Kenneth T. Tellis: Senior White House officials question Venezuela's arms purchases?

VHeadline commentarist Kenneth T. Tellis writes: When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias announced yesterday that his country would be buying Chinese military training planes, and expanding recent arms purchases to further strengthening its ties with China, Washington immediately accused him of carrying out an arms spending spree that could destabilize the region.

But they forgot to mention that the U.S. has been in the business of arms sales for s very long time, and one of her customers is the puppet state of Colombia, which used U.S. arms and equipment in the March 1, 2008 illegal raid across the border in Ecuador, and that did it felt did not destabilize the region at all.

Why does the U.S. government question these arms purchases by Venezuela, by the statement that there have been few military conflicts in the region?

• Is not Ecuador in the region, and was it not attacked by U.S. Special Forces and the U.S.'s Colombian surrogates on March 1, 2008?

So the statement about there having been few military conflicts in the region by the Senior White House officials was at best patently false.

This seems almost like the false accusations against Saddam Hussein of Iraq arming himself with Weapons of Mass Destruction, when none were developed or purchased at all. But, it did give the U.S. military an idea of what Iraq possessed, so as to have an edge, when they began the bombing and invasion of Iraq later.

Is the U.S. now attempting to gain information about Venezuela's defence capabilities in the even of a U.S. attack and invasion of that country?

These are all moot points, when putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, are they not?

Kenneth T. Tellis
kenttellis@rogers.com