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August 8, 2002
Gary Leupp
Karzai's
Bodyguard
August 7, 2002
Anis Shivani
The First
21st Century
Police State
Jeffrey St. Clair
Fallon's
Fallen
Is the US Navy Killing
Children in Nevada?
Robert Fisk
For the
Forgotten Afghans,
the UN Offers a Fresh Hell
Dr. Susan Block
Rigas in
Cuffs
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies of the US Part 5: the Call of Democracy?
August 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Signs
of the Elites
Bruce Gagnon
We Must
Come Alive
David Krieger
From
Hiroshima to Hope
Jerre Skog
Global
Reach of Corporate Crime or What the Hell are
They Teaching at Harvard?
Robert Fisk
Return to
Afghanistan:
Collateral Damage
Alexander Cockburn
The
Fox in the Pension Fund
August 5, 2002
Rahul Mahajan
Iraq
and the New Great Game
Jordy Cummings
The
Last Frontier of
Israel and Palestine
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Saddam's Diary
Mike Leon
US Mute
to Israeli Brutality
Norman Madarasz
Brazil:
the Most Important Election of 2002?
August 4, 2002
Susan Davis
Fat Americans
August 3, 2002
David Krieger
Nuclear
Apartheid
Gilad Atzmon
The End
of Innocence
Gavin Keeney
Everybody's
a Critic
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
August 2, 2002
Ralph Nader
The Labor
Party
Chris Floyd
Moral Maze:
Bankruptcy Made Easy
Jeremy Scahill
Saddam,
Chemical Weapons and Donald Rumsfeld
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Deeds in the Black Hills:
Daschle Dooms the
Sacred Land of the Sioux
August 1, 2002
Steven Higgs
Activists
Under Siege
Anthony Gancarski
Draft
Picks:
Staffing the Latest War
Zeynep Toufe
Invisible
Children: AIDS,
Africa and Selective Vision
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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August
8, 2002
Bush Administration
Tries to Hide Role in Venezuela Coup
by Mark Weisbrot
Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill's trip to Brazil,
Argentina, and Uruguay has brought some needed attention to the
financial and economic crises there. But there is one country
where the US is playing an enormous -- and thoroughly destructive
-- role that has been left out of the picture: Venezuela.
Last April the Bush Administration sent
a powerful message not only to Venezuelans but to all of our
Southern neighbors: if we don't like the presidents you elect,
we will use our muscle to get rid of them. By any means necessary.
That is what was understood when the Administration endorsed
the attempted  military
coup on April 11 against the elected president of Venezuela.
(The White House later justified its response by saying it thought
that President Hugo Chavez had "resigned;" but nobody
south of the Rio Grande was fooled).
Now we will see whether the Democratic-led
US Senate will object to this 1950s-style foreign policy.
On May 3, Senator Christopher J. Dodd
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee requested an investigation
from the US State Department, to find out what it did wrong in
Venezuela. What he got was a complete whitewash -- which was
turned over to the Senate last week.
The State's Department's supposedly independent
Office of the Inspector General didn't even interview a single
Venezuelan, but relied on US embassy officials and others who
had a direct career interest in covering up what happened. This
is comparable to investigating Enron by talking to Ken Lay and
Andrew Fastow.
Significant parts of the report remain
classified -- most tellingly, a section entitled "Miscellaneous
Issues Raised by the News Media in Venezuela or the United States."
Just what issues raised by the Venezuelan and U.S. news media
are our State Department trying to keep away from the public
discussion?
Of course they can't hide what the press
has already printed. The Washington Post and New York Times cited
numerous meetings between top US officials and the people who
led the military coup on April 11. The European press was even
more explicit about these meetings: "The coup was discussed
in some detail, right down to its timing and chances of success,
which were deemed to be excellent," reported the Observer
of London, citing sources at the Organization of the American
States.
There were dozens of such leads in the
press that the State Department could have investigated. But
they chose not to do so; or if they did, they have apparently
withheld the results from the public.
Some of the report's admissions are even
more damning than the omissions. Listing the reasons for US hostility
to President Chavez, the report notes "his involvement in
the affairs of the Venezuelan oil company, and the potential
impact of that on oil prices." There you have it: the number
one reason for the US State Department supporting a military
coup against a democratically elected president. He had the nerve
to get involved in deciding how much oil Venezuela should produce,
instead of leaving these decisions to Washington! And people
wonder why anti-US sentiment is rising in Latin America.
Even more importantly, the report admits
that US officials did little or nothing to warn the coup leaders
that the United States would impose sanctions on a government
that was installed by military force. This means that all the
admonishments from the US embassy about not supporting a coup
-- while Washington was funneling millions of dollars to pro-coup
organizations -- were a mere formality. The real message was
a big green light.
The anti-democratic Venezuelan opposition
will continue to understand that message, until there is an explicit
statement from the Bush Administration that a coup would result
in a cut-off of economic and diplomatic relations with the United
States.
The Senate should demand exactly such
a statement, and conduct a real investigation in place of the
State Department's cover-up. Anything less would tell the world
that our Congress -- not just the Bush Administration -- has
little respect for democracy in Latin America.
Mark Weisbrot
is co-Director of the Center
for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
He is co-author (with Dean Baker) of Social
Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press).
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