and everyone knew he would win.
That was when Rumsfeld went behind the sitting President's back and arranged secretly with the top military brass to hand over ALL their shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles and they were spirited out of the country to an air base in Texas.
When the President learned about it he fired everyone concerned in Bolivia, but of course it was too late, and Morales made a big point of his anger about it when he was elected.
Filthy behavior.
Later this article appeared concerning US subversion there:
Undermining Bolivia
By Benjamin Dangl, February 2008 Issue
A thick fence, surveillance cameras, and armed guards protect the U.S. Embassy in La Paz. The embassy is a tall, white building with narrow slits of windows that make it look like a military bunker. After passing through a security checkpoint, I sit down with U.S. Embassy spokesman Eric Watnik and ask if the embassy is working against the socialist government of Evo Morales. “Our cooperation in Bolivia is apolitical, transparent, and given directly to assist in the development of the country,” Watnik tells me. “It is given to benefit those who need it most.”
From the Bush Administration’s perspective, that turns out to mean Morales’s opponents. Declassified documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that the Bush Administration is using U.S. taxpayers’ money to undermine the Morales government and coopt the country’s dynamic social movements—just as it has tried to do recently in Venezuela and traditionally throughout Latin America.
Much of that money is going through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In July 2002, a declassified message from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia to Washington included the following message: “A planned USAID political party reform project aims at implementing an existing Bolivian law that would . . . over the long run, help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors.” MAS refers to Morales’s party, which, in English, stands for Movement Toward Socialism.
Morales won the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, but five regional governments went to rightwing politicians. After Morales’s victory, USAID, through its Office of Transition Initiatives, decided “to provide support to fledgling regional governments,” USAID documents reveal.
More:
http://www.progressive.org/mag_dangl0208
The progressive leaders have been far more polite to Washington than Washington could ever deserve. The constant bullying will, in the end, work against the aggressors.
= new reply since forum marked as read
