US 'War of Terrorism' extends to Venezuela

On October 17th U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (TX), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, released a report on border violence in the Southwest. The bulk of the report – 38 pages out of 39 - deals with the increasing violence and influence of Mexican drug cartels operating on the US southern flank and is obviously of great concern for US security and the health of its population from the increasing “drug menace” which is being pushed by more narcotics consumption at home. (See page 32 of the report, and footnote 117)

On October 17th Fox News interviewed McCaul and the next day CNN followed suit.

Both interviews allowed McCaul to bring Venezuela into the mix alleging that the Venezuelan government has been issuing ID documents to potential terrorists from Colombia, Cuba and the Middle East, countries which host foreign terrorist organizations.

The source for these revelations is an article written by one Linda Robinson in US News and World Report on October 6th 2003 and can hardly be classified as “intelligence information”. This article is a mix of hearsay and innuendo and when it was published three years ago was part of the campaign to discredit the democratically elected and constitutional government of President Hugo Chávez, who called the article “sewage and disgusting” when questioned about it in 2003.

Robinson provides no hard evidence for her claims in the article which was long since discredited in 2003. The US taxpayer should be asking the question why millions of dollars are spent producing House Subcommittee Reports based on spurious allegations from a paid hack?

At this time in 2003 Venezuelan authorities were issuing ID documents to millions of Venezuelans and foreign residents who did not possess such documents, since it is a constitutional right for everyone to have a legal identity in Venezuela and hence the right to vote in elections. In this context, unidentified US officials stated at that time: “The list easily totaled several thousand," the official says. "Colombians were the largest group; there were more than a thousand of them. It also included many from Middle Eastern `countries of interest' like Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon." The official adds: "It was shocking to see how extensive the list was."

What is not mentioned is that there are at least four million Colombians historically living in Venezuela and the other countries mentioned also have large populations in Venezuela as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country. None of this is new. However, it was twisted into a red herring in 2003 and has now been revived by McCaul in his October 17th report.

In the report there are implicit accusations that the Venezuelan government continues with this alleged policy of issuing ID documents to “terrorists”, who could then obtain Venezuelan passports and US visas to enter the US. Same unreliable source from Robinson. The only evidence in the report is that “several Pakistanis were apprehended at the US-Mexican border with fraudulent Venezuelan documents”. In the CNN interview McCaul lies when he says that Venezuela is issuing ID documents to alleged terrorists, when the only documents found were fraudulent.

There has been no official protest from Ambassador Brownfield in Caracas about these wild, unfounded allegations, nor has there been a diplomatic note sent to Venezuelan Ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvárez. To obtain a US visa in Caracas is extremely difficult and fewer and fewer are being issued. So where is the scandal?

The scandal is firmly entrenched in the editorial line of Fox News and CNN who are clearly participating in the media judgment together with McCaul of Venezuela somehow being involved with international terrorist activities.

And all this has suddenly been revealed when there is a titanic struggle taking place in the UN for the remaining seat for Latin America on the non-permanent Security Council. Guatemala – in reality the US – has been thwarted from imposing its will by Venezuela since after 35 rounds of voting, no country has obtained the two thirds majority necessary to occupy this seat for the next two years. This is not a coincidence and so it is necessary to discredit Venezuela by any means. Call in the media troops to lay the terrain.

US actions of actively lobbying for Guatemala also indicate that the US must be convinced that Chávez will be reelected in December. If Chávez contender had any chance then the US would probably have let Venezuela accede to the UN seat in the secure knowledge that a new lackey would be president of Venezuela from February 2nd 2007 onwards.

In the CNN interview McCaul spins several lies to make his case against Venezuela:

Hezbollah training camps on Margarita Island – a a long-standing Venezuelan international holiday island for the rich in the Caribbean Sea. This allegation started in 2003, but then the “training camps” belonged to Al Qaeda. US spokesmen should make up their minds and provide photographs of these Islamic groups training. In fact, no news agency has managed to do this in more than three years.

Note for readers: Exiled Venezuelan and Cuban opposition terrorists are still training militias in Florida to invade Cuba and Venezuela, but not one word is uttered by Governor Jeb Bush.
Venezuela is supporting Iran’s nuclear arms program and “talking to Iran about uranium” There is no evidence anywhere that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb and even less that Venezuela is going to sell uranium to Iran. Just speculative news reports from unethical sources such as CNN, Fox News and other news outlets at the service of the Bush administration. The only evidence offered has been by radical Venezuelan opposition groups in Miami alleging that there is a “uranium enrichment plant” under an bicycle factory set up jointly by Iran and Venezuela in Bolivar State (south east Venezuela) and that Venezuela is “flying uranium directly to Iran from Amazonas”. Venezuela has consistently stated that it supports Iran’s right and that of any other country, to develop nuclear power “for peaceful purposes” and condemned North Korea’s recent nuclear underground test.
McCaul even mentions that “Islamic terrorists” could in fact introduce WMD’s over the Mexican border into the US. This is not even worth commenting on as it goes beyond the realm of barefaced lies, into the realm of paranoid schizophrenic fantasy. Let’s be clear, the aim is to terrorize the US population into more fear from terrorist attacks and then pass new laws to infringe the basic human rights of US citizens in the name of National Security.

The terrorism being practiced is media terrorism by major US news agencies and endorsed by the hawks in the Bush administration. This is without mentioning US military terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq where the war is being lost in a dust cloud of attrition accompanied by the deaths of US soldiers and innocent civilians.

The conclusion to be drawn by this unsubstantiated attack on Venezuela is that it is not only a question of the deadlock in the UN, but also that the US is laying the ground to destabilize Venezuela before the December 3rd presidential elections and distort its image internationally after Chavez’s firm stand on being an independent, sovereign nation out of the orbit of US hegemony.