10 Bodies Found in Venezuela Where Victims Kidnapped

[Judi Lynn]

10 Bodies Found in Venezuela Where Victims Kidnapped

CARACAS -- The bodies of 10 people who had been shot to death were found Saturday in an area of western Venezuela near the border with Colombia at a place where 12 Colombian soccer players were abducted off the field earlier this month.

The discovery of the bodies was reported by the local press in the Venezuelan state of Tachira, after which the director of the CICPC investigative police, Wilmer Flores, said that his subordinates had gone to the crime scene.

"The bodies found in southern Tachira are being investigated to see if they are related to the multiple kidnapping" on Oct. 11, Flores told reporters in reference to the Colombian players on the amateur soccer squad Los Maniceros (The Peanut Vendors).

Flores recalled that on an improvised soccer field in the town of Chururu in the Tachira municipality of Fernandez Feo, some 850 kilometers (528 miles) west of Caracas, a game was being played that day when about 25 heavily armed men suddenly drove up.

"They asked (the referee) for the list of players on the Los Maniceros soccer team - so called because they sold peanuts ("mani" in Spanish) on public transport vehicles. They called out the players' names, lined them up and took them to an unknown destination," Flores said.

For its part, Union Radio in Caracas said that "according to preliminary accounts" the bodies did belong to the people kidnapped on Oct. 11.

The radio station said that the bodies of the abducted vendors were left in different parts of the Uribante municipality in the Montaña area, on the state line (of Tachira) with the state of Merida.

The Diario Los Andes newspaper in Tachira did not rule out that this was the work of an illegal group recruiting new members by force.

Various irregular organizations including Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitaries and drug traffickers operate in the border area, a lawless zone characterized by kidnapping and numerous other crimes.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=346064&CategoryId=10717

[Peace Patriot]

1. It makes you want to cry--how much grief and horror Colombia generates,

along with draining our coffers of $6 BILLION in military aid. Wherever U.S. military loot goes, in big quantities--and of course wherever our war machine goes--death, torture and social mayhem increase exponentially. Every problem is made worse. I fear that this death squad activity is typical Rumsfeldian chaos, which has a darker purpose than is obvious, in this case possibly to provide the cover for a "Gulf of Tonkin"-type incident by which the U.S./Colombia will invade Venezuela (as they rehearsed against Ecuador last year).

[Braulio]

2. US and Colombia invade Venezuela?

Interesting. Why would they do that?

[Peace Patriot]

5. Gee, I don't know. The oil maybe? nt

[Braulio]

7. Oil? What for?

If the US wants to "influence" Venezuela using its military, it doesn't have to invade it. All it has to do is create some fiction about Venezuela building nuclear weapons (they're very good at making up lies), then park a couple of carrier battle groups offshore Venezuela, and bomb a bit. No need to invade it.

Furthermore, the whole issue is pretty funny. US foreign policy is guided by the Israel Lobby. For the USA to want to do start a war with Venezuela, the Israel Lobby has to push hard... the military industrial lobby just isn't strong enough to do it on its own. And the Israelis got their hands full trying to get the USA to attack Iran. Plus the USA already got itself bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. So the whole issue seems ridiculous. I know they've been talking about Venezuelan uranium being shipped to Iran, but that's just a side issue made up by neocons who got nothing better to do.

Finally, when it comes to oil, Venezuela can be replaced - and it seems it's being replaced by Brazil. Brazil has giant discoveries offshore - one of their new fields covers 2000 km2, and is well on its way to replace Venezuela as the premier oil producer in Latin America. Venezuela, you see, has most of its remaining oil in the "Orinoco Oil Belt", and that oil is very very heavy. So it requires huge amounts of capital to produce it and upgrade it. I would bet the USA is going to be very friendly with Brazil, help them develop their fields, and forget Venezuela.

[Peace Patriot]

9. You need to think like Donald Rumsfeld...

And you might start by reading his 12/1/07 op-ed in the Washington Post, ""The Smart Way to Defeat Tyrants Like Chavez," in which he urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America.

I believe the plan for grabbing Venezuela's, Ecuador's and possibly even Brazil's oil, is a plan Rumsfeld left on the desk. He hints at it one year after his resignation, with his sudden odd interest in Chavez, after Rumsfeld had been denied nuking Iran and was ousted from the Pentagon.

Brazil's Lula da Silva said that the US 4th Fleet--which the Bushwhacks reconstituted in the Caribbean in summer 2008--was a threat to Brazil's oil fields (not just Venezuela's). He also is the one who proposed that South American form a "common defense" in connection with their newly formalized "common market," UNASUR. These and other reasons are why I suspect that Brazil might also be on Rumsfeld's war map.

The strategy is not for an invasion, exactly--as in Iraq--but to instigate a local fascist secession movement in Venezuela, which will attempt to split off the oil rich northern provinces (Zulia et al), which border both the Caribbean and Colombia, into a fascist mini-state in control of Venezuela's main oil reserves and operations. These fascists will paint themselves as "patriots" and "freedom fighters" and, at some point in their rebellion, will request U.S. military support (possibly from Colombia, and/or together with the Colombian military, and/or involving the 4th Fleet or air strikes) against the Venezuelan military and the Chavez government. It would be more like Vietnam than Iraq--with local puppets "inviting" the U.S. to invade it--but of course could end up being equally devastating to the people of the country.

This scenario was in fact rehearsed in Bolivia just last year (Sept. 2008, shortly after the reconstitution of the 4th Fleet), with the Bushwhacks funding/organizing a white separatist secession movement in Bolivia's gas/oil rich eastern provinces. The secessionists rioted, sacked government buildings, seized an airport and murdered some 30 unarmed peasants. President Morales threw the U.S. ambassador out of Bolivia for his collusion with these fascists. And various other events conspired to foil this Bushwhack/local fascist plot, if they actually intended it to succeed, and not just as a test-out of systems and responses. Among other things, they found out that the newly formalized South American "common market," UNASUR (formalized just a few months before the events in Bolivia) could quickly pull together to protect one of their own. Their first meeting was an emergency meeting, called by Chile, about the Bolivian crisis. Brazil and Argentina went into action and announced in no uncertain terms that they would not recognize or trade with a secessionist state. As they are Bolivia's chief gas customers, they had special clout in this situation. UNASUR voted unanimously to back up Morales, and sent delegations to Bolivia to help quell the disturbance. Bolivia's neighbor, Paraguay, elected its first leftist president ever, in the leadup to the Bolivian insurrection, and this may possibly have foiled plans to use the several hundreds of U.S. troops who were then active in Paraguay to aid the secessionists just over the border in eastern Bolivia.

Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador stated publicly just prior to this period that there was a coordinated fascist plot for secessionist coups in three countries--his own, Venezuela and Bolivia. Bolivia didn't make much sense, strategically. It was at that time landlocked, and is located in the heart of South America, surrounded by leftist countries (except for Peru). (Chile has since given Bolivia access to the Pacific.) And Morales--Bolivia's first indigenous president, in a largely indigenous country--is surely the most popular of the very popular leftist Bolivarian leaders. So I favor "rehearsal" as the Bushwhack purpose in Bolivia.

And there was another rehearsal, of the military coordination of U.S. and Colombia forces, early in 2008 (in March) with the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador's territory--to slaughter 25 sleeping people in a temporary FARC hostage-release camp just inside Ecuador's border. This action nearly caused a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela. If you look at a map of the targeted countries, you see Venezuela's main oil reserves sandwiched up in the northern region, between Colombia to the west and Brazil (and Brazil's new oil find) to the east. Venezuela's oil region is quite a "sitting duck." Ecuador's main oil region is also in the north of the country, bordering Colombia to the south (where the bombing/raid occurred). Ecuador just evicted the U.S. military from its air base in Manta, Ecuador (where the plane that dropped ten 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on the FARC camp probably originated; Ecuador's military said that Colombia was not capable of delivering those bombs). And the U.S. recently announced the establishment of seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia, at an unknown total cost, along with the Pentagon's $6 BILLION military aid package to Colombia. I think this, too (the seven new bases), was a plan set in motion under Rumsfeld. (They have known about the eviction from Ecuador at least since 2006.) With the Honduran coup--securing the U.S. military base in Honduras--they have Venezuela's main oil reserves and operations surrounded (in an arc from Colombia to Honduras to Venezuela's Caribbean coast)--and you can't help but add up these war assets and wonder what it is all for. What motivates Bushwhacks? OIL!

Ecuador's northern oil region would be the easiest to pick off. Venezuela's oil region is also actually quite vulnerable. (I believe that that is why the Chavez government took control of harbor and airport facilities in the northern region--because they are aware of this war plan.) And if Brazil sided with Venezuela and Ecuador, they, too, could be targeted for their northern region oil.

You wrote: "If the US wants to "influence" Venezuela using its military, it doesn't have to invade it. All it has to do is create some fiction about Venezuela building nuclear weapons (they're very good at making up lies), then park a couple of carrier battle groups offshore Venezuela, and bomb a bit. No need to invade it."

I think you're wrong there. The plan that I see in all these developments is much subtler than that, and possibly all the more deadly because of it.

"...the whole issue is pretty funny. US foreign policy is guided by the Israel Lobby. For the USA to want to do start a war with Venezuela, the Israel Lobby has to push hard... the military industrial lobby just isn't strong enough to do it on its own. And the Israelis got their hands full trying to get the USA to attack Iran."

Do you know what is the only government in the world that recognized the Honduran junta? Israel. I would not underestimate Israel's foresight in understanding that the U.S. war machine needs oil to protect Israel, and in that process, to maintain its enormous war machine in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has "its hands full to get the USA to attack Iran" because the USA ain't gonna do it. That is the issue that got Rumsfeld ousted. And I think it was a combination of Russia and China (nuclear powers) threatening to come in, on Iran's side, and the U.S. military brass balking at the use of nuclear weapons to subdue a country (Iran) with a lot more military capability than Iraq. I believe that this threat of Armageddon is what took Iran "off the table." So where else is the big oil-sucking machine--the US military--going to get sufficient oil?

"Sitting duck" oil, right here in our own "backyard"--which, but for the rise of leftist democracy in Latin America, could be Exxon Mobil's, to sell to the Pentagon, at US taxpayers' expense.

I've been following this matter for a long time, in its snaky meanderings through the corpo-fascist 'news'--and I don't think it's funny at all. I think it's quite likely Rumsfeld's and the Bushwhacks' Plan B, in their "Project for a New American Century." I think this war plan would fail, and would have terrible consequences--among them, permanent alienation of the northern and southern halves of our hemisphere--but when did stupidity, wrongness, mayhem, stark horror and unfeasibility ever stop Bushwacks?

And don't think they can't come back, if and when they decide to end Obama's quixotic career. They can.

[Zorro]

3. There is blood on the hands of many groups in the region

Here's what is not included in your alternative article, but is in the one I posted originally in LBN:

"The most senior official in Tachira state, Leomagno Flores, blamed the violence on the armed wing of the ELN, a group led by a man known El Payaso or the Clown."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8324496.stm

Deliberately bolding the font to obscure who might be responsible for this horrendous event only works on the willfully ignorant.

[Peace Patriot]

4. And we're supposed to believe "senior officials" in Colombia because...?

Amnesty International attributes 95% of the extrajudicial murders of union leaders in Colombia to the Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (about half and half) and only 2% to the FARC. And a recent UN human rights report attributes 75% of the extrajudicial murders in Colombia, of all types (murders of union leaders and all others--human rights workers, community organizers, peasant farmers, journalists) to the same parties--the Colombian military and its death squads. The Colombian military and fascist politicians also LIE about these murders, including lying about their "kill rate" by murdering innocent people and dressing their bodies up like FARC guerrillas.

I am not condoning anyone's killing of anybody--but pardon me if I don't trust the word of "senior officials" in Colombia. The official and official-extrajudicial carnage in Colombia cannot be excused by pointing to other parties, when the other parties are NOT committing the vast majority of these murders.

It's also very difficult to get reliable information about Colombia because of who's in charge--for instance, Alvaro Uribe, some 50 of whose political cohorts are either in prison or under investigation/indictment for their close ties to the death squads and to drug trafficking. It's like expecting reliable information from Murder, Inc.--or from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales & gang. Same kind of people, I'm afraid. Genocidal liars.

[Zorro]

6. Those remarks are by Venezuelan "senior officials"

Take your anti-Uribe blinders off.

[Braulio]

8. I thought this happened in Venezuela?

You sure sound confused. The article was about 10 people killed in Venezuela, not Colombia, right?