The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as
he met President
Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy.
Chavez is anything but.


US President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with Venezuela's
President Hugo Chavez, Friday.
Photo: AP
The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic
traditions and has put
Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of
power, political
persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that
Chávez is a power-hungry
dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose
authoritarian vision and
policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the
US Senate, the South
American project director for the Center for Strategic International
Studies said that Chavez's
government engages in "arresting opposition leaders, torturing some
members of the
opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging,
if not directing,
its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and
intimidate voters-all with impunity."

In spite of a presidential term limit of six years, Chávez has
suggested that he would like to
remain in power for 25 years. Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses
human rights and
undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president.
There's something
wrong with that picture.