Posted on 09/02/2007 1:51:41 PM PDT by Jeff Head
In a new outburst of antiwestern sabre-rattling, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has threatened Britain with revenge for the Falklands war of 1982. The belligerent Latin American leftist warned last week that his recent build-up of sophisticated Russian and Iranian weapons would be used to destroy the British fleet if it attempted to return to the South Atlantic.
Speaking on his weekly television show Alo Presidente (Hello, Mr President), Chavez denounced what he described as Britains illegal occupation of the Falklands and repeated his call for a regional military alliance against Britain and the United States.
If we had been united in the last war, we could have stopped the old empire, Chavez said, as he gesticulated to maps showing how Venezuelan aircraft and submarines would intercept British warships. Today we could sink the British fleet.
Chavez has often expressed support for Argentinas claim to the Falklands, but his latest broadside was notable for both its antiBritish vitriol and its unprecedented threats. He declared that British history was stained with the blood of South Americas indigenous people and demanded revenge for the cowardly sinking of the General Belgrano, the Argentine cruiser.
Western diplomats have long grown used to harangues from Chavez, who announced this weekend that he would negotiate with guerrillas holding dozens of hostages in Colombia, including three US contractors and Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian abducted as she campaigned for president in 2002. But US and British officials have recently become more concerned by his willingness to lavish billions of dollars from Venezuelas soaring oil income on military capabilities.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I guess Hugo has forgotten how the governments in South America have and continue to kill the indigenous folks...
Just wondering... what Bizarro World map you are using that makes the Brits have to go past Venezuela to get to the Falklands?
Typhoon? Is that a British aircraft.. All I recall of knowing a Typhoon to be is a Russian missile boat, God help us all if Chavez gets his hands on that...
If they use the same path/route they used before, staging at Ascension Island. Not bizarre at all. Of course they could use the Canal and go the other way, either the Suez or the Panama, but that adds a lot of distance and does not provide as good a staging.
Bush should have killed Chavez. He should kill him now...tonight. Why is it that the more outspoken international maniacs become, the more we fear eliminating them? We did this with Hitler, Arafat, Amadinejad, Al Sadr etc. Now again with Chavez. Our hesitation just makes them stronger. Won’t we ever learn? Kill him NOW Mr. Bush. What follows cannot possibly be worse...don’t believe Ms. Rice when she counsels otherwise.
What is in the Kool-Aid at Foggy Bottom that turns conservative icons into kook idiots?
There is a certain psychologiacl impact to hundreds of 500lb bombs turning whole sections of a city into an Urban Renewal Project.
I think a two-carrier task force would need about three days to ruin his entire oil infrastructure. Thenwe sail away and let him suck on that one for awhile.
As the article explains, they are mothballing a main fleet carrier. The expected future cuts will mothball an amphib ship as well. They plan to cancel 2 of the air defense destroyers previously planned. They are cutting the surface escorts by half a dozen additional ships. Nor is the readiness level they are starting from high - this instant, only 18 British surface ships are at ready status, with all the others still supposedly on strength, actually on 48 hours standby.
The British navy has already been gutted and it is about to be gutted by a factor of two, again. The likelihood that the pantywaists deliberately doing so, supposedly to save a quarter of 1 billion pounds per year out of a national government expenditure of 292 billion pounds, is lower than the chance Ahmadinejad will announce tomorrow that he has found Jesus.
Britain is a has-been country circling the drain. Facts may not be pleasant, but it is enough of a warning for us that we can't afford to sugarcoat it.
If Argentina occupied the Falklands again, would Britain go to war this time or 'negotiate' them away?
And Khaddaffi's playing nice-nice these days...all because we showed strength in the 80s and in Iraq.
Your 163 post: If they use the same path/route they used before, staging at Ascension Island. Not bizarre at all. Of course they could use the Canal and go the other way, either the Suez or the Panama, but that adds a lot of distance and does not provide as good a staging.
Guess the continents must have moved... since I took geography back in the 1950s...
But... as I recall:
Going from the UK to Ascension Island and on to the Falklands does not cross Venezuela...
What is that, a FedEx or whatever commercial, where the older guy tells the young guy to put a pin in China on the map? And the young guy starts at Greenland?
That's the way... I am feeling here!
We need to send a few ships down South to tempt Hugo into committing suicide. Britain should call his bluff and take Hugo out if he confronts them.
Why is the Falklands War and of this fool’s concern? So the Brits defeated an Argentine military dictatorship. Evidently the type of government Chavez sides with.
I was peaking rhetorically about “the city”. A B-52 on the M-I targets would be a helluva message: “Even with a 50 year old aircraft design we can penetrate your airspace and blast whatever the hell we want.”
“Could the Brits even begin to attempt the same operation today?”
I don’t think the Brits have the naval assets to create a credible task force.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.