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December 10, 2007

Chavez and his plans to overturn the election

Thomas Lifson
Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's former foreign minister, writes in Newsweek online that Hugo Chavez attrempted to overturn the vote on his dictator-for-life constitutional "reforms" in Venezuela.
... by midweek enough information had emerged to conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in El Nacional, and confirmed to me by an intelligence source, the Venezuelan military high command virtually threatened him with a coup d'état if he insisted on doing so. Finally, after a late-night phone call from Raúl Isaías Baduel, a budding opposition leader and former Chávez comrade in arms, the president conceded-but with one condition: he demanded his margin of defeat be reduced to a bare minimum in official tallies, so he could save face and appear as a magnanimous democrat in the eyes of the world. So after this purportedly narrow loss Chávez did not even request a recount, and nearly every Latin American colleague of Chávez's congratulated him for his "democratic" behavior
Last week Roger Cohen wrote an op-ed for the New York Times of stunning, idiocy, naïveté (or disingenuousness), praising Chavez for his commitment to democracy.

AT ridiculed Cohen's idiocy, and added some facts that he neglected to mention.  John Podhoretz of Commentary asked if this was the worst op-ed ever written.

It takes a lot of doing to be worse than Paul Krugman who has predicted multiple fantasy recessions, or Maureen Dowd, the world's oldest teenager. But right now Roger Cohen holds the crown as the most ridiculous op-ed columnist at the New York Times.

Hat tip: Rick Moran

Posted at 01:14 PM | Email |

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