Venezuela's Chavez Starts Channeling Sun Tzu

Sometimes when a politician changes his mind it's a sign of strength. No one would mistake Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's recent reversals for anything other than an acknowledgement that he is a man in retreat. That's what a sudden and massive loss of public support will do to a guy. Take his weekly television and radio address of June 8, in which he urged Alfonso Cano, the new leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to hand over all the guerrilla group's hostages, some of them held for more than 10 years. This is the same Chavez who has embraced and encouraged FARC, a group that most of the world considers a terrorist organization with a side business in drug trafficking. But there was Chavez, saying ``the guerrilla war is history`` and ``at this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place.'' Just a few days earlier, Chavez backed off on a new national intelligence law, which would have turned Venezuela into the next Cuba. The most reprehensible aspect of the law would oblige every Venezuelan to cooperate with the country's intelligence service and police or risk prison terms of two to six years. The law was decried by human-rights groups, the press, the Catholic Church and political opposition. In a rare moment of clarity, Chavez called the new law ``an indefensible error.''