Oily Chavez Oozes Beyond VenezuelaMay 09, 2008
The Hemisphere: Oil spiked $4 Friday on new evidence of Venezuela's deep involvement in terrorism. There's no glossing over such news: Hugo Chavez intends to destabilize the region. The U.S. will need to take action.
After poring over some of the 10,000 documents captured from the computer of dead FARC terrorist Raul Reyes, killed in a raid on March 1, U.S. intelligence officials are convinced that Chavez's involvement is deeper than anyone realized, according to a front-page story by the Wall Street Journal. "There is complete agreement in the intelligence community that these documents are what they purport to be," a U.S. official told the Journal.
The oil market understood the implications of this: The U.S. probably would be forced to declare Venezuela a state sponsor of terror and then end Venezuela's role as a top oil supplier, as required for other rogue states such as Iran.
With global oil supplies scarce, and Venezuela accounting for 12% of U.S. oil imports, the U.S. economy would feel the effects.
Yet the alternative of doing nothing probably is worse.
The new documents show Venezuelan complicity in the FARC's war on Colombia well beyond any past estimates. Chavez offered the drug-dealing Marxist terrorists rocket-propelled grenades and ground-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. and Colombian aircraft.
Such rockets, remember, enabled ragtag Afghan tribesmen to chase out invading Soviet troops in 1989.
Chavez also offered port access for Russian arms shipments in Maracaibo to FARC's jungle bases. He offered FARC rest and recreational bases, along with state medical care. To cap it, he offered the terrorists a $250 million "loan," payable upon the overthrow of Colombia's government.
This is astonishing support for some of the worst terrorists on Earth. FARC is reviled by average Colombians. It should be dead or disarmed at this point because President Alvaro Uribe's courageous efforts to confront FARC have been relentless. Yet he hasn't won yet, thanks to FARC's clandestine support from Venezuela.
It's hard enough to win an asymmetrical war like this, harder still if the insurgents are stoked from other states. Chavez not only supports these jungle thugs, he's urging the West to take these killers off international terror lists, so they can openly raise more funds.
So long as America buys Venezuelan oil, Chavez will have the money to help FARC eventually destroy Colombia. He won't stop on his own, and the clandestine nature of his aid suggests he'll seek new ways to do it on the sly.
It's part of Chavez's strategy to use his petrodollars to take over the hemisphere ? or at least become its main power broker.
Thus far, the open side of Chavez's quest is clear. Using democratic elections, Chavez seeks to get Latin leaders elected who will be his vassals. He does so by secretly buying off leftist political parties, and manipulating elections and the minds of poor voters. He has helped put socialist cronies in power in Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua. Now, he has his eyes on his next prize: U.S. ally El Salvador.
Bad as that is, the new FARC computer documents show an even darker side: Any nation that resists his charms, anti-U.S. rhetoric and oil cash, gets destabilized.
Colombia may be the scariest example of Chavez's destabilization efforts, but others are threatened, too ? including Mexico and Peru, two stalwarts who have no interest in being Chavez's puppet states. It's significant that Mexico's and Peru's ambassadors were recently seen with President Bush at the Council of the Americas Wednesday pleading to Congress for free trade for their neighbor Colombia, whose economic success is as vital to them as their own.
All three nations are under fire from Chavez, and need vibrant economies to withstand him.
Peru is fighting Chavista infiltration through the dictator's newly formed "Houses of Alba" and has seen a resurgence of the Shining Path Marxist guerrillas it stomped out a decade ago.
Mexico's fighting a terrible war against drug-dealing criminals whose prime support from abroad is FARC terrorists. Last Thursday the chief of Mexico's national police was gunned down by these thugs in Mexico City, striking into the heart of the Mexican state.
Meanwhile, the raid that killed Reyes also revealed the presence of Mexican operatives in Colombia believed to be in training to destroy Mexico's oil pipelines, which supply much of America's oil.
It's an ugly picture for the U.S. We must either de-fang Chavez soon, or watch democratic neighbors collapse to his vast dictatorship. If that happens, oil prices will rise as high as his ambition.
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