracy once and for all.

It is madness, yes, but have we not seen madness reign in U.S. government policy, at home and abroad, ever so long now? Why would we expect it to be sane?

It would be a reasonable fear if those "seven bases" made up at least one full U.S. division or more but they don't and they can't.

Why? Because nothing in the U.S.-Colombia agreement alters the troop cap covering both U.S. military personnel and "contractors". This cap isn't set by treaty, it's set by the U.S. Congress itself and there is nothing in the agreement about this matter. I still remember that your interpretation is that the treaty set no limit or somehow magically removed it, but that's so hilariously wrong I continue to find it funny months after the fact.

Even if you assume that there's, say, about double the official number of U.S. personnel in Colombia in general, not just those "seven bases" if you include Black Ops and other things that belong to the realm of speculation, the numbers are still comparatively minuscule in military terms.

And this is all without entering into all the logistical and geographical complications of war. The U.S. invading Venezuela through Colombia is a stupid proposition once you actually decide to look at the details of the situation on the ground. I would be willing to bet more than ten bucks that it won't happen.

Venezuela's military is armed to the teeth with new conventional weapons from Russia and China across all of its branches while Colombia's forces still have tons of ridiculously ancient equipment that hasn't been replaced in decades because it wouldn't be of much use in a non-guerrilla war. I'm guessing just throwing the magic words "$7 BILLION" around without stopping to find out and research about the exact details is impressive, but some of us know that there are, in fact, detailed accounting reports indicating what does or doesn't go where. They're even public.

In other words, under any realistic scenario there are way more factors worth considering than those you've just named.

As for the outcome of a hypothetical war, I think it's irresponsible to make any speculations. I hope it never happens anyway.

Other than that, perhaps it's not really worth debating the rest of your notions which rely on the hilarious demonization of the U.S., making Santos sound worse than Uribe (conveniently and selectively placing things out of context) and the simplistic idealization of Chavez (who I don't generally hate or disrespect, for the record, but then again I don't live in a black and white world of "good guys" on the left and "bad guys" on the right).

"...the numbers are still comparatively minuscule in military terms."

The U.S. went from 3,000 "military advisors" in Vietnam in 1961 to 400,000 U.S. troops on the ground five years later, in 1966.

Don't tell me that the U.S. war machine can't dramatically escalate troop numbers and everything that goes with them when and where it decides to do so, shoving any legal niceties down anybody's throat who objects. Colombia is a U.S. client state. It will do what it's told, just like South Vietnam did.

Colombia's military equipment is outmoded? Then what in God's name was that $7 BILLION for? We are either looking at grand theft, on a scale of the missing $7 billion in Iraq, or the U.S. creation of a proxy war apparatus--the Colombian military--which would be backed up by U.S. weapons, bombers, bombs, pilots, high tech surveillance, warships, special forces and potentially large numbers of troops. The USAF document that Evo Golinger uncovered describes the goal of the U.S. military buildup as creating the capability for "full spectrum" U.S. military activity in Latin America.

Overcoming logistical obstacles is what the military does.

And there are many ways to start a war. A border invasion is just one of them--one that, in this case, has been rehearsed, in the Ecuador incident. Uribe's accusation, in quite the same vein, that Venezuela is "harboring" FARC guerrillas, could be a set up for the same excuse--whether real or contrived--of Colombian pursuit of FARC guerrillas. Such an incident could start the shooting, but does not necessarily dictate the next moves. A few U.S. "military advisors" get shot at, in a border incursion, and the U.S. moves to blockade the Gulf of Venezuela. And there are many kinds of wars, as we learned in Vietnam--with the U.S. setting up a client state, wholly dependent on U.S. largesse, which then invites the U.S. to defend it, which then becomes a U.S. territorial war, with no one ever asking the question, "what right do we have to be there, at all?" The CIA sets it up. And suddenly we are "defending" the most corrupt government in the world. The U.S. didn't invade Vietnam--like the Bush Junta invaded Iraq. It happened incrementally, technically legally, with one absurd justification after another, until we were in a full-scale war in which two million Southeast Asians and over 55,000 U.S. soldiers died.

There are haunting resemblances between that disaster and what could well become a very similar disaster in South America. They're even using the same old anti-communist rhetoric! Add in the oil motive--the prime mover of our war profiteers--corporate motives (desire to exploit slave labor, smash unions, privatize everything) and you have a a lot of motivation for hijacking the U.S. military to this purpose--a lot more discernible motives than there ever were in Vietnam. And here we have another incremental U.S. military buildup, with our people utterly oblivious to it, and furthermore, having been psychologically prepared to not care if "that dictator Chavez" is taken down. The psyops/disinformation against Chavez was actually the first alarm bell for me. I kept wondering what could be the purpose for this relentless lying throughout the corpo-fascist press. "The first casualty of war is Truth," and Truth gets slain in the pre-war psyops, before people start getting blown to bits.

As for demonizing the U.S., the U.S. government's behavior in the world over the last decade alone speaks for itself. Torturing thousands of prisoners. Slaughter of a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq in the first weeks of bombing alone. Smashing their society to pieces. Resource theft. Bullying and bribery to coerce other countries to join an unjust war. Lawlessness. Massive corruption. Proliferating of weapons everywhere--huge stashes of them disappeared in Iraq. The gross abuse and misuse of our soldiers and our National Guard. Support for rightwing governments in Latin America, from the massively corrupt fascists in Colombia and Honduras to the merely rightwing/"free trade for the rich" governments of Mexico and Peru, and despising, reviling, hating, sabotaging and trying to defeat good leftist governments that do something for the poor majority, that truly represent their people. Misuse of multi-millions of dollars in USAID funds to rightwing groups in Latin America. Perpetrating the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs." Spreading U.S. military bases all over the region, wherever it can bully or bribe local governments, generally against the wishes of the people who live there. And I haven't even begun to list the evil that my own government has inflicted on others and is still inflicting on others. Demonize? I am not demonizing my government. My government is demonizing itself.

We are a sick, sick, sick country, with a barely recognizable democracy, spending trillions of our peoples' money on the worst possible thing--a great war machine, which right now has its eye on getting more oil. I think it is very foolish not to grasp the reality of this. The oil war is not over!

...by ignoring all of the geopolitical differences on the international stage and all of the other differences on a regional and internal context.

I'm not an expert on all things South Vietnam, but what little I do know tells me that only by jumping over all of the details would you be able to equate it with Colombia or, essentially, any other current situation for that matter. And what's more, Venezuela (thankfully, for everyone involved) isn't North Vietnam either.

It's easy to throw such generic labels as "client state" around for political purposes, when nobody is going to ask you to back them up with actual content or when political, economic, geographic or demographic nuances don't matter to you. After all, 2010's Latin America is really 1960's Asia in disguise, no? I'm sorry but that way of thinking really seems...structurally flawed right from the get-go.

-"Colombia's military equipment is outmoded? Then what in God's name was that $7 BILLION for?"

Do you really think that Kfirs can stand up to Su-30MK2s? Or EE-9 Cascavels to T-72s and AMX-30s? You must be kidding.

Outside of the huge helicopter fleet, which is actually quite vulnerable to conventional anti-air as Venezuelan military planners are smart enough to know, Colombia's military hardware is quite laughable and would find itself dominated by its Venezuelan equivalents fairly quickly.

The only area where you could argue that Colombia has superiority is in infantry...most of which is spread around the entire country fighting an insurgency (or committing human rights abuses in pursuit of the same objective, which makes no difference for this analysis) and not ganged up on the Venezuelan border or in any sort of formation that would be remotely useful for an invasion. You can't exactly turn around and rearrange that on short notice either.

Do you really think counterinsurgency/counter-narcotics operations and the training/equipment required represent the full range of what would be necessary for a conventional war between two states?

As for the $7 billion and how it's spent, let's see what the GAO has to say:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0971.pdf

That aside, wake me up when the U.S. invades Venezuela (directly or indirectly) and I'll happily kiss your boots in resignation, but until then...forgive me for thinking that there's a comparatively greater chance of a new Middle Eastern war and, even then, not that much of one either. I don't deny that there are dark, even outright imperialistic forces in the U.S. but, you know, I assign to them one characteristic that is often ignored in these situations: human flaws and human virtues, as opposed to inhuman or otherworldly natures.

I am thinking each of them through. I most certainly do not want to be wrong on such a matter, and I will admit it, if I am convinced that I am wrong. Or, rather, I DO want to be wrong, in the respect that I don't want another oil war, God knows. But am I wrong in thinking that another oil war is being planned and may well be executed?

In general, you mistake me if you think that I am predicting that such a war is imminent. I cannot know what the Pentagon has in mind as a time-line. All I can know is the news that we are permitted to know and I can only judge that information on the basis of my experience, having lived through several (too many) U.S. wars, knowledge of recent and past history, and considerable experience at reading between the lines of corpo-fascist news stories and U.S. State Department propaganda.

You broadly attack my analysis on the basis that Colombia is not Vietnam, and South America is not Southeast Asia. But you don't entertain the possibility that Pentagon war planners may not be making any such distinctions, in their mortification at having been defeated by "little brown people in straw hats and sandals" and their desire to fight that war all over again, with all their new shiny toys. Pentagon dense-headedness does not really change.

I don't mean this comparison to Vietnam as an exact, one for one analogy. Of course they are different regions, countries and circumstances, but there are also haunting resemblances. My analogy is mainly intended for those who scoff at the idea of a Pentagon war plan against Venezuela by ignoring what I've said about it, and calling it an "invasion"--a la Iraq--which they say is a ludicrous idea, and by inventing predictions by me that such an "invasion" is about to happen. It took the CIA more than a decade to turn the anti-colonial war in Vietnam--led by independence hero Ho Chi Minh--into the civil war of the early 1960s, and then to escalate it into a U.S. war against "international communism" (ignoring the fact that, if the U.S. had permitted UN-run elections in Vietnam in 1954, Ho Chi Minh would have won, hands down; the Vietnamese people would have freely, democratically chosen a communist government).

The haunting resemblances include a long civil war (within Colombia), along political lines (right vs left, rich vs poor), U.S. funding of a corrupt, fascist government, the long stealthy buildup of U.S. forces in the region (so like Vietnam), use of the "war on drugs" very like the "war on communism" as the excuse for greatly increased militarization of existing circumstances, re-use of the "war on communism" (the main covering flag of the war on Vietnam) to stir up rightwing forces in the region (and here), difficult jungle terrain, the drug trade background, U.S./Colombia sabotage of any peaceful resolution of the internal conflict (the CIA had Diem assassinated when he began talking of a peace accord with North Vietnam; the U.S./Colombia dropped ten 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on the FARC guerrilla hostage release and peace negotiator, Raul Reyes, in 2008, amidst international efforts to end the Colombian civil war), use of a client state (recipient of $7 BILLION in U.S. aid) to carry out U.S. plans (I'm sorry but $7 BILLION in aid makes you a U.S. client state--the U.S. does NOT give out such aid without demanding obedience in return); widespread corruption and massive human rights abuses by the client state because it really does not represent the poor majority and requires violent repression to stay in power--and armed rebellion by local leftist groups which Colombia and the U.S. would have us believe are allied with a leftist "dictator" next door (Uribe's recent accusation that Venezuela is "harboring" FARC guerillas).

Venezuela is not North Vietnam. And Hugo Chavez is not Ho Chi Minh. But the aim of current CIA propaganda is to make it look that way. The underlying brainwash is that people would never freely choose a communist or far leftwing government. In Vietnam, they would have chosen communism. In Venezuela, they HAVE CHOSEN a far leftwing government--freely, democratically, and with an election system that is far, FAR more honest and transparent than our own. Yet the CIA "meme"--spread throughout the corpo-fascist press--is that Chavez is a "dictator," in the teeth of the facts, including statements like this, by Brazil's president, Lula da Silva: "They can invent all kinds of things to criticize Chavez, but not democracy!"

So, WHY this intense psyops/disinformation campaign to create a bogeyman "dictator"--with the latest fillip being that the bogeyman "dictator" is "harboring" Colombian "terrorists" in Venezuela? This charge is baseless. Its "evidence" is on a par with Colin Powell's "evidence" of WMDs in Iraq. Is the purpose for demonizing Chavez and now charging him with supporting "terrorists" merely political, or is it pre-war psyops?

I really don't know for sure. But meanwhile, the U.S. reconstituted the 4th Fleet in the Caribbean (mothballed since WW II), began illegal spy flights over Venezuelan territory from U.S. bases on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast (on the Caribbean), beefed up its bases in Panama, has started military maneuvers recently in demilitarized Costa Rica, secured its military bases in Honduras with a rightwing coup, and signed a secretly negotiated military agreement with Colombia, permitting U.S. military use of at least seven Colombian military bases, U.S. military use of all civilian infrastructure in Colombia and included a provision for total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and U.S. military 'contractors' (of which there are said to be 1,500 at present), no matter what they do in Colombia. Also, as Eva Golinger discovered, there is a USAF document laying out the reasons for all of this: "full spectrum" U.S. military activities in Latin America, for dealing with drug trafficking, terrorists and "countries hostile to the U.S."

As for the Colombian military being ill-equipped and scattered all over the country chasing FARC guerillas (and slaughtering trade unionists, human rights workers, community activists, teachers, journalists, peasants farmers are other peaceful opposers of the fascist government), it's interesting what the Ecuadoran military said about the Colombian military attack on Raul Reyes' camp (just inside Ecuador's border): that the Colombian military is not capable of delivering 500 lb "smart bombs" and that this attack must have been aided by the U.S. military (probably a pilot, plan and bombs out of the U.S. military base at Manta, Ecuador, which has since been evicted by Ecuador's leftist president). This is just like Vietnam--the South Vietnamese army being trained and equipped by the U.S. military, amidst vast corruption within the local military and government, and thus, the U.S. military provides them with "backup" and the conflict becomes a U.S. war.

There are differences from Vietnam, some of which may help prevent such a war in South America--for instance, the strength of the leftist democracy movement throughout Latin America--a movement whose time has come--and the new spirit of cooperation among Latin American countries aimed at formation of a Latin American common market. But there is rather strong evidence that the U.S. response to this movement is following old, "anti-communist" lines--of funding and arming rightwing forces, lies, disinformation, psyops and sabotage, fomenting chaos and destabilization, and trying to thwart genuine populist movements and majority will for social justice and independence. This policy ever holds out war as the "solution" if it cannot achieve U.S. corporate ends by other means. It is a policy of bullying and intimidation. War is its other hand.

A nuclear war is very unlikely, because Iran lacks nuclear weapons.

FOODFIGHT!