And you thought Chavez was exaggerating...
...a few days ago.

via Rising Hegemon (one of my very favorite blogs), it seems that the US has decided to "move to a more confrontational approach" vis-a-vis Venezuela. I guess the coup wasn't confrontational enough (Seattle Times):

The U.S. government knew of a plot to oust Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, in the weeks before a 2002 military coup that briefly unseated him, newly released CIA documents show, despite White House claims to the contrary a week after the coup.

Yet the United States, which depends on Venezuela for nearly one-sixth of its oil, never warned Chávez, Venezuelan officials said. [snip]

While one government is not required to tell another government with which it has diplomatic relations that it may be facing a coup attempt, such an alert would be in keeping with the spirit of the Inter-American Democratic Charter of which both Washington and Venezuela are members, according to international-relations experts.

No definite proof has yet emerged that the maladministration was directly involved in the coup attempt. But, as attaturk says, if people don't realize "that the Bush Administration's fingerprints were all over this coup they are living in fantasy land." Half of America lives there, unfortunately.
- posted by TJ @ 2:54 PM