Eva Golinger’s New Book - Bush vs. Chavez

by Stephen Lendman

Eva Golinger’s eagerly awaited new book is now out -
but only for those able to read and understand Spanish
as it’s not yet available in English.  It’s
appropriately called Bush vs. Chavez - Washington’s
War Against against Venezuela published by Monte Avila
Editores in Caracas.  Hopefully it will soon be
available in English as well.

Golinger is a Venezuelan-American attorney
specializing in international human rights and
immigration law.  She wrote her first blockbuster book
published in 2005 called The Chavez Code - Cracking US
Intervention in Venezuela that documented the events
surrounding the 2002 US-directed failed coup against
Hugo Chavez that ousted him for two days and that the
people of Venezuela through their mass outrage
reversed.  In her first book, Golinger obtained
top-secret documents from the CIA and State Department
through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests
showing the Bush administration had prior knowledge of
and was complicit in the 2002 coup against President
Chavez and had provided over $30 million in funding
aid to opposition groups to help pull it off.  It
failed because they hadn’t expected the kind of
people-power that’s likely to arise again in the face
of trouble and support the president they love and
won’t give up without a fight.

Golinger also showed how the US government funded the
so-called National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that
functions to subvert the democratic process to help
oust leaders more concerned with serving their own
people than the interests of wealth and power.  Also
involved in the coup plot was the international arm of
the Republican party, the International Republican
Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute,
the US Agency for International Development (USAID)
and the AFL-CIO that has a long and disturbing record
of acting as an instrument of US foreign policy
instead of sticking to what it’s mandated to do -
representing the interests of American working people
it falls far short of much too often in its policy of
selling out to the interests of capital for the
personal gain of the union’s leadership.

In the Chavez Code, Golinger showed how these agencies
funded and worked with the Chavez opposition beginning
in 2001 cooking up schemes that led to mass-staged
street protests leading up to the day of the coup.  It
was done with the full knowledge and approval of the
Bush White House that mounted a full-scale effort
post-9/11 to oust Hugo Chavez and has now tried and
failed three times to do it.

In her new book, Golinger picks up from her first one
chronicling the Bush adminstration’s focused efforts
at illegal intervention in Venezuelan affairs
attempting to destabilize the Chavez government
leading up to another scheme to overthrow it that may
be only days away following the December 3
presidential election Chavez is virtually certain to
win impressively.  The book documents the usual kinds
of mischief directed out of Washington:

—a demonization campaign conducted through the
complicit US corporate-controlled media that’s likely
to reach a crescendo in early December.

—financing 132 anti-Chavez groups.  Golinger
explains ....“the US is funding these organizations in
civil society….to obtain control in all different
parts of the country.”  She goes on to say “The US
government has censored the names of organizations,
but they’ve left the descriptions of what the funding
is for….what they are proposing to do with the
money; we just don’t know if they’re actually doing
it.”

—The Bush administration is making a determined
effort at subversion in the run-up to the December 3
election “bringing down their best
experts….political strategists, communications
experts, to help them craft the entire (opposition)
campaign” - of Zulia state governor Manuel Rosales who
was the only governor in the country to sign the
infamous Carmona Decree after the 2002 coup that
dissolved the elected National Assembly and Supreme
Court and effectively ended the Bolivarian Revolution
and all the benefits it gave the Venezuelan people
(for two days.)

—The Bush administration is conducting “diplomatic
terrorism” against the Chavez government.  Golinger
explains “This includes sanctions against Venezuela
for made-up things….claiming Venezuela is not
collaborating on (curbing) drug trafficking, which is
not true (as a US State Department report shows by
having documented that from 1998 - 2004 Venezuela’s
drug seizures rose from 8.6 to 19.1 tons and Caracas
claims the tonnage rose dramatically in 2005).”  It
also includes a “second sanction….for trafficking in
persons.  But there is not a shred of evidence that
Venezuela is not doing everything in its power to
prevent trafficking in persons.”

—Most important of all, the US created a new
classification in May, 2006 “and Venezuela is the only
country (under it) - which is for not cooperating with
the war on terrorism.”  Venezuela is now sanctioned
and “prohibited from buying arms that have been
manufactured in the US or use US parts.”  The Bush
administration is hard-pressed explaining what this
new classification means, why Venezuela in the only
country accused under it, and what the Chavez
government is doing.  It can only say (fraudulently)
“All the countries on the list are state sponsors of
terrorism” even though the US has never classified
Venezuela as a terrorist nation as the world community
would never go along with that kind of outrage.

—a campaign of hostile rhetoric coming out of
Washington has been ongoing for some time and is part
of the Chavez-demonization project attempting to
justify whatever schemes the Bush administration has
cooked up trying for the fourth time to oust him.  It
comes in the harshest language and from the highest
levels in the administration like Secretary of State
Rice referring to Chavez as “a negative force in the
region” and now fired and discredited former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld calling Chavez
another Hitler and one of the most dangerous and
destabilizing forces in the region.

—Golinger also explains the US Congress issued a
report on border issues mentioning Venezuela and
incredibly saying: “President Chavez is engaged in
smuggling Islamic radicals from out of the Middle East
to Margarita Island (off the Venezuelan coast) where
they are training them in Spanish and giving them ID
documents and sending them to Mexico, where they are
crossing the border to the US.”

—Golinger also covers Washington’s “military front”
attack directed against Venezuela including “an
increased presence in the region.” She explains she
investigated the Pentagon’s presence on the tourist
island of Curacao in the Caribbean, close enough to
Venezuela to see the coastline, where a US base is
located.  She calls this an “alarming” development,
and it’s being supported by the government of The
Netherlands.

—Golinger also cites the Pentagon’s use of
anti-Chavez directed psychological warfare including
the use of ugly agitprop directed against the Chavez
government.

—She also explains “The use of Colombian
paramilitaries by the US (as part of the “military
front”)....And the intervention of US Special
Forces….as well.”  US Special Forces handle the
command-and-control function directing the intruding
paramilitaries who are “actors….sent over to try to
assassinate Chavez.”

—Further, the book covers the US “building up a
secret base near the border with Venezuela, next to
Apure state….a small base, but the US is building
airplane hangars for spy planes (to be used as a)
launching point for espionage operations and
monitoring of Venezuela.  They also have large amounts
of high-ranking US Special Forces there” along with
high and low-ranking Colombian forces all controlled
by US Special Forces.

Golinger shows how once again the Bush administration
is funding and directing the above-mentioned agencies
like NED to subvert and overthrow democracy in
Venezuela as well as one other one - Sumate - a
nominally non-governmental organization (NGO) founded
in 2002 by a group of Venezuelans led by Maria Corina
Machado functioning as an anti-governmental
organization dedicated to the overthrow of Hugo Chavez
and the return of the country to its ugly past ruled
by the former oligarchy and the interests of capital.

The book also covers possible Bush administration
plans to invade the country outlined in Plan Balboa.
It “was created as a military exercise jointly
simulated with NATO (an arm of US interventionism)
forces, supposedly realized during the month of May,
2001….but contains real satellite images, of the US
institutions and precise coordinates of Venezuelan
airstrips and strategic points within the territory of
the country.”  The idea is to “come in from Colombia,
Panama and from bases in Curacao….take over
(oil-rich) Zulia (state) and the border area and
declare it an international zone” - in other words,
divide the country and steal the oil-rich part of it
by force, then deal with the rest of the country.

She also discusses the possibility of Colombian right
wing paramilitary intervention, and she believes their
mission is to assassinate Hugo Chavez.  She
interviewed a paramilitary leader who told her there
are already more than 3000 paramilitaries in the
region around Caracas alone.

If paramilitaries intervene, it won’t be the first
time as this tactic has been used before and was
foiled by Venezuelan police when a paramilitary plot
was uncovered and arrests were made.  Chavez has also
had to combat years of paramilitary infiltration
across the border conducting a wave of kidnappings and
assassinations, especially in areas bordering the two
countries like in Tachina state where the number of
killings rose from 81 in 1999 to 566 in 2005. 

There’s also considerable evidence Colombian right
wing president and close Bush ally Alvaro Uribe had a
hand in these activities as well as the present
destabilization efforts to oust Hugo Chavez and
possibly try to assassinate him.  He has a long and
ugly record supporting the interests of wealth and
power in his own country and has used his paramilitary
assassins to leave a long trail of blood in displacing
three million peasants from their land as well as
having one of the worst records of state-sponsored
terrorism in the world and a well-known contempt for
democracy and human rights.

Golinger believes there are plans in place to
overthrow the Chavez government and recently said
Washington is “trying to implement regime change (in
Venezuela). There’s no doubt about it (even though it)
tries to mask it saying it’s a noble mission.”

Many longtime Venezuelan observers and this writer
believe the next attempt at regime change will unfold
around the time of the December 3 election and likely
begin the day after its conclusion when Hugo Chavez is
virtually certain to be declared the winner with an
impressive margin of victory.  Expect it to include
mass-opposition street protests claiming fraud and
demanding Chavez not be allowed to claim victory and
another term in office.  Whatever happens next, only
the coup-plotters know for sure, but it’s almost
certain to be ugly and may include
US-behind-the-scenes-directed violence, possibly
extreme in a determined effort to succeed this time
unlike previous attempts to oust Chavez that failed. 

We’ll soon learn whether the coup-plotters will be any
more successful this time than before.  Chavez knows
something is up and is prepared to act against it when
it comes.  It won’t be long before the fireworks
begin, and it now remains to be seen how the latest
chapter in the saga of the Bush administration vs.
Hugo Chavez will play out. Stay closely tuned.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
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