Chavez is a fruit loop. no?
Topic: General News.

Are you parnoid if they really are out to get you? Hugo Chavez said in September on his visit here the US was planning to invade Venezuela and everybody just scratched their heads and then forgot about it. The wiseguy at Oilwars found this interesting post at the WaPo blog that reports:

"The Pentagon has begun contingency planning for potential military conflict with Venezuela as part of a broad post-Iraq evaluation of strategic threats to the United States.

The planning has been precipitated by general and specific directives issued by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his civilian policy assistants.

Internal documents associated with the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and preparation of the fiscal year 2008-2013 future defense plan identify five specific "threat" countries in three groups requiring "full-spectrum" planning."

A pardon for Libby?

A nice little war in South American would get everybody's minds off of Scooter Libby's upcoming trial. Or would it? Remember, Daddy pardonedCasper Weinberger just before he was going to trial to prevent his notes, possibly inplicating Bush in the Iran/Contra scandal, from being used as evidence. Weighing the potential disaster of having Cheney and his office of misfits testifying under oath versus keeping all that dirty laundry under wraps might convince the brains behind Bush that a pardon, though politically damaging, is the lesser of two evils. He might want to just go ahead and pardon Rove right now, jus to be on the safe side.

Another thing everybody should ignore is Dana Priest's article in the WaPo yesterday pointing out that the:

"CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long."

Meanwhile W. is moving his rollign bunler tour down south. Reuters reports:

Bush was scheduled to arrive late Thursday for a two-day Summit of the Americas in a country where anti-Bush sentiment runs high due to the war in Iraq and U.S.-backed, free-market policies that Argentines say pushed millions of their compatriots into poverty.

"People see all the iron barricades and police on every corner and they get scared," said construction worker Hernan Brito, who received five last-minute requests to board up store windows from merchants who he said also fear looting.

U.S. interests like Blockbuster video stores and Citibank branches were covered with corrugated metal shields ahead of protest marches early Friday.

More than 7,500 police officers erected a security ring around the summit hotels and patrolled the streets and beaches of this normally bustling city of 600,000, which looked more like a ghost town. Coast guard boats and helicopters trolled the shore, while air space was restricted.

"We hope protests are carried out in a peaceful way, but if they are not, we are prepared to give wrongdoers a forceful response," said Federal Police commissioner Daniel Rodriguez."

That'll keep everyone's focus elsewhere!