Originally Posted by Eric5273

First, I never accused you of being against the people of Venezuela. Where did you get that idea from? You accused Chavez of being against the American people, which I said is not true. He dislikes our leader, not our country or our people.

Second, Chavez is indeed paranoid because he came extremely close to being overthrown and assasinated back in 2002 by a group of rogue officers from his own military who were being supported by the Bush Administration. You can argue whether or not that is true (Bush denies this accusation), but what is obvious is that Chavez believes it is true, and I doubt he believes this without good reason. In addition, some of those rogue officers have not been brought to justice because they are being given a safe haven here in the United States. That issue you cannot argue.

Since our government claims to support democracy, one would think they would be in favor of the prosecution of people who participated in the attempted overthrow of a democratically elected leader. But apparently they support such people if they disagree with the economic policies of the democratically elected leader who they tried to overthrow.

I know this was not a big deal in our news, but let me refresh your memory as to what happened in Venezuela back in April 2002:

The military entered the Presidential Palace, arrested Chavez, blindfolded him, put him on a plane, and flew him to an island off the coast of Venezuela where he was held in a prison for 48 hours.

The following morning, all of the U.S. and Venezuelan newspapers reported that "Chavez resigned". There were even some "unofficial" reports that he had committed suicide.

Following these reports, hundreds of thousands of angry Venezuelan people lead large protests all over the country. Violence also broke out, and some government offices were stormed. The protesters demanded that Chavez be returned to power.

In the end, the group of officers leading the coup failed to take control, and the Presidential Palace was recaptured by Chavez's Presidential Guard. The coup lasted 48 hours and ended with some of the coup leaders being captured while others fled the country. Chavez was flown back to Venezuela and returned to power.

He claims when he was being held in exile, there were American intelligence officials present. Prior to this incident, there was never any bad blood between Chavez and the United States.

But this ordeal has the CIA's footprints written all over it. This is almost like their standard procedure for getting rid of socialist governments. Support a military coup, assasinate the leftist leader, and claim it was a suicide. It happened to Salvador Allende in Chile and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, just to name a couple. If the Venezuelan people had not protested, I'm pretty sure history would say the same for Hugo Chavez.