Word: chavezes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lackey of the empire, Uribe.' HUGO CHAVEZ, President of Venezuela, attacking pro-U.S. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe after Colombia's military launched a raid in Ecuador against Colombian rebels...
...Line: Chavez, who considers himself the modern heir of South America's 19th-century independence hero, Simon Bolivar, still likes to wear his red army beret. But according to a recent Chavez biography, he once told a U.S. diplomat that for all his bellicose rhetoric, "I know where the red line is. And I'm not going to cross that line - I just go up to that little edge." He demonstrated some sense of the limits on his power by conceding defeat in the referendum last year when critics had widely expected him to reject it and cross...
...fact, the Marxist guerrillas of the FARC had the upper hand in Colombia's four-decade-old civil war. But since Uribe took office in 2002, the armed forces have grown and modernized impressively enough to land body blows against the FARC, as demonstrated by Reyes' stunning demise. Chavez may have spent $4 billion over the past decade to buy everything from AK-47 rifles to Russian Sukhoi fighter planes, but the Venezuelan armed forces haven't seen real action since Chavez himself, then an army paratrooper, led a failed coup in 1992. So, Venezuela is likely at a military...
...Hard Sell at Home: If Chavez has learned one thing from his idol Fidel Castro, it's how to summon the threat of the U.S. to distract his countrymen from problems at home. And if there is one thing Uribe has learned from his pal George W. Bush, it's how to manipulate the terrorist threat to amass greater executive power. But a cross-border war would most likely backfire on both men - especially Chavez, whose strategy this time may have been a miscalculation, as Venezuelans haven't exactly taken to the streets to answer his martial call. Chavez plans...
What Would the Neighbors Say? Neither Uribe nor Chavez needs any more bad international publicity right now. Uribe's domestic approval ratings may be higher than the Colombian sierras, but he can't secure a free trade agreement with the U.S., for example, because Congress is too wary of his government's alleged ties to Colombia's bloodthirsty right-wing paramilitary armies and because of human rights abuses by the Colombian military. Nor is he getting global kudos for sending his troops over a neighbor's border on Saturday in an operation denounced by Ecuador's leftist President and Chavez...