Venezuela Attack Plans: No Longer Deniable

Earlier in the year when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that his intelligence had found evidence of US plans to attack Venezuela, the State Department called them "wild charges," "ridiculous" and "untrue."

Well the Washington Post reports today that Venezuela is indeed included on a Pentagon list of 5 countries in 3 top groupings that pose "strategic threats" to the US and thereby require "full spectrum planning" (ie. full scale attack plans).

The top priority group includes North Korea and Iran. China is listed as a "growing peer competitor" and threat of tomorrow. Syria and Venezuela are listed as "rogue nations."

Venezuela is listed with Syria as a "rogue nation" - the same as Iraq was? Excuse me, but this is an unbelievable major escalation from the US side. Even beyond the rank lies this categorization exposes, to call a democratically elected leader who poses no threat to the US is absurd... except there's that thing called oil, oh now it makes sense.

Growing F-16 Row
Meanwhile, a very interesting buried news item from last week has resurfaced. Apparently the US said NO to a request for US parts and help in rehabilitating the 2 dozen or so F-16s that we sold them in the 80s (despite our contractual obligation to do so). Additionally, the Bush Administration heavily pressured Israel not to offer (lucrative) assistance either (plus they wanted to buy a few). So Chavez has announced that since the contract has been unilaterally abandoned, Venezuela is no longer bound to the limits on 3rd party military technology transfers and threreby threatened to "maybe" send the F-16s to Cuba or China for study.

This seems to me to be a bit of bluster to draw attention to a quite unjust decision on the US part. If you sell someone planes for greed and because you like a leader at one time, that is awfully short-sighted. Obviously if it is in the contract to provide spare parts, that is a clear obligation that should have been thought about at the time. One should not expect to get out of it without consequences. This could be big... lets hope the US swallows its pride for once and respects its word. At this point the US has not commented about the spare parts issue, which means its probably true.