US uses drug war to further political interests

The Mexican army seized 5 1/2 tons of cocaine on a commercial airliner that had arrived outside Mexico City from Venezuela. It's a big haul but hardly remarkable enough to mention except for the way they slant the story to smear Venezuela's President Chavez. Take these 2 closing paragraphs.

A U.S. State Department report released in March said that Venezuela has become a key transit point for drugs because of “rampant corruption at the highest levels of law enforcement and a weak judicial system.”

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez suspended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in August, accusing its agents of spying.

Leaving aside the rank hypocrisy of our State Dept throwing pot shots at rampant corruption in law enforcement, as if it doesn't occur here regularly, look at the other information buried in the middle of in the article. [emphasis added]

The army was waiting for the plane on Monday at the airport of Cuidad de Carmen, 550 miles east of Mexico City, after receiving information from Venezuelan and U.S. authorities, Gen. Carlos Gaytan told a news conference.

That suggests cooperation doesn't it? And what's the point of this paragraph?

U.S. and Mexican officials say that cocaine and heroin is increasingly passing from Colombia through Venezuela to Mexico where it is smuggled into the United States. While drug traffickers used planes to smuggle large quantities of drugs in the 1990s, most Mexican traffickers now use land and sea routes.

This shipment was found on a commercial plane. It has nothing to do with overland smuggling. So why bring it up except to smear Venezuela? And then there's this little item.

Soldiers arrested Colombian Miguel Vazquez, 47, who was the plane’s co-pilot, but the pilot escaped, Gaytan said. There were no passengers.

You'll notice they don't identify the carrier or the orgination point of the flight. My guess is it was a Colombian airliner that merely stopped in VZ to refuel. This is how our government uses the drug war to further its political agenda.

Chavez is on their hit list. They desperately want to neutralize him and regain mega-corporate control of his oil reserves that they lost when Chavez nationalized the oil companies in Venezuela. Plus they want to neutralize Chavez period since they blame him for creating the current political climate in the Latin Americas that has swept so called leftist candidates into office. As if it can't be blamed on malevolent US drug war and trade policies that has kept the indigenous populations living in fear and poverty. But how convenient to blame Chavez for their failures.

[hat tip Skald]