Dutch and Belgian Navy units were also involved in Venezuela's April 11, 2002 coup d'etat

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, May 04, 2003 By: Raf Custers

Belgian and Dutch marines were at least partly involved in the coup d'etat that took place in Venezuela on April 12, 13 and 14 ... and there slogan to do so: "We are guarding Uncle Sam's backdoor while he is out hijacking his annoying neighbor."

For over two years, the Belgian and Dutch navy were carrying out missions in the Caribbean for the American Coastal Guard. And now it seems that the American army had been quite active before and during the revolt against President Chavez Frias of Venezuela.

For four years, the Belgian navy was supporting operations carried out by the American Coastal Guard in the Caribbean ... the Belgian government has always been very secretive about these missions and has never allowed publication of the exact content of the agreements with the United States in this matter. The co-operation started in 1999 when a Belgian-Dutch navy-battalion joined in a military exercise near Puerto Rico.

(Belgian) Minister of Defense Poncelet labeled the assignment as "detection and identification" for the benefit of the American anti-narcotics-operations. Whoever checks on the American Coastal Guard-activities in this period in the Caribbean will however notice that they were actually hunting down and deporting illegal immigrants in 80% of the cases.

At the end of the same year, NATO started bombing the former Yugoslav Republic. In the aftermath of these bombings, the Belgian frigate F912 Wandelaar was send to the Adriatic Sea to join the anti-Yugoslav blockade.

In early 2000 the Belgian warship Wielingen entered the Caribbean to take part in a NATO-exercise with "an imaginary hurricane" on Puerto Rico as the main attraction. At that time, The Wielingen was part of NATO's "Standing Naval Force Atlantic" (STANAVFORLANT) and propaganda surrounding the exercise mentioned "rescue-operations," but in reality the Wielingen got involved in intelligence (a.k.a. espionage) or, as the Belgian army described it: "taking part in the construction of a surface- and aerial-image of the Caribbean ... the sensors of our (Belgian) ships are optimized against fast and low-flying aircraft, but also against fast boats."

It was only at the beginning of 2001, that the Belgian government signed a multilateral agreement with the United States to cooperate in the "war against drug transportation in the Caribbean Sea." Already in 1999 there was talk about a "Memorandum of Understanding" ... but only in those cases where American custom-officers would be operating out of Belgian naval vessels.

According to the documents we have in our possession however, this never happened.

At about the same time, the F910 Wielingen joined a Dutch and German squadron in the Caribbean.

In early 2001 however, the American crusade against "terror" messed up the routine ... Belgium immediately became involved in the war against Afghanistan ... not only was the air force sending in C-130 airplanes (in April 2002, a Belgian-Portuguese battalion was shipped off to Pakistan "to provide supplies for the ISAF/International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan"), but also the Belgian navy was taking part in the war effort.

The procedure is well known: while American warships are operating at very close range, Belgian ships are carrying out rear-tasks ... at that moment, in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, where they started monitoring and intercepting merchant vessels.

Because of this operation, the "drug enforcement" in the Caribbean turned out smaller than usual at the beginning of 2002. Early February, an Alouette-helicopter was shipped to the sea that separates the Eastern part of the United States with Cuba and the coastal areas of Venezuela and Colombia. The Alouette was to be working from the Dutch frigate HNLMS Abraham van der Hulst. The Belgian and Dutch navy were carrying out American orders and were coordinating their actions with the American Intelligence service. This became quite clear when the Bloys van Treslong, a Dutch frigate, was send to intercept a Panamanian coastal vessel ... the Panamanian ship was smuggling cocaine ... the Dutch frigate however, had an American "Law Enforcement Detachment" aboard.

Conclusion: Within the framework of NATO, the Belgian and Dutch naval forces were handing out 'freebies' to the American Coastal Guard (in a so called anti-drug effort in the Caribbean while it seems that the Coastal Guard is mainly concentrating on hunting down migrants) but when the United States is going to war (against the former Yugoslav Republic in 1999 or against Afghanistan near the end of 2001), they were quite happy to be assisting Uncle Sam with rear-tasks to lighten the war efforts of the United States against a couple of so-called "unruly nations."

Also President Hugo Chavez' Venezuela is a country that apparently has to be taught a lesson ... seeing that Chavez is not doing what he should be doing in his foreign politics nor in his internal policy.

As President of the organization of oil-exporting countries (OPEC), for instance, he was insisting that all member countries should respect quotas set at OPEC-meetings ... an attitude that keeps oil-rates pretty high and thus increases profits of the oil-producing countries. He has also broken down the 40-year-old economic blockade against Cuba and is making oil-contracts with Havana on delivery of inexpensive oil-products.

Shortly after Chavez was elected President in 1998, the "prestigious" American media started a hate-campaign against the newly-elected President and, when in the spring of 2002, the upset to put the Venezuelan "master of masters" Carmona in power was drawing near, not only American CIA super-conspirators came into action against Chavez but also the entire military apparatus.

A little note on the CIA: A couple of months before the coup, the American Intelligence Agency made sure that Carlos Ortega could win the trade union elections ... and in the days before the actual upset, several people noticed a coming and going of right-wing conspirators in and out of the American embassy in Caracas.

But as we said before, the American military also became involved.  In a report by former US National Security Agency (NSA) official Wayne Madsen it was revealed that, under the cloak of a military exercise in the Caribbean Sea, the US Navy was giving "intelligence and communications jamming support" to the Venezuelan soldiers involved in the coup against Chavez. US Navy ships were monitoring communications to and from the Caracas embassies of Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq.

Employees of the National Security Agency in Key West-Florida, Sabana Seca-Puerto Rico and in Medina-Texas were translating and passing on secret information to the American General HQ and the Pentagon. "From eastern Colombia, CIA and US contract military personnel ... ostensibly used for counter-narcotics operations ... stood by to provide logistics support for the leading members of the coup. Their activities were centered at the Marandua airfield and along the border with Venezuela", according to Madsen.

But this wasn't the end of it.

American intelligence airplanes were flown in from Ecuador as well as American Navy vessels which were said to be on an exercise near Puerto Rico and sent in to prepare the possible evacuation of American civilians. Among those, the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and the destroyers USS Barry, Laboon, Mahan en Arthur W. Radford of which some of them are said to have carried NSA-units, specialized in passing on operational information to American agents in the field who were in close contact with the Venezuelan mutineers.

Meanwhile, when all those intense and secretive activities were going on, Belgian and Dutch marines were still chasing drugs under the supervision of the American Coastal Guard ... or in other words: while the American "supercop" was attending a hijacking in the house of Hugo Chavez, "our boys" (Dutch and Belgian) were guarding the surroundings.

I suppose this is what they mean by "war against terror."