Posted on 03/05/2006 2:43:02 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
VENEZUELAN military officers have started classes in unconventional warfare to repel an invasion left-wing President Hugo Chavez warns Washington is planning.
Snipers draped in foliage and civilian reservists armed with knives, catapults and handguns crawled out of a hidden tunnel in a mock demonstration as an instructor lectured officers on resistance tactics.
Captains joined lieutenants straining behind a cordon to see another soldier camouflaged inside tree perch as he fired a bow and peppered a uniformed dummy target with arrows.
"If no one comes, then that's fine, we can continue as the free and sovereign country we are, but we cannot permit that any foreign force tries to invade," instructor Lt. Col. Antonio Benavides said as gunfire cracked from a firing range.
"All Venezuelans, the state and civil society, have a joint responsibility to defend the nation," he said over the weekend.
Locked in a fierce confrontation with the U.S. government, President Chavez is building up civilian reservists and ordering the armed forces to adopt a doctrine emphasizing "asymmetric war" or resistance war against a more powerful foreign force.
An initial group of 500,000 civilian reservists and territorial guard volunteers will start four-month basic training nationwide at weekends, said retired Col. Hector Herrera, a reservist advisor.
Washington dismisses Mr Chavez's charges that it plans to oust him to control the world's No. 5 oil exporter and brushes off his invasion talk as sabre-rattling to stir up nationalism before elections in December.
But tensions are high as U.S. officials portray Mr Chavez, a self-styled socialist revolutionary allied with Cuba, as a negative influence in Latin America. Washington has opposed Venezuela's recent arms purchases and the reservist drive.
The United States and Venezuela last month expelled diplomats after Chavez accused a U.S. naval attache of spying and the former soldier has stepped up threats to cut off U.S. oil shipments. Since surviving a 2002 coup, he has often accused U.S. officials of trying to topple him.
Speaking on his regular Sunday television program, "Hello, Mr President", Mr Chavez accused Washington of planning his kidnap and supporting opposition attempts to force the secession of western Zulia state where much of the country's oil reserves are located.
"If someday a group of invaders comes looking for me, they will never take me alive," Mr Chavez said.
"The war of resistance is war we would have in case of any imperialist intervention," he said.
At the special forces military base in Macarao National Park, officers listened to a lecture on camouflage, surprise attacks and utilising reservists to strike at invading troops as part of their regular training.
Instructors made comparisons to Viet Cong guerrilla attacks on U.S troops, including the use of secret tunnels, poisons and home-made weapons.
Venezuelan officers have also been sent to Havana to learn civilian-military cooperation from the Cubans as part of the training, said National Guard Gen. Juan Alberto Hernandez.
An ex paratrooper first elected in 1998, Mr Chavez has steadily cut U.S. military ties as he strengthens relations with Russia, Iran and Cuba. He has suspended U.S. anti-drug cooperation and ended most U.S. training programs.
In April he drilled more than 20,000 civilian reservists he said were key to defending his "Bolivarian" revolution, named after South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar, and to helping with his social programs for the poor.
Critics worry about the reservists may be used to crackdown on foes of a president they say has become more authoritarian in a drive to copy Cuban communism.
Reservists, who get a stipend of around $8 for each training session, could be armed with old FAL rifles currently used by the armed forces after regular troops get 100,000 new Russian Kalashnikov rifles, officials said.
"They will guarantee resistance against an invading force in their areas. They'll be trained in weapons and other home-made artifacts," said instructor Benavides. "They can be confused with the populace and that is part of asymmetric war."
What a nutbag!
My Lord that guy is paranoid.
Ok, now is the left, who is so willing to toss around the whole Hitler paradigm...watching this? Hey guys...your hero is acting Hitlerish! Nationalistic! Alarmist! Are you watching?
No, he isn't. The first rule of Communist regimes is to get fingers pointed at a hated external enemy and keep them there. It's the only way to keep dissent from brewing at home.
He might as well; A VD infested mind is a terrible thing to waste.
He's just biding his time before Venezuelans realize what a sheer failure he's been as president.
His time of reckoning is near...
Ouch! Ouch! My eyes hurt from rolling so hard!!!
But he gives the people free healthcare, so he's not a lunatic.
has Chavez even won an election yet?
It doesn't appear so.
"If someday a group of invaders comes looking for me, they will never take me alive," Mr Chavez said.
Dead, just as good.
Jimmah Carter would disagree.
Bush should just send a public message that WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU! That's all.
There won't be an invasion.
But we're still looking for someone to play the role of Pinochet to Chavez' Allende.
I know. We would be done with him overnight. As JC denton said in Deus Ex: "If i'm gonna kill you, you're already dead."
Really, really, really long punji sticks.
"If someday a group of invaders comes looking for me, they will never take me alive," Mr Chavez said. "
Yeah right Hugo, Saddam said the same thing. Sure kept his word, didnt he?
"What a nutbag!"
He may have a Vietnam type defense plan in mind.
You're right though, he's a complete wacko, albeit a wacko with lots of oil money.
A lot of these China, Venezuela, Iran etc headlines look like the captions from the beginning of Red Dawn, to me.
Not that I'm paranoid or anything, just vigilant.
Maybe Chavez needs a few US black ops personnel to visit him one night, and make it look like an accident...
yeah and Jimmah's been irrelevant since 1976.....
:)
Yes, and they are using the time tested war-cry:
They're coming to take me away... ho ho
They're coming to take me away... ha ha
Sadly, this was going to be the Democrat party theme song this year, but they lost out to Hugo Chavez.
Wrong. Fighting in that jungle environment would most certainly NOT be a cake walk.
If we had supported the coup in 2002 more actively, perhaps Chavez would never have returned to power.
Mine too! If I was Bush I would be tempted to send a supersonic flight of low flying B-1s over Caracas.
Not to drop anything. Just to create a sonic boom and would send brown organic matter squirting out of every anal orifice in the city.
Just to make them realize how much is at stake when you dis Uncle Sam tooooo much.
Oh, the suspense. Why doesn't he get it over with and just go ahead and kill himself.
Yeah. Well, it's nice to see they're keeping busy down there.
You're right. If Chavez's forces were dedicated, it would be like another Vietnam type combat scenario.
Please Arm all of the people and give them weapons and bullets.
Wonder who pays the health providers? ; ).
He's playing it up for the home crowd. Gotta keep them at fever pitch against something, or they may stage another coup d'etat.
Nope. He's practicing one of the world's oldest tactics: solidifying support for his dictatorship by creating an external straw demon. Nothing unifies people behind a leader like threatening an invasion in this day and age, especially by the U.S.
Kim Jong (Mentally) Il has been doing it for years in North Korea and it's a favorite of despots everywhere. Australia's about as likely to invade New Zealand as we are to invade Venezuela.
If what you say is true I don't know which is worse: You're friend telling you this, or you repeating it on a public internet forum. Loose lips sink ships.
"catapults"?
I presume the author means what in the US are called "slingshots" rather than the medieval artillery
That's the problem with socialized medicine, Canadians are finding that out now,
Neither invasion would take long!
Huh? Am I missing something in the news? I haven't heard any feirce controversial statements from the U.S. side?
Chavez is like an annoying yapping lapdog running around under your feet. The kind you would just dearly love to punt into the next yard but don't dare because it would be more trouble than it would be worth.
Some people just have to learn the hard way I guess.
BTW, I love your tagline. Hume is my journalistic hero.
Did I miss a sarcasm tag, or was it you?
OPINION: What's in Chavez' drinking water?
He's nuttier than a fruit cake.
He sounds like AllMyJihad in Iran
who has the exact same problem.
We should drop cartons of Depends on this guy. Just fly overhead and drop off diapers in parachutes.
Asymmetric wars, a wave of the future...
Hume is the best!...IMHO
If the coup had been real, it would have made sense to eliminate Chavez in the first hour
I think it more likely the coup was staged, in order to smoke out elements opposed to his rule, so they could be eliminated.
His primary enemy is the Venezuelan middle class, and his primary support is the welfare class. His objective is to turn the underclass into a security force that will maintain his rule
Hugo, we'd love to ignore you completely, and we would if you'd let us.
Maybe Chavez should talk to Saddam or Noriega, they were saying basically the same thing. Or there's always the old "conventional wisdom" that the UK would be unable to do anything when Argentina tried to take over the Falklands.
Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (Nov. 11, 2003) - Sailors aboard USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) "Man the Rails" as the Navy's newest Nimitz class aircraft carrier arrives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., her first ever port visit. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 1st Class John Lill.
Sensationalistic reporting that just feeds Chavez's ego.
But if I were his neighbors, I'd be wondering if my borders were up to snuff. It wouldn't shock me at all if he decided that some of his fellow South Americans were simply American puppet governments about to launch an attack on him, so he'd have to go liberate them first.
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