[Kitten Festival]

Chavez armed thousands of thugs who are now planning to kill all the middle class people, as che guevara once did, but first are practicing on each other. There is going to be a bloodbath and massacre in Venezuela. And Hugo Chavez cannot control them. Check out the pictures of these scary che-t-shirt-clad thugs, they are horrible.

[Sam Cree]

They look middle class themselves. But evil.

[Travis McGee]

Un-fricken-believable. When you can't believe Hugo can turn Venezuela into a worse bizarro-world....

[marron]

This is the problem. Chavez has significant support, and his supporters are prepared to fight. He has a significant part of the military with him, civilian goon squads armed and ready to go, his own guerrillas in the jungle, Cubans sprinkled throughout, all of them prepared to fight. And then, as the article suggests, many of these groups are more dedicated to the pursuit of power than they are to him.

He has opened a Pandora's box in making violent revolution socially admirable, chic even.

Who ever decides to overthrow Chavez will have the enormous problem of hunting these people down and disarming them. As you can imagine, they aren't going to go down without a fight.

Understanding this helps to explain the situation Pinochet faced when he overthrew his predecessor in Chile. Its not enough to get the guy at the top, you have to get them all. While granting that Pinochet's security forces undoubtedly committed abuses in the course of their work, it is also with a doubt that their work was going to be tough no matter what. Whoever overthrows Chavez had better be ruthless or he should just stay home.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Paging Pat Robertson to repeat his statement as to preferred method for Hugo's demise.

[inkling]

The US doesn't need to do anything. The Venezuelan people need to grow some cojones and take their damn country back.

[NonValueAdded]

So someone learned from the Iraqi insurgency. Old Hugo thought he'd take a page from Saddam's book, eh?

[Caipirabob]

Jeez, the growth of the Latino "Red Triangle" is far more alarming than I'd imagined.

I keep thinking that the "Red Dawn" scenario keeps becomming more and more likely, except with the Chinese remotely funded and coordinating the assault rather than the Russians.

Meus hermaos, o somente Communistas boas nao podem respirar...

[Crawdad]

Sounds like Cambodia.