<a href=www.jihadunspun.com>Jihad Unspun Apr 26, 2003 By Ted Rall, Common Dreams

Iraq is going to hell. Shiites are killing Sunnis, Kurds are killing Arabs and Islamists are killing secular Baathists. Baghdad, the cradle of human civilization, has been left to looters and rapists. As in Beirut during the '70s, neighborhood zones are separated by checkpoints manned by armed tribesmen. The war has, however, managed to unite Iraqis in one respect: everyone loathes the United States.

Some Iraqis hate us for deposing Saddam Hussein. No dictator remains in power without the tacit support of at some of his subjects. Now that we've committed the cardinal sin of conquest--getting rid of the old system without thinking up a new one--even those who chafed under Saddam blame us for their present misery.

Others resent our Pentagon-appointed pretender, 58-year-old banker/embezzler Ahmed Chalabi. The State Department points out that Iraq's new puppet autocrat has zero support among Iraqis, having lived abroad since 1958. But who knows? Maybe he was a really popular kid.

Thousands of Iraqis have been reduced to poverty, raped and murdered by rampaging goons as U.S. Marines stood around and watched. Wanna guess how long it will take them to "get over it"? We watched the plunder of museums in Mosul and Baghdad safe at home with our tisk-tisk dismay, but Iraqis will remain outraged by the wanton devastation we wrought through war, permitted through negligence and shrugged off through arrogance. ("We didn't allow it," Rumsfeld shrugged. "It happened.") Imagine foreign troops sitting idly, laughing as hooligans trashed the Smithsonian, stole the gold from Fort Knox and burned down the Department of the Interior.

That was us in Iraq.

But let's forget this penny ante stuff. Let the real looting begin! George W. Bush's bestest buddies, corporate executives at companies which donate money in exchange for a few rounds of golf and a few million-dollar favors, are being handed the keys to Iraq's oil fields.

Bush's brazen Genghis Khan act seems carefully calculated to confirm our worst suspicions. First he appoints retired general Jay Garner, president of a GOP-connected defense contractor, SYColeman Corp., as viceroy of occupied Iraq. "The idea is we are in Iraq not as occupiers but as liberators, and here comes a guy who has attachments to companies that provided the wherewithal for the military assault on that country," marvels David Armstrong, a defense analyst at the National Security News Service. A smart and/or decent president would have picked a civilian for a civil administration post.

Then Bush slips a $680 million contract to the Bechtel Group, whose Republican-oriented board includes such Reagan-era GOP luminaries as secretary of state George Schulz and defense secretary Caspar Weinberger (the late William Casey, Reagan's CIA director, was a Bechtel executive). The deal puts the company in position to receive a big part of the $100 billion estimated total cost of Iraqi reconstruction. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel gave Republican candidates, including Bush, about $765,000 in PAC, soft money and individual campaign contributions between 1999 and 2002.

Finally, refusing to accept bids from potential competitors, Bush grants a two-year, $490 million contract for Iraqi oil field repairs to Halliburton Co., the Houston-based company where Dick Cheney worked as CEO from 1995 to 2000. "It will look a lot worse if Halliburton gets the USAID [Agency for International Development] contract, too," Bathsheba Crocker, an Iraq specialist for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned in March. "Then it really starts looking bad." Guess what! Halliburton has since scored a piece of that $600 million USAID contract.

Are we looking bad yet?

Only Bush's most intimate friends were invited to bid for these contracts. Even businesses based in Great Britain, where Tony Blair risked his political career to support Bush, have been excluded from a rigged process where only U.S.-based, Republican-led, Bush-connected companies need apply.

Two senior Democratic Congressmen, Henry Waxman and John Dingell, are asking the General Accounting Office to look into these sleazy kickback deals. "These ties between the vice president and Halliburton have raised concerns about whether the company has received favorable treatment from the administration," their letter reads. Well, duh. But don't count on appropriate action--like impeachment proceedings--from the do-nothing Dems.

Bush's right-wing Gang of Four--Cheney, Rummy, Condi and Wolfy--saw Operation Iraqi Freedom as a chance to line their buddies' pockets, emasculate the Muslim world, place U.S. military bases in Russia's former sphere of influence and, according to the experts, lower the price of oil by busting OPEC. "There will be a substantial increase in Iraqi oil production [under U.S. occupation], and I wouldn't be surprised if schemes emerged to weaken, if not destroy, OPEC," says Jumberto Calderón, former energy minister of Venezuela. Former OPEC secretary general Fadhil Chalabi (no relation to Ahmed) estimates that increased exploration could potentially double Iraq's proven reserves, which would raise production from 2.4 to 10 million barrels a day. Such Saudi-scale production would "bring OPEC to its knees," says Chalabi. The cartel's member nations, ten of 11 of them predominantly Muslim, would suffer staggering increases in poverty as a result of falling oil revenues, plunging some into the political chaos that breeds Islamist fundamentalism. Meanwhile, the people of Iraq, whose self-flagellating Shias already make the evening news look like a rerun of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, would starve as foreign infidels raked in billions thanks to the oil beneath their land.

Time to dust off the duct tape.

Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the underreported Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, April 24, 2003 By: Mark Weisbrot

USA-based international commentarist Mark Weisbrot writes: With the war in Iraq receding from the media spotlight, the Bush Administration is now turning some attention to our traditional "back yard" of Latin America.

US Treasury Secretary John W. Snow has just completed a visit to Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia. In Washington circles such attention is seen as a positive development. It is widely acknowledged that our government has no policy toward Latin America other than those dealing with drugs and terrorism, and this is not exactly the best way to make friends.

Anti-US sentiment in Latin America is running about as high as it has been since riots forced Vice-President Richard Nixon to cut short his 1958 goodwill tour of South America. The war in Iraq has been immensely unpopular, leaving many Latin Americans wondering what "regime change" might be next on Washington's hit list.

Closer to home, Latin Americans are increasingly rejecting "neoliberalismo," the economic experiment that their governments have adopted -- at Washington's urging -- over the last two decades. There can be no doubt as to the failure of this experiment, which has included indiscriminate opening to foreign trade and investment flows, large scale privatizations, and the widespread implementation of unsuccessful macro-economic policies advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

From 1980 to 2000, income per person in Latin America grew by only 7% over the whole period. In the pre-experimental years of 1960-1980, it grew by 75%. No statistical test is needed to see that something has gone terribly wrong.

The opening years of the 21st century are looking like the beginning of another "lost decade." The downturn of 2001-2002 in Latin America was its worst in nearly two decades. The current recovery is anemic: the IMF projects regional growth of 1.5% for the year, which would still leave income per person -- which is what matters for living standards -- stagnant for 2003.

And given the weakness in the US economy -- including a $3 trillion housing bubble that has yet to deflate -- things could turn out even worse. Latin America sends nearly two-thirds of its exports to the United States, so a recession in our economy tends to drag the rest of the Americas down with it.

Latin Americans have increasingly taken to the ballot box, as well as the streets, to demand more effective and fair economic policies. The elections of populist presidents -- Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1998 and 2000, Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva in Brazil (last October) and Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador (November) are among the results of this rebellion.

Washington refuses to acknowledge that any of its economic policies have failed, and since the US Treasury Department controls the IMF -- which heads up a creditors' cartel that most developing countries must deal with -- it has a tremendous influence on economic decision-making throughout the region.

And for our government, the slogan appears to be "not one step back." Treasury Secretary Snow praised Brazil during his visit for its extraordinarily tight monetary and fiscal policies: short-term interest rates are set by the central bank at 26.5%, and the government is running a large (4% of GDP) primary budget surplus. (The primary surplus is the government's surplus excluding interest payments). The economy is unlikely to grow very much under these conditions, and it will be difficult if not impossible deliver on the social improvements for which millions of Brazilians voted.

In Argentina, the IMF recently signed an agreement that could easily stall the country's slow recovery after the worst depression in its history -- which was itself largely a product of the Fund-supported policies. Yet the IMF continues to prescribe the same medicine of fiscal and monetary austerity.

Other aspects of US foreign policy have stirred deep resentment in Latin America. The Bush administration's support for a military coup last April against the democratically-elected government of Venezuela was reminiscent of the worst outrages of the Cold War era. That seems to have been recognized here -- at least in most policy circles -- as a mistake. Not so for the long-term failure of Washington's economic policies, which have brought enormous harm to almost the entire region.

Until these change, the United States' standing among our southern neighbors will continue to decline.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research at 1621 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20009-1052 -- +1 (202) 293-5380; Fax +1 (202) 588-1356.  You may email Mark Weisbrot at weisbrot@cepr.net

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Our editorial statement reads: VHeadline.com Venezuela is a wholly independent e-publication promoting democracy in its fullest expression and the inalienable right of all Venezuelans to self-determination and the pursuit of sovereign independence without interference. We seek to shed light on nefarious practices and the corruption which for decades has strangled this South American nation's development and progress. Our declared editorial bias is pro-democracy and pro-Venezuela ... which some may wrongly interpret as anti-American. Roy S. Carson, Editor/Publisher Editor@VHeadline.com

Asia Times OnLine By Henry C K Liu

Very few serious observers in the Middle East, if any, expect the United States to achieve its declared aims of establishing a democratic government in Iraq. Some are openly skeptical of US intent, while others give the US the benefit of the doubt, but consider its aim a hopeless fantasy.

Three days after US invasion forces officially announced the fall of the Iraqi government and proclaimed military control of the city of Baghdad, they allowed, if not encouraged, lawlessness to destroy a cradle of civilization on a scale thousands of times worse than that which the US accused the Saddam Hussein government of having done to the Iraqi nation and its people. The war itself has made a reality of harsh misery out of the abstract discontent of political oppression, the liberation from which had been the pretext for the war. Instead of saving the Iraqi people from alleged oppression, the war has brought them undeniable destruction. Liberation has come in the form of senseless killing, looting and burning. In the name of defending freedom, the United States has unilaterally denied the people of Iraq their freedom to live a normal life for years to come. The war has robbed the Iraqi people of freedom from lawlessness, freedom to preserve and enjoy their historical and cultural treasures, and freedom from foreign occupation.

The wartime suffering of millions has been aggravated by the postwar loss of even the essentials of life, such as clean water, electricity, medicine, food and personal safety. The Geneva Convention regarding responsibility of occupation powers toward the population in occupied territory has been ignored, resulting in a breakdown of security, anarchy, widespread looting and arson of public property and the proliferation of violent acts of revenge and lawless of settling personal and tribal scores.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld justified this crime of barbarism dismissively by telling the press that "democracy is untidy" and that "freedom includes freedom to commit crimes". While it may be debatable whether the definition of war crimes should include the killing of civilians by uniformed US soldiers as a standard tactic against urban guerrillas, there is no need to debate that peace crimes against civilization and humanity have become part of the collateral damage of the liberation imposed by US armed occupation of Iraq.

Overwhelming force to shock and awe had been available to military plans with ample reserve. But the world's sole superpower pleads powerlessness to protect civilians and national properties and treasures under its coercive military control. Despite total US control of Iraqi airspace, there is no around-the-clock airlift of humanitarian supplies as in the Berlin blockade, notwithstanding that the toppling of Saddam's statue in central Baghdad by a handful was eagerly compared with the fall of the Berlin Wall by the US media. Apparently, Arabs don't need food and water as much as Europeans do. The US military can summon hundred of cruise missiles and precision bombs to target Saddam on a few minutes' notice, yet this superpower that spends more on its military than all the world's other nations combined cannot provide law and order and basic sustenance for the people it has just conquered. This is a superpower only of destruction, and a paper tiger when it comes to humanitarian rescue.

Presidential palaces were precision-bombed as war targets despite the fact that common sense would surmise that Saddam would be stupid to stay in any of them once hostilities had begun. Television images of US marines trashing the palaces and the subsequent looting by lawless mobs waving to approving GIs were supplemented by embedded media commentary about popular rejoicing over the fall of tyranny. Yet these palaces were built with the resources of the Iraqi people, thus they belong to the people and should be returned to the Iraqi people for their popular enjoyment, rather than trashed by an invading horde. These palaces, albeit not examples of good taste, are nevertheless national assets that could have been turned into a Palace for Youth, Palace for Women, Palace of Science, Palace of Islam, Palace of Freedom, etc. Instead, they are now useless rubble that will constitute heavy added cleanup burdens for the war-battered people of Iraq.

The US Marine Corps in the past has earned well-deserved respect in the journals of military valor. In Iraq, its political officers failed to protect the honor of this once fine and proud military organization.

If this war is about spreading US values, it has scored only defeat by spreading barbarism. The destruction of the Iraqi network of presidential compounds, government and cultural institutions and facilities bring to mind the 19th-century burning and looting of the Summer Palace in Peking by barbaric Western imperialist plunderers.

Contrast that with the flawless protection of oilfields and the commercial records of the Ministry of Petroleum while truly priceless artifacts from the dawn of civilization were looted, some say by foreign professional thieves, with the theft masked by subsequent destruction from looting local mobs hailed as joyful expression of freedom from oppression. So much for the priorities of US freedom and values.

For weeks the world has been talking about the war on Iraq. But in reality, there was no war. There was no formal declaration of war by the invader and there was no formal surrender by a vanquished government. There was a largely unopposed foreign invasion preceded by massive precision hits from thousands of cruise missiles launched from distant warships and bombs dropped from high-altitude planes from distant carriers and air bases. Tens of thousands of precision cruise missiles and bunker-busting bombs added up to a slaughter by remote control. But one side of the conflict did not fight, for reasons that have yet to become clear. There were some minor skirmishes and paramilitary resistance in the initial phase in the south. But there was no war in the sense of major force-on-force battles and there was no decisive Battle of Baghdad.

Peter Maass wrote in the April 20 New York Times Magazine: "To get to Baghdad, the marines of the 3rd Battalion fought the old-fashioned way, by shooting as many of the enemy as they could. The victims weren't all soldiers." The enemy was Iraqi civilians whom the US had come to liberate. Maass reported that after a shooting spree that killed a dozen civilians, the marine squad leader shouted: "My men showed no mercy. Outstanding."

The Iraqi government was not vanquished; it merely vanished. After US forces took control of the capital, there was widespread looting that finally stopped only because there was nothing else left to loot, not because of orderly US postwar planning.

Most of the world's professional military experts had been misled about the prospect of urban warfare inside Baghdad, while the US high command apparently knew it was going to be a cakewalk into Baghdad. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney knew something that even uniformed officers in the field did not know, which was that no Iraqi resistance was going to materialize.

Was all the pre-invasion bombing merely a fireworks overture to augment the disinformation that the Iraqi military could be expected to be a lethal force of tenacious resistance? The invasion of an enemy capital defended by hundreds of thousands of elite troops was deftly accomplished by a small, fast-moving, light forward force. Is Cheney a military genius, or did he know something the rest of the world did not know when he confidently predicted that the "war" would be over in a matter of weeks?

The "victory" appeared to be less than honorable, achieved mainly through treason on the part of the enemy high command induced by bribes. The Battle of Baghdad was no Iwo Jima or Stalingrad. It appeared that the massive precision bombing did not destroy the Iraqi army as much as treason facilitated through the uninterrupted linkage between the Iraqi high command and its former handlers in the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon Special Section. If these conspiracy theories are valid, then the question arises whether the intensive bombings of Baghdad and other cities, with tragic collateral damage of sizable civilian casualty, were militarily necessary, and whether the chaos after the fall of Baghdad was part of the war plan.

With the military phase of the war in Iraq drawing to a close by the third week of conflict, General Tommy Franks, commander of the US forces, laid out in a CNN interview a timetable that could see his troops in Iraq for another year. "The Iraqi army has been destroyed. There's no regime command and control in existence right now, but we know there are pockets of anything from paramilitaries to death squads," he said. But the winding-up of the military campaign does not signal a quick US exit from Iraq. "We have simply bypassed villages and towns, and we will go to every single one of them to be clear that we don't have some last small stronghold," Franks said. He added that if the country remained fractious, the number of US troops required to stay on for a lengthy period would be significant.

Le Monde, the French daily, reported that Maher Sufyan, commander of the Republican Guard, reached an agreement to cease resistance in exchange for money and postwar protection for himself and his top officers. Maher Sufyan is not included in the infamous "deck of cards" identifying the most wanted officials in the Saddam Hussein government. Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Al Sahaf, its foreign minister, Naji Sabri, and the minister of health, Oumid Medhat Mubarak, are also not included on the list. Vladimir Titirenko, the Russian ambassador to Iraq, told NTV upon returning to Moscow: "I am confident that the Iraqi generals entered into secret deals with the Americans to refrain from resistance in exchange for sparing their lives."

The question then: Is the "victorious" Iraqi war plan based on treason applicable to other wars, such as the pending wars on Syria and Iran? Or have future targets of US preemptive invasion learned to adopt new strategies of asymmetrical and unconventional warfare of counter-preemption?

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman defines Saddamism as an entrenched Arab mindset, born of years of colonialism and humiliation that insists that upholding Arab dignity and nationalism by defying the West is more important than freedom, democracy and modernization. And he identifies Saddamism as the real enemy of the United States.

Saddamism will now form the new basis of pan-Arabism. No one knows for certain why Saddam did not put up a fight, as expected by everyone except Rumsfeld, Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Perhaps this is Saddam's new "unconventional" tactic, to turn the fight into a protracted guerrilla struggle, perhaps not. Either Saddam is dead or he merely failed to answer the call of history. Perhaps he was betrayed by the Republican Guard commanders. But if he did not intend to fight, he should have given up before the hostilities began. The entire Arab world is puzzled by his behavior to date and disappointed by the turn of military events in Iraq.

Whatever actually happened, there was no superpower victory. It was a fixed match in a superbowl in which one opponent took a fall. Or the real war has yet to start with a vanished opponent that has merged into the general population to fight a protracted unconventional war. Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress favored by the US Defense Department for a key role in postwar Iraq, told BBC radio on Monday that his group was tracking Saddam Hussein, who remains in Iraq and is moving around the country.

Either way, the potential of Saddamism is very much alive. Many in the Arab world insist that those Iraqis recorded by US television stamping and spitting on the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein were Kurds, not Arabs, or unprincipled paid hooligans, not freedom fighters. "Millions loved Saddam" was a common comment throughout the Arab world, and widely reported in the Arab press.

A Brookings Institution study by Christine Moss Helms in 1984 (before the official US demonization of Saddam) did not contain one single word about the Saddam regime torturing anyone. It characterized the Iraqi Ba'ath Party as a political organization of clandestinity and ubiquity. Iraqi Ba'athists might deviate from strict interpretation of Ba'athist ideology of Arab unity, freedom from foreign domination and tribal socialism, yet Ba'athist doctrine generally set guidelines for Iraqi policy formulation, such as geopolitical non-alignment, pan-Arabism and accommodation with diverse religious and ethnic groups, throughout its history. Leadership was not hereditary, setting it apart from other Arab regimes. Iraqi Ba'athist policies, as distinct from Ba'athism in the Arab world in general, were directed toward specific Iraqi needs and problems, keeping Iraq from extreme pan-Arabism.

Since the Iraqi Ba'athists took control of the country in 1968, the leader had to deal with practical problems of governance of a less-developed country, by devoting considerable resources to internal development, irrigation projects, upgrading of agriculture, industrialization, education and freedom for women. It also had to deal with problems facing any oil-producing nation: economic imperialism, globalized finance and US dollar hegemony.

Resistance by Arabs to foreign intervention and influence generally takes two forms that share diagnosis of the problem but are diametrically opposed in proposed solutions. The first is that Islam provides the raison d'etre for unity, despite a variety of beliefs such as Islamic modernism, reformism, conservatism and fundamentalism. Postmodernist foreign interference in the Muslim world poses increased and profound consequences that push many Islamic movements to adopt political goals, with a return to perceived purity of Islamic values.

The second response is Arab nationalism. While recognizing the importance of Islam, Arab nationalists feel that it, as an ideology, does not fully encompass the modern needs of the Middle East. The reasons are threefold: 1) the region includes non-Arabs and non-Muslims, 2) there are differences of interpretation within Islam and 3) Islamic fundamentalism cannot effectively adapt to changes facing the region. Arab nationalists are committed to modernization through secularization that would also facilitate pan-Arab unity. Nasirism has been generally accepted as the main representation of Arab nationalism. In contrast to Nasirism, as espoused in Egypt, which relied more on personality cult, Ba'athists attained a high level of organization. Although the leader is also inescapably tied to supremacy in the tradition of tribal culture, the Ba'ath Party is designed to function in the event of the leader's sudden death or ouster.

The Brookings study warned that it would be erroneous to assume that all non-Ba'athists opposed the Ba'athist central government, despite the radical and ruthless image with which the Ba'ath Party had been portrayed in the West and by opposition groups in exile. Many Iraqis benefited from the Ba'ath economic and social policies during the 1970s and valued the stability of continuous government since 1968. Many older Iraqis who were not Ba'athists were proud that their children were party members. And party membership did not particularly enhance advancement in the general economy outside of government. One of the Ba'ath Party's goals was to broaden the base of support from Iraq's heterogeneous society. The party launched a Literacy Campaign to reduce the 44 percent illiteracy rate to 20 percent. The party emphasized a policy that the wealth of the nation is in its youth and promoted education for women. The Agrarian Reform Law of 1970 gave women the right to own land on an equal basis as men, and equal wages for female farm-cooperative workers. Women were granted voting rights, and benefited from marriage reform. It was not until 1991, at the start of the first Gulf War, that US demonization of Saddam began in earnest.

Despite US media spin about pent-up Iraqi hatred for Saddam, looting is not political expression. It is mere US propaganda that the looting encouraged by the US military all over Iraq was the joyous expression of an oppressed people suddenly liberated. The New York Times reported isolated incidents of looting by some firemen in the collapsed World Trade Center towers in New York. Surely, New York firemen as a group are patriotic and honorable public servants. If massive bombing were to hit New York, with the sudden disappearance of the police force, and the absence of the National Guard, with indifferent foreign troops waving criminals on, there would also be widespread looting in New York. Rumsfeld acknowledged as much in his news conference by pointing out that riots also happened in US cities even when the government had not collapsed.

Political freedom is not about senseless destruction. The lootings of museums and libraries are crimes against civilization. If only US marines had also failed to protect the Ministry of Petroleum and the oilfields the way they failed to protect these cultural institutions that belong to the all humanity, the excuse of shortage of troops would be more credible. Rumsfeld's lame excuse of "catastrophic success" in war would be more credible if he had not been so confident, in defiance of common-sense expectation, that the military operation would be over within weeks, a confidence that even his own field commanders challenged as unfounded. A war plan that had taken into account all unforeseen contingencies, that had miraculously predicted that the war would end within weeks, had been caught off guard by "catastrophic success"? It is a no-win argument. You cannot have it both ways. Either unpreparedness for success is a poor excuse or predictive confidence in success has been a bluff.

• Next: The new Agincourt Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 By: Roy S. Carson

VHeadline.com Editor & Publisher Roy S. Carson writes: Once upon a time ... there was a fantasy land to the North, full of Mickey Mouse and Disney World, Hollywood movies, cowboys & indians.  Soda pop and good clean living.  The empire ... for it was of empirical size and status in the minds of everyone south of the Rio Grande ... was so damned attractive to impoverished Latinos that they adopted words like "pana" (a vocalization of cowboy 'pardner'), "Chevere" (Chevrolet = excellent) and the "beisbol" unforgettables: "strajk" and "honrun."

Latino admiration for northern climes was also a respect for "Freedom" -- economic, firstly, but also of expression; the right to hold an opinion.  We heard all the time of how the "gringos" defended their Constitutional freedom of expression to an almost religious "nth" degree, fighting for the right to hold opinions whether or not they were commonly accepted or nay.

But, sadly, those days are gone!

Gone with the wind as politicians on both sides of the barricades realize the electoral brownie points they can whip up so easily on a xenophobic storm that negates everything that proud USA citizens had held to be true.  They say now that is is because they possess The Truth!  But what is this elusive thing called Truth?

President Hugo Chavez Frias insists in his speechifying that he will honor and defend the Constitution of the Republic of Venezuela.

President George W. Bush insists that he also will honor and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

Chavez Frias' duty is to protect the sovereign best interests of the Venezuelan people.

Bush 2's declaration is to defend the sovereign best interests of the American (USA) people.

On this basic premise we can, hopefully, all agree?

The rot, however, appears to have set in somewhere around the time that Clinton was frolicking with an intern in the Oval Office.

The rot had already set in in Venezuela way before the time of the Lusinchi/Ibanez administration and the inevitable consequences of February 28, 1989 and the attempted coups against corrupt President Carlos Andres Perez in February and November 1992.

US Ambassadors to Venezuela had (almost) always enjoyed a warm and welcome reception in Venezuela ... certainly Jeff Davidow and John Maisto were among the more progressive of the US diplomatic corps on assignment to Caracas ... but something happened on the heels of Clinton Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's bull-whipping tours of the Middle East in parallel with Chavez Frias' and Venezuela's rise to prominence within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The frivolous appointment of Donna Hrinak as US Ambassador to Venezuela seriously slammed US-Venezuelan relations into reverse gear and her extracurricular dalliances with a certain Venezuelan print media publisher did not win much respect for her or her entourage now sequestered in the bunker on Colinas de Valle Arriba ... Donna's dispatch into the backwoods of Brazil came not too early but the appointment of Charles Shapiro to the Caracas chair was full tilt into prehistoric USA-Venezuela paranoia a la Otto Reich.  Scarcely surprising that "reds under the bed" should begin to take such prominence in an upsurge of latent McCarthyism at US State.

Of course, it helps the Bush administration get over the fact of a questionable election victory in Florida against Chavez Frias' several times ratification as Venezuela's unquestionably democratically-elected President, that Reich and his Shapiro shadow can wag red-neck fingers at Chavez' open relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro.  It had been difficult for Washington to accept the fact that Chavez Frias had insisted on Venezuela's sovereignty when they insisted they would send two shiploads of (armed) Marines to Venezuela in the wake of the December 1999 floods disaster.  Rejected, the Washington mandarins could not understand the natural suspicion that the Beltway Bosses would use the pretext to stay and neo-colonize as has been their wont elsewhere.

• Yes, admittedly it's Bush 2's design to protect the best interests of the American (USA) people ... but that in itself does not necessarily tally with the best and sovereign interests of Venezuela, France, Germany or the rest of the world...

That's why its such an anachronism to view the current state of US Freedom of Expression where, hey it's okay guys to express opinions in favor of the United States but, whoa there, a distinct no-no to express an opinion at variance with White House protocol.  Frenchies, Krauts, Venezuelans and other ne'er do wells beware ... Uncle Sam doesn't like it ... so Constitutional Freedom goes out the windows with Freedom (French) Fries and similar xenophobic nonsense polluting the airwaves.

Simply ... the world has gotta understand you're either with US or you're agin US!

So stuff the Stateside hate mail as we explore The Truth as seen from a Venezuelan perspective.

We make no bones about it at VHeadline.com ... we're totally biased on behalf of the Venezuelan people and the Constitution they are pledged to uphold.

We believe in Law & Order and we're not welded at the hip to any President by name or politics ... we do, however, acknowledge and uphold the democratic right of any duly-elected Venezuelan government to rule as befits the best interests of the sovereign Venezuelan people...

...and, if that's at variance with Bush 2 dictates; hey, get over it and move on!

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 By: Dawn Gable

Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 15:50:10 -0700 From: Dawn Gable morning_ucsc@hotmail.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: Yvonne Becker illogical and uninformed

Dear Editor:  Yvonne Becker not only missed something in math class but also missed a bit of history and logic ... she certainly skipped out on the history of Venezuela if you think that the economic woes of this country appeared in the last 5 years!

Venezuela's problems are more complex than you apparently care to investigate, and much older than the entire life of President Hugo Chavez Frias, whom you blame.

Venezuela has a long history of political unrest, violence, strikes, extreme economic polarity, under- and un-employment, illiteracy, hair-trigger tempers and mob mentality. Have you forgotten the “Caracazo” ... the mass looting throughout the country in February 1989?

Today’s economic problems were decades in the making. Chavez’ predecessors privatized many state industries ... wealthy Venezuelans have deposited their money in foreign banks. Corporations and those same individuals have evaded taxes.

The nation’s consumer base has remained small because most Venezuelans live in substandard conditions while the wealthy fly to Miami to shop.

Production has stalled frequently because of “strikes” that resemble management lockouts more than grassroots labor mobilizations.

Media outlets have trashed their own country’s reputation among investors by promoting political and economic instability.

...and then there’s the $1 billion price tag of April 2002’s failed coup attempt.

Logic is not one of Yvonne's strong points evidently.

Cause and effect ... that is the chapter she needs to brush up on.

Dawn Gable morning_ucsc@hotmail.com

Our editorial statement reads: VHeadline.com Venezuela is a wholly independent e-publication promoting democracy in its fullest expression and the inalienable right of all Venezuelans to self-determination and the pursuit of sovereign independence without interference. We seek to shed light on nefarious practices and the corruption which for decades has strangled this South American nation's development and progress. Our declared editorial bias is pro-democracy and pro-Venezuela ... which some may wrongly interpret as anti-American. Roy S. Carson, Editor/Publisher Editor@VHeadline.com