Hugo the FARC Lover

Hugo is making some noises and Correa is following his lead. Myles Frechette, a former ambassodor to Colombia, made the rounds in the papers. I don't want to read too much into it but it appears to me that the Frechette tailored his message to his audience. For the Herald Frechotte cited Hugo's motivation for his actions:

"You'll see a lot of [diplomatic] movement in the next few days,'' Frechette said, adding, "Chávez is playing to the cheap seats in Venezuela. His ratings are down. The economy is suffering, and the people know it. He's using this as a smoke screen. Note that Chávez has carefully not said he'll attack Colombia"

In the WaPost piece Frechette goes out of his way to say that Uribe is the one in dire straights:

"Uribe has got to go down there, meet with Correa, calm him down, and he's going to have Chávez fuming at the border," Frechette said. Uribe is "in a pickle, in the sense that diplomatically he's got to get himself out of this corner that he's got himself in."

Every piece even the one at NYTimes notes Chavez is gets along fine with the FARC. NYTimes article defined Chavez/FARC relations as warm and noted, just like WaPost, that Reyes and Hugo had met three times.

FARC Leader F***ed

Sort of intellectually lazy to resort to profanities but how else to characterize the elimination of Raul Reyes by Colombian forces? I have to give a hat-tip to Boz where I first happened upon the good news. He also has some good analysis and links - so good that anything on my part would be superfluous.

The only new news Boz has not put up is Venezuela's reaction which is to man up along the border to protect FARC guerillas residing in his country...Oh gosh...did I say that out loud? I meant that Chavez put troops along the border to protect the sovereignty of Venezuela. Chavez is also shutting down the embassy in Bogota. Since the Colombians did not touch Venezuelan territory this strikes me as a tad hysterical, assuming that he is not associated with the FARC. Chavez is doing his saber-rattling routine to see if he can boost popularity at home - it worked for Fidel so why not him? At least that seems to be his thinking.