If Hugo Chavez thought he could come to America and belittle our President without there being any consequences, he was wrong.
President Hugo Chavez said his foreign minister was detained by U.S. authorities at a New York airport Saturday for more than hour as he tried to return to the South American country.
Chavez told Venezuela’s state TV broadcaster that U.S. officials alleged that Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro had links to a failed coup that Chavez led in Venezuela in 1992.
“They have held him accusing him of participating in terrorist acts here,” Chavez said in Venezuela. “He didn’t even participate in that patriotic rebellion.”
Both Venezuelan politicians were in New York this week attending the yearly U.N. General Assembly, where Chavez attracted attention with a speech calling President Bush “the devil.” He later criticized the U.S. leader during a stop in Harlem before returning home.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials and it wasn’t known if Maduro has since left for Venezuela.
Maduro told CNN Espanol shortly after being released that he was confined to a small room and told to remove his clothes.
Maduro said that when he explained that he was the Venezuelan foreign minister and showed his diplomatic passport, he said he was threatened, pushed and yelled at by immigration and police officials.
“They were violating diplomatic conventions,” he said.
Maduro told Venezuela private TV station Globovision separately that U.S. authorities said a code on his airplane ticket identified him as “almost a terrorist.”
This is a little like the Valerie Plame incident. Don’t go after the person that is annoying you, go after their wife, or their foreign minister. It’s pure thuggery, designed to send a message to anyone that might think about sticking up to this bully of a President. It should be beneath a head of state to engage in this type of behavior, but almost nothing is below this President.
Wonderful. The Great Asswipe, having succeeded in his efforts to make hating America the standard in Europe, the Middle East, now turns his brilliance on Latin America. A whole new frontier, a whole new manpower resource to make sure terrorism threatens an isolated and despised US of A for generations to come. Not bad for the most idiotic demon in Hell. He should be a shoo in for Satan’s Golden Pitchfork award.
Venezuela is up against Guatemala for the seat representing the Latin American block as a non-permanent member on the UN Security Council. The US has been lobbying hard for Guatemala.
After the Chavez UN speech, some pundits had opined that it lost Venezuela votes….all mediapromoted was the Bush is the devil sound bite.
This JFK childish, short-sighted, little stupidity by Us authorities went over real big in the RoW and just broughtsympathy, disgust and I bet, restored those wavering votes; if any.
The speech was more than ‘the devil was here.’ What was said before that…and after?
“Rise Up Against the Empire.”
Heard on NPR Weekend edition, (no transcript) State Department apologized. We need partners…not bosses.
Should Venezuela retaliate and not deliver cheap heating oil to the north-east and mid-west this winter – or ship every barrel of oil to China?
may want to write an anti-suicide note now — if he hasn’t already done so.
His “treasonous” ideas can’t get much higher on the book charts.
Do you suppose if we sent a copy of this book to the White House anyone would read it?
If anyone read it, is there any hope of them understanding any of it? </snark>
Why does this bit of dialog come to mind?
And that was before I learned that the title of Chavez’s speech was “Rise Up Against the Empire!”
Um, except Darth Vader was right — Princess Leia was a part of the Rebel Alliance.
Not because I have anything against Maduro — far from it, I think detaining and threatening a diplomat was barbaric.
But now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the current United States misadministration is a pile of thugs. They don’t think they have to participate in niceties like the Geneva Conventions or diplomatic protocols. So this opens the door for American diplomats to be detained in a similar manner. Can you just see Condi Rice being detained for war crimes upon trying to cross the border of some foreign country? It looks like there’s even precedent for a strip search, but let’s not go there.
I keep hoping somebody will detain the Chimp in Chief but it hasn’t happened yet.
From The Independent, UK
The State Department said yesterday that the incident had been “regrettable” and that it had apologised. But Mr Maduro was not mollified.