Are you familiar with Monty Python? Nudge nudge, wink wink.
Brett
Are you familiar with The Guardian? The Guardian that wrote, only a few
days after September 11th, that if you've always hated Americans, the
attack was no reason to stop hating them? Maybe you feel that way, but it
tends to make me consider them a less than credible source.
And, in fact, even what it wrote there is not what you were saying. Of
course the Administration was talking about a coup in Venezuela four months
before it happened. _I_ was talking about the possibility of a coup in
Venezuela months ago. You didn't have to be a genius to realize that Hugo
Chavez was such a blithering incompetent that a coup was a distinct
possibility. But the Administration officials never supported the coup.
Even the Guardian doesn't say that they did. It says that they made it
clear that they supported democracy, but didn't explicitly say don't
overthrow Chavez. They probably should have, but that's vastly different
from what you were accusing them of. Should they have told the officials -
not under any circumstances? No, actually they shouldn't, because there
are circumstances in which one would have been justified, and Chavez was
treading fairly close to that line. Could plotters have interpreted that
as a green light? Well, I suppose it's possible. I don't know what was
said in those meetings. _You_ don't know what was said in those meetings.
All we know is that it was discussed. No kidding. That's not exactly a
shock. What we _do_ know is that the Administration told them we supported
democracy. We do know that the Administration called Cardona and told him
to not, under any circumstances, dissolve the National Assembly. Which he
did despite our influence. Which suggests, don't you think, that maybe he
wasn't under American control anyways? Why not mention that piece of
evidence? If, despite our calls, he still dissolved the Assembly, why do
you think he would have refrained from overthrowing Chavez whatever we said
to him? In either case, why accuse the US of supporting a right-wing coup
against a democrat when it wasn't a right-wing coup, so far as we can tell
(it's an odd right-wing coup that is triggered by a 500,000 person popular
demonstration organized by unions that is fired upon by the picked thugs of
the President) and the most you can say we did is not come out strongly
enough for your satisfaction against it?
Gautam
