Posted on 03/10/2008 11:52:35 AM PDT by King of Florida
WASHINGTON -- A senior government official has confirmed that the Bush administration has asked its lawyers to look into what gets a country on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. The inquiry follows allegations that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's links with Colombia's FARC guerrillas have been much deeper than previously believed.
The investigation is the first step in a process that could see Venezuela join North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Iran as countries that have been designated by the State Department as supporters of terrorism.
U.S. laws give leeway to what economic activity is subject to sanctions, but in the extreme, U.S. and many foreign businesses would be forced to sever links with one of the world's largest producers of oil, severely affecting Venezuela's oil trade.
The legal review comes after Colombia captured four computers belonging to a FARC guerrilla leader in a March 1 raid. The documents suggest the Venezuelan government was in the process of providing $300 million in assistance to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which U.S. and Colombian officials call a "narco-terrorist" group but Chávez considers a legitimate insurgency.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Try looking under 'V'
Then Google 'Monroe Doctrine.'
He should then find out if we can buy oil from state sponsors of terrorism. I’d love to see Hugo thrown on that list, but the economic repercussions should be taken into account.
How does the Monroe Doctrine apply here? That was basically a warning to European powers to cease colonization of the Americas.
“It is enough of a stretch to call FARC a terrorist organization”
So widespread political murder, kidnapping, and drug-running doesn’t make an organization “terrorist”? What do you think does qualify?
Without disputing your main point, it needs to be said that Venezuela’s relations with FARC are not based on a captured laptop.
He has been openly allied with them since his days as a cashiered colonel. And since the day he took office, he has been their open supporter. They have captured Venezuelan-supplied weapons again and again, and FARC uses Venezuela as its safe zone. It is where it keeps its high value hostages. The whole charade of Chavez negotiating the release of hostages being held in Venezuela is, you have to admit, a bit much.
FARC leaders live openly in Caracas, carry Venezuelan passports with Venezuelan citizenship which allows them to come and go.
Chavez has often appeared with FARC members on stage with him, they are in his inner circle.
FARC has launched attacks from the Venezuelan side of the border, occasionally with Venezuelan air support. And the big move of 10 battalions to the border the other day covered the escape of FARC’s #1 to safety in Venezuela.
And, just to make sure you don’t miss the point, when FARC’s #2 was killed the other day, who squealed? Chavez, who took the whole thing very personal.
If FARC overthrew Uribe and took over the government, and then a bunch of right-wing guerillas formed to fight the new government, who would be the terrorists? And it can't be the drug component since Uribe is involved in them as well (or at least the paramilitaries he sponsors.
Are you a FARC sympathizer?
FARC has long since ceased to be a bona fide guerrilla movement. It claims to be a guerrilla group, and it appears you have bought that claim hook, line, and sinker.
While it used to be a guerrilla movement, it is now primarily an organization dealing in profits from the drug trade and kidnapping. Indeed, the Colombian Communist Party -- for which FARC was originally the military wing -- broke with it years ago for these very reasons.
FARC doesn't just engage in kidnapping and murder -- such things are its stock and trade, among other undeniably terrorist activities. I don't see how one can call launching mortars into poor neighborhoods of Bogota, as happened prior to Uribe's inauguration in 2002, just "murder." Nor would I call the bombings of the Bogota Beer Company bar or the El Nogales nightclub just "murder." These are acts of terrorism, plain and simple.
Even if one somehow could justify these acts -- and I don't know anyone short of wild-eyed radicals who could -- FARC offers no plausible alternative system of governance. Most important, it has virtually no support whatsoever among the Colombian population. For all of Uribe's supposed ties to the paras, he has enjoyed a 70%-80% approval rating throughout his seven-plus years as president. That's remarkable. FARC has no legitimacy whatsoever.
Your claims that Uribe is involved in the drug trade are ridiculous. There have been accusations of some nebulous ties to the now defunct Medellin cartel and the paras, but these actually consisted of little more than expressions of support for Uribe from paras. The ostensible ties to the defunct cartel have been debunked as well.
You spout FARC talking points pretty well. In fact, you talk just like one of the Chavez lackeys at DU. What are you doing here?
*ping*
What, Bush hasn’t done this already? This is OBVIOUS. If a nobody sitting at a computer can figure it out, why is the US President just now getting around to it?
Chavez should have been assumd a terrorist years ago!
Bush made up the list to begin with, didn’t he? Well just put them on it and be done with it.
My understanding is that this is essentially an administrative action by the Department of State. Bush has to make some sort of declaration or certification that is published in the Federal Register, and Condi has to certify the addition of Venezuela to the list 45 days later.
Longer than that actually.
They do engage in kidnapping an murder and even hijacked a plane once
In other words, they are terrorists, and you are a terrorist apologist.
unless they want to call the right-wing paramilitaries Uribe is using to come after FARC terrorist organizations as well
Why would you call anti-terror groups terrorists? Are the US Marines in Baghdad terrorists? Are the private military contractors in Kabul terrorists?
it is just something being done for political reasons and not because these people are international terrorists
They're not internatuional terrorists - except that they regularly cross into Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador, except that they have links to Fatah, the IRA, the ETA, the Shining Path, and other terror groups, etc., etc.
If FARC overthrew Uribe and took over the government, and then a bunch of right-wing guerillas formed to fight the new government, who would be the terrorists?
The terrorists would be the ones who overthrew a constitutionally-elected government.
And it can't be the drug component since Uribe is involved in them as well (or at least the paramilitaries he sponsors.
Alvaro Uribe is not involved in the drugb trade at any level. If you are going to lies about him, you should probably come up with something plausible.
Guerilla groups are as old as South America, and they always form in response to poor treatment by the military to civilians
No, terrorism is not a response to "poor treatment" - it is a strategy used by power-hungry fanatics who know that they cannot win elections fairly.
The Monroe Doctrine staked out this hemisphere as our sphere of influence and anything untoward occuring therein that affected our nation was cause for action.
Not at all. They kidnap and murder noncombatant civilians in pursuit of ideological goals. That's the definition of terrorism.
If FARC are not terrorists, then the ETA are not terrorists or the IRA either.
Chavez is a terrorist. Drug smuggling Mexicans are terrorists. Illegal aliens that plant pot in our national forests are terrorists (according to John Walters of ONDCP). See how that works?
Since the US State Department does not designate any of the above as terrorists, but it does designate FARC as terrorists I'm not sure what your point is, exactly.
Oh, yes, and I am a terrorist sympathizer because I think Plan Columbia sucks.
No, you are an apologist for terrorism because you are defending FARC against the accurate charge of terrorism.
My point here is that if a guerilla group forms under a right wing dictatorship we call them terrorists and if they form under a left wing dictatorship we call them anti terrorists.
Only if one assumes that the methods and tactics of The Shining Path and the methods and tactics of the Contras are identical.
However, that would be a false assumption.
And yet right wing dictators are just as brutal and evil as left wing ones, at least in South America.
Another false assumption. Under the Batista regime for seven years, no political prisoners were executed. Within three years of seizing power Castro had executed 14,000 political prisoners.
The most brutal rightist dictator, measured by the hysterics he causes among leftists, in South America was Pinochet.
His regime executed a few hundred people, many of whom were foreign communist agents, in the first year of his rule.
To those who can count, it is clear which side is more "brutal."
That is something really hard to determine.
Translation: you do not have a shred of evidence concerning your allegations against Uribe, but you will smear him just the same.
FARC came about because of excesses of the military. Noone denies that.
Plenty of people deny that, because it is a lie.
FARC was founded by a well-to-do Stalinist ideologue by the name of Manuel Marulanda.
Marulanda took advantage of the riots that followed in the wake of the assassination of Jorge Gaitan to found a violent guerrilla faction - a guerrilla faction of the kind that the Soviet Union was encouraging and funding throughout the world.
When he and Jacobo Arenas - the head of the Khruschev-approved Colombian Communist Party - joined forces, they renamed their combined organization FARC.
And I still believe they are more of a guerilla group more than a terrorist group.
A guerrilla group, if it is to be distinguished from a terrorist group, targets only members of the government's armed forces and police forces in the field.
If the group spends most of its time and energy in kidnapping and killing civilians, then it is a terrorist group like FARC.
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