[News] If it weren't for Iraq, the US military would have invaded Venezuela

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Complicitous US Ambassador could not quite bring himself to speak the truth

<http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21225>http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21225
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United States Ambassador
Charles S. Shapiro

VHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: It made a refreshing change 
to hear conciliatory sounds from US Ambassador Charles Shapiro as he 
tendered his farewells to the government of the Fifth Republic. This man, 
deeply complicitous in the events of the April coup and in subsequent 
political attacks on the lawful government of the nation to which he was 
sent by Washington, still could not quite bring himself to speak truth, 
however.

He leaves us with the statement that "the United States is not an empire", 
although the cynical might take one look at conquered and colonialized Iraq 
and say that alone is quite enough to give him the lie. But what was new 
and even startling in his parting statements were denunciations of the 
appearance of Colombian paras just outside of Caracas.

Were it not for the heavy resistance and high costs in both money and blood 
the imperial forces have encountered in Iraq, we may be sure that the 
Colombian paramilitaries would have been accompanied by US Marines. No one 
should ever forget that. And we may be sure that President Hugo Chavez 
Frias will never be that naive.

The assault on democracy in Haiti, the rising crescendo of political and 
economic attacks on Cuba, and a continuing propaganda blitz in US media 
against the Bolivarian Republic show us that the imperial regime has 
accepted that it must delay its program. But it remains far from any 
abandonment of its hopes to exploit political and social division in your 
country and others for its own advantage. This is the historical pattern of 
US relations with all of the nations south of the Rio Grande del Norte. 
Neither property party here in the USA will voluntarily change the basic 
design of our policy.
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Executive Vice President
Jose Vicente Rangel

What President Chavez and Vice President Rangel have done, correctly I 
believe, is to exploit the man-power shortages in the US military (as I 
write this, new US and satellite troops are being sent to the Mideast even 
from threatened Korea) to buy time for Venezuela to strengthen its 
conventional military and build up a new popular militia.

We have also, in several editorials called upon the Bolivarian authorities 
to be as creative on the diplomatic front as they have shown themselves on 
the military. We asked them to consider asking Holland if it is her 
intention to join the United States in aggression against Venezuela from 
her territories off your coast. And if hostilities are not intended to bar 
the use of the Antilles to US provocations and aggression.

This column has also appealed to President Chavez and Foreign Minister 
Perez to formally accuse US President George W. Bush and his leading 
officials of the war crimes they have already committed before the new 
International Criminal Court. This court is a part of the legal machinery 
of the United Nations and has jurisdiction to deal with violations of the 
Geneva Conventions, unprovoked military aggression and other crimes against 
humanity.

Some readers have suggested that because the USA are not signatory to the 
Convention that the court has no jurisdiction over its officials and 
soldiers. Nothing could be further from the truth, although these readers 
are hardly to be blamed for laboring under yet another misunderstanding, 
one carefully propagated by the corporate press.

After all, the USA has been, since day one of the Bush administration, 
using threats and bribes to arrange 89 bilateral agreements with other 
nations attempting to exempt its personnel from legal investigation or 
prosecution. But such individual arrangements only apply to each individual 
nation in its own relationship to the USA.

Ironically, a non-signatory country like the USA has lost the right to 
interpose between the international process and accused persons it own 
judiciary! And the vigor with which the USA has pursued this tactic of 
bilateral exemption reveals her sensitivity to this problem. And reveals as 
well a conspiracy at the summit of her government to subvert this aspect of 
international order as it has so many others.
    * Somehow this culture of imperious imperial impunity must be ended. 
And Venezuela's own President Chavez has the power to do it.

No wonder Mr. Shapiro was so nice and polite.

Chris Herz
<mailto:cdherz44 at yahoo.com>cdherz44 at yahoo.com


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