The IBD piece asserts that:

The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won’t snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That’s right, the government’s sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized. Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Here is the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide from October 2011, p. 171:

Certain investigative matters should be brought to the attention of FBI management and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials because of the possibility of public notoriety and sensitivity. Accordingly, Assessments and Predicated Investigations involving “sensitive investigative matters” have special approval and reporting requirements.
[...]
A sensitive investigative matter (SIM) is defined as an investigative matter involving the activities of a domestic public official or domestic political candidate (involving corruption or a threat to the national security), a religious or domestic political organization or individual prominent in such an organization, or the news media; an investigative matter having an academic nexus; or any other matter which, in the judgment of the official authorizing the investigation, should be brought to the attention of FBI Headquarters (FBIHQ) and other DOJ officials.

Sections of the document concerning the Sensitive Operations Review Committee (SORC) are heavily redacted so as to be unreadable. But the gist of the above text is that, yes, there are certain investigations which are considered more “sensitive” than others and this includes investigations of Islamic groups. But here’s the thing: this also applies to all religious and political groups as well as the news media and academic institutions. So the FBI would most likely face the same hurdles investigating a Christian church or a Jewish synagogue as it would in investigating a mosque.

Hilariously, the IBD editorial makes it sound as if the Sensitive Operations Review Committee was a recent creation of the Obama administration “set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques.” Yet the name of the committee also appears in the 2008 FBI domestic operations guide as well, meaning it was either created under Bush or an earlier administration.

It is doubtful that the IBD allegation contains even a shred of truth. The publication has previously made the false assertion that Obama offered to apologize for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (as if that would be a bad thing!) based on a willful misreading of a Wikileaks cable. Additionally, the complaints made by groups like CAIR and the ACLU about the FBI nosing around mosques and attempting to stir up trouble with provacateurs do not lack merit.

Predictably, the ludicrous idea that Muslims are exempt from the Obama administration’s numerous spying programs is now catching on in the right-wing puke funnel. It is an especially cruel myth to promote since Muslims have faced some of the worst civil liberties violations in the US in modern times. Apparently, the only way the right-wing can get outraged by government surveillance is by imagining red-blooded, white, patriotic Christians such as themselves as the primary target.

US v. Tarek Mehanna (Court of Appeals for 1st Circuit, Case no. 12-1461), Brief for the United States, 5 April 2013, pp. 67-68:

Under HLP [Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project], translation services render “material support” if they are “directed to, coordinated with, or controlled by foreign terrorist groups.” 130 S.Ct. at 2728. [...] Mehanna conspired and attempted to provide translation services that were “coordinated with” Al-Qa’ida. HLP used the term “coordinated” to describe “concerted” rather than “independent” activity. 130 S.Ct. at 2721-22. This distinction comports with the common understanding of the word. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 501 (1993) (defining “coordinate” as “to bring into a common action, movement, or condition”). As in HLP itself, this case presents no occasion to determine the outer limits of “coordination” because the term easily extends to services rendered to an FTO [Foreign Terrorist Organization] at the organization’s own behest. See McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U.S. 93, 221-22 (2003) (“Congress has always treated expenditures made ‘at the request or suggestion of’ a [political] candidate as coordinated”). Whether or not they constitute political speech, translation services requested by an FTO are not “independent advocacy” on its behalf. Whether or not they constitute political speech, translation services requested by an FTO are not “independent advocacy” on its behalf.

In this case, the government has declared the act of translating Islamist militant propaganda to be a form of criminal “material support” if done in “coordination” with designated foreign terrorist groups. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s refusal to define the level of coordination needed before speech can be criminalized in the HLP ruling, the government is now embracing one of the broadest definitions possible, one that doesn’t even require direct contact or a mutually recognized relationship.

It is increasingly unclear how one could engage in “independent advocacy” on behalf of an FTO without being seen as “coordinating” with the FTO in the US government’s eyes. The reason is obvious enough: militant groups with political goals tend to request all the advocacy they can get. If someone in the US without any connections to Hamas were to start a website offering verbal support for Hamas and translating Hamas propaganda, it would be almost almost impossible to conclude that the individual was not “coordinating” its activities with Hamas using the US government’s definition of the term. This is because Hamas would most likely welcome and encourage verbal support from anyone in any part of the world, just as any other group would.

UNOCI [United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire] has documented several dozen metal containers at the Attécoubé naval base, some bearing labels with misspelled information and some also with markings in Spanish (see annex 12 to the present report). It is possible, therefore, that the ammunition manufactured in Israel was relabelled and retransferred to Côte d’Ivoire after initially being exported to a third country. UNOCI also documented dozens of crates from the same lots at the presidential palace and the Attécoubé naval base in June and July 2011. The Group has observed that it is not common in Côte d’Ivoire to find large quantities of homogenous ammunition from the same producer and lot. Moreover, the two above-mentioned sites were facilities used (notably during the 2010/11 post-electoral crisis) by units of the Ivorian security forces loyal to Mr. Gbagbo.

It should be noted that Israel generally enjoyed warm relations with the (now fallen) regime of Laurent Gbagbo even after he fell afoul with France and the UN (Marc Perelman, “President of Cote d’Ivoire reflects on Israeli support,” Jewish Daily Forward, 6 June 2008). After a UN arms embargo against the Gbagbo regime was declared in 2004, both the UN and France suspected that Israel was still allowing arms to be exported there (Yossi Melman, “France demands list of Israeli firms selling arms to Ivory Coast,” Haaretz, 11 February 2005; Yossi Melman, “UN probing suspicions Israel sold arms to Ivory Coast,” Haaretz, 28 July 2005).

Gbagbo also enjoyed verbal support from Christian evangelicals and prominent figures in the American right, who saw his leadership as preventing the Ivory Coast from falling “into the hands of Muslims” (Alex Seitz-Wald, “Inhofe, Beck, and Pat Robertson defend brutal Ivory Coast dictator,” Think Progress, 5 April 2011; Justin Elliot, “Why the Christian right is backing a brutal despot,” Salon, 30 March 2011).

This wouldn’t be the first time Israel’s arms export policy has went against the official will of the UN, the major European powers and even the US. In the early to mid 1990s, it was an open secret that Israeli arms were getting through to Bosnian Serb forces as they shelled Sarajevo (Tom Sawicki, “How are Bosnia’s Serbs getting Israeli arms?,” Jerusalem Report, January 1995; Joel Bainerman, Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA & Israel’s Mossad, 1994, pp. 26-27; see also: Batsheva Sobelman, “Israeli citizen suspected of involvement in Bosnia war crimes arrested,” Los Angeles Times [blog post], 18 January 2011). At the time this explicitly went against the US/NATO policy of siding with the Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

“The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He’s in Fallujah and we’re going to destroy him.”

–Col. Gary Brandl (AP, 6 November 2004)

“Nearly every refugee from Fallujah I’ve interviewed has spoken of mass executions, tanks rolling over the wounded in the streets, bodies being thrown in the Euphrates by the military, and other atrocities.”

–Dahr Jamail (Interview with Charles Shaw, Newtopia, 2 December 2004)

Prensa Latina, 17 May 2013:

Deputy Governor in the Western Iraqi province of Al Anbar, Sadun Obaid al-Shalan, today called for using DNA tests to identify about a thousand bodies found in three mass graves on Thursday. Security forces and human rights organizations found the mass graves with containing around a thousand bodies in the northern city of Fallujah, and it appears that they were killed en masse in summary executions by U.S. occupation forces, said Sadun Obaid al-Shalan. [...] The mass burial was found in three graves between Saqlawiyah and Ameriyah localities, said the deputy governor, and it is presumed that those people were killed in 2004 and 2005, with their deaths never reported during the combat to retake control of the city.

It has already been reported that during the 2004 battles in Fallujah, the US military:

• Allowed its client regime under US-appointed leader Ayad Allawi to threaten legal action against journalists and news agencies that refused to “stick to the government line” (Reuters, 11 November 2004).
• Had snipers indiscriminately shooting “anything that moves” so that Iraqis were “afraid of even looking out the window” (AP, 12 November 2004). Snipers even regularly shot at ambulances (IPS, 20 April 2004).
• Considered parts of the city to be “weapons-free” zones. In the words of Kevin Sites, this meant that “Marines can shoot whatever they see–it’s all considered hostile” (NBC News, 10 November 2004).
• Prevented “all males aged 15 to 55″ from fleeing the city before and during the largest offensive (AP, 13 November 2004).
• Dropped three bombs on a medical center, killing 35 patients and 15 workers (Nation, 24 November 2004).
• Spurned a truce offer from prominent Sunni leaders (Washington Post, 6 November 2004).
• Tossed dead Iraqis into the Euphrates River (New Standard, 3 December 2004).
• Shot and killed Iraqis attempting to flee the city by swimming across the Euphrates River (Ibid).
• Blanketed the city with white phosphorus, a napalm-like weapon that causes agonizing burning even when water is applied (AP, 16 November 2005; IPS, 25 November 2004; Independent, 15 November 2005).
• Prohibited humanitarian NGOs from entering during the worst of the fighting (IRIN, 17 November 2004).
• Destroyed 70% of the city’s buildings (IRIN, 4 April 2005).
• Killed around 6,000 of the city’s residents according to the Iraq Red Crescent Society (IRIN, 26 November 2004).
• Left behind a medical catastrophe of skyrocketing rates of cancer and birth defects likely caused by depleted uranium (Rania Khalek, 20 March 2013).

FURTHER READING:

• “The barbarians of Fallujah” by Matt Carr
• “Fallujah’s legacy” by Richard Seymour
• “Remember Fallujah: demonising place, constructing atrocity” by Stephen Graham

The problem is this: the Republican Party is still hopelessly intertwined with neoconservative interventionists as the Democratic Party is in bed with liberal interventionists. Despite the often purported “isolationism” of the Tea Party movement, very little has changed in the GOP’s promotion of a militarized and fundamentally interventionist foreign policy. This is true even among Tea Party favorites. Sarah Palin–who built her media persona as being a “renegade” against the GOP establishment–largely endorsed the overthrow of Gaddafi while expressing some reservation over the Obama administration’s “mixed messages.” Mark Levin, a firebrand talk show host who is notorious for berating the alleged anti-Tea Party stance of the GOP, went as far as defending the Obama administration against claims it overstepped its Constitutional bounds by intervening without Congressional approval. While it is true that Michelle Bachmann and Allen West made statements against the Libya intervention, this opposition was rarely voiced and–in the case of West–inconsistent with an eagerness to get rid of Gaddafi.

And don’t even get me started on the man who the GOP nominated to run against Obama.

Muammar al-Qaddafi was a tyrant who terrorized the Libyan people and shed American blood and the world is a better place without him

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 20, 2011

Because the GOP finds itself incapable of condemning the regime change that took place in Libya, it is significantly hampered in the range of criticisms it can throw at Obama over Benghazi.

Also worth considering is this 2006 story:

Syrian guards foiled an attempt by suspected al-Qaida-linked militants to blow up the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday, exchanging fire outside the compound’s walls with gunmen who shouted “God is great” and tried to storm in with automatic weapons and hand grenades.
[...]
The rapid response by Syrian guards won rare praise from the United States, which accuses President Bashar Assad’s government of supporting terrorism in its backing of Hezbollah guerrillas and Palestinian militants.

“I do think that the Syrians reacted to this attack in a way that helped to secure our people, and we very much appreciate that,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. No Americans were hurt, and the embassy was not damaged.

White House spokesman Tony Snow also thanked Syrian officials and called for Damascus to “become an ally and make the choice of fighting against terrorists” (AP, 12 Sep. 2006)

Perhaps the Republicans could do US embassy workers more of a favor by keeping tabs on Obama’s regime change policy in Syria than by grandstanding over edited talking points.

Take it away Mr. Kucinich:

During the 1980s, the federal government, right-wing exiles and private conservative organizations waged a domestic war against the Central American solidarity movement and it’s related Sanctuary movement. The repression consisted of–but by no means limited to–frivolous investigations, widespread infiltration by informants and provocateurs, death threats, break-ins, criminal prosecution and at least one case of kidnapping, rape and torture…. and there were indeed unwarranted IRS audits, but that’s just kid stuff compared to most of what the FBI, the INS and others put the Central America peace movement through.

By the late 1980s much of this official sabotage against a generally peaceful non-violent movement was coming out from under wraps thanks to FOIA requests and Congressional investigations. Inside the prepared statement of a civil liberties group from one of the Congressional hearings is this nugget of information:

The requested advisory from the Heritage Foundation suggested a harder line against domestic groups opposed to administration policies. It called for ”presidential emphasis on the nature of the threat… the reality of subversion and emphasis on the un-American nature of much so-called dissidence.” The Heritage report insisted that it was critical that investigations of political groups not be required to be linked to a criminal investigation, and asserted that the FBI should be allowed to conduct break-ins as part of such investigations, without warrants or approval from the President or the Attorney General. According to the Heritage Foundation, surveillance of political groups requires “such standard intelligence gathering techniques… as wire-tapping, mail covers… and at least occasionally, illegal entries.”

– Statement of Center for Constitutional Rights before House Judiciary Committee, 20 February 1987

So, in other words, the Heritage Foundation advised the Reagan administration to conduct black-bag jobs against domestic dissidents. The Heritage report literally used the word “illegal” to describe the conduct it was recommending.

Still, it could have been worse: the Heritage Foundation could have asked the feds to delay the peace organizations’ tax-exempt status.

Alberto Rotondo was the head of security for Tahoe Resources’ Escobal mining project in San Rafael Las Flores, which resides in the southeast department of Santa Rosa. Rotondo is currently under house arrest on charges relating to assaults against anti-mining protesters. Quotes from the recently released piece of evidence include: “goddamn dogs, they do not understand that the mine generates jobs,” “we must eliminate these pieces of animal shit,” and “kill those sons of bitches.” He was arrested at La Aurora International Airport after telling his son in a wiretapped conversation that he would need to to flee the country to “avoid problems with the law.”

Tahoe Resources, Inc. is a Candian-based mining company with US offices in Reno, Nevada. The company was founded by ex-Goldcorp president and CEO Kevin McArthur in 2010. The Escobal mine was originally a Goldcorp project and it began when the company obtained an exploration license in 2007. In 2010, Tahoe Resources bought 60% of the shares in the Escobal project (MiMundo.org, 28 March 2012). Goldcorp has a long and bitter relationship with Guatemalan communities that oppose its projects on environmental grounds (Al-Jazeera, 24 November 2012).

On 17 March 2013, four members of an indigenous activist group were kidnapped by armed masked men while traveling home from a public referendum on the Escobal mine. While three managed to escape one of the members turned up dead the next day (Mining Watch Canada, 20 March 2013; Rights Action, 27 March 2013).

From freelance journalist Sandra Cuffe, earlier this month:

Fifty miles southeast of the capital, private security guards working for Vancouver-based mining firm Tahoe Resources shot and wounded several local residents on Saturday in San Rafael Las Flores, on the road in front of Tahoe’s El Escobal silver mine. [...] Following a Cabinet meeting late last night, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina declared a 30-day State of Siege in four municipalities around the El Escobal mining project: San Rafael Las Flores and Casillas in the department of Santa Rosa, and Jalapa and Mataquescuintla in the department of Jalapa. The measure is in effect as of today. Initial reports indicated that the constitutional rights suspended include freedom of movement, freedom of assembly and protest, and certain rights of detainees and prisoners (Upside Down World, 2 Mar 2013).

The double standard of the Guatemalan government’s approach to both sides in the conflict is rather blatant. Tahoe Resources security official Alberto Rotondo is merely under house arrest and allowed full legal representation after being caught authorizing murder while mine opponents are being detained without charge under Pérez Molina’s state of siege (Guatemala Times, 9 May 2013).

Strangely, the article doesn’t mention the National Endowment of Democracy, one of the key US tax-payer funded NGOs that supposedly promote democracy around the world. The co-founder of this group, Allen Weinstein, once stated that, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” It also neglects to mention the in-depth role played by the briefly-mentioned International Republican Institute in the temporary 2002 coup in Venezuela the permanent 2004 coup in Haiti. Both of these coups overthrew democratically elected leaders who were widely supported by the impoverished majority in their respective countries. In Haiti, individuals and groups funded and trained by the IRI actually associated with illegal militias made up of ex-death squad members in order to make their regime change successful.

Since the article mainly deals with USAID, it is inexcusable that it fails to cite a Wikileaked State Department cable from 2006 which plainly shows how USAID was utilized to undermine the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez:

The cable, signed by then-Ambassador William Brownfield, outlines a five-point strategy that includes “penetrating Chavez’s political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital U.S. business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.” Those goals are to be obtained by strengthening “democratic institutions,” according to the cable.

“During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and governance,” Brownfield wrote in the memo detailing how the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives helped those goals. Strengthening democratic institutions, he wrote, “represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela. Organized civil society is an increasingly important pillar of democracy, one where President Chavez has not yet been able to assert full control” (The Hill, 5 April 2013).

The harshest criticism voiced in the LA Times article comes from a Brookings Institution analyst named Ted Piccone:

“If this were flipped — if Egypt were funding groups in the United States — it would hit a real wrong chord [...] As evenhanded as we try to be, this is the most sensitive kind of assistance out there. We are intervening directly in their political affairs.”

This is relatively mild criticism when one considers the documented cases of “democracy promotion” being used as a fig leaf for political intervention defending US interests.

RELATED:
Chamber of Commerce affiliate received $100 mil. in US tax dollars to promote free market policies abroad (26 November 2010)

The efficacy in distributing oil wealth throughout the country will not necessarily be a cure for all of Libya’s ills but it will be the jumping-off point for recovery from the collapse of the previous government and a disruptive civil war. Part of the difficulty involved in making sure oil revenue is properly used will be reforming Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC), formerly the Libyan National Oil Company, which had been run under 40 years of Qaddafi’s dictatorial rule. Oil produced prior to 2011 in Qaddafi’s Libya was subject to 95 percent tax aimed mostly at multinationals. The figure has now decreased to approximately 75 percent, on par with energy giants like Russia and Norway. With nothing but time to bide, the proper divestiture of oil revenue to a vulnerable population, coupled with a flourishing democracy, may just reverse the bygone days of Qaddafi’s centralised socialism.

Honduras is a major transit country for cocaine, as well as some chemical precursors, and synthetic drugs. The United States estimated that more than 80 percent of the primary flow of the cocaine trafficked to the United States first transited through the Central American corridor in 2012. The United States also estimated that as much as 87 percent of all cocaine smuggling flights departing South America first land in Honduras. The Northern Atlantic coastal region of Honduras is a primary landing zone for drug-carrying flights.

Also worth noting is this statement from Danielle Marie Mackey, Guernica, 3 December 2012:

In a June interview with the staff of Diakonia Honduras, director Reina Rivera Joya mentioned that a map that charts the most common points of drug plane entry, provided by the regional security monitor organization Friedrich Ebert Foundation, shows exactly the parts of the country that are dominated by large plantations owned by the landowners: Aguan, Colon, and Mosquito.

In March 2012, 94 members of Congress sent the State Department a letter requesting that it “suspend US assistance to the Honduran military and police given the credible allegations of widespread, serious violations of human rights attributed to the security forces.”

This past February, the NGO Rights Action has documented the killings of some 88 peasants and peasant supporters in the Bajo Aguan region of Honduras (a backgrounder on the land-based conflict in this region can be found here).  Many of these killings–and other rights violations–have been attributed to the Honduran military’s 15th Battalion. According to Rights Action Co-Director Annie Bird, “at the same time the 15th Battalion was implicated in kidnappings, killings, threats, torture and abuse of authority, it received assistance and training from the Special Operations Command South (SOCSOUTH) of the United States Armed Forces.”

Last month, the Associated Press released an investigative piece on the presence of death squads within Honduras’ civilian police force.

See Also:

• “US Funds Still Supporting Honduras Death Squads” by Lauren Carasik
• “Honduras is Open for Business and Repression” by Grahame Russell
• “Honduras: Exhumations in the Aguán in Search of the Truth” by Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH)
• “Remains of Tortured Campesino Dug up in Honduras” by Rights Action and Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguan (MUCA)

One [commonly made argument] is usually summed up colloquially as, “Gaddafi was in bed with the West” since at least 2003 when sanctions were lifted and the U.S. and Libya appeared to pursue a mutual strategy of reconciliation and normalization. That reveals a superficial understanding of the actual content of their relations, which remained tense, on the brink of breaking on numerous occasions, and fraught with mutual suspicion. Ample evidence exists of course to show increased cooperation, exchange, and even the appearance of friendship between Gaddafi and certain Western leaders, as well as his heightened desire to be admitted into the mainstream of Western capitalism. Few (if any) commentators seem prepared to consider that it was this very “friendliness” that made Gaddafi more of a liability to those states that had previously attacked and isolated Libya, previously plotted his overthrow, supported previous uprisings, and continued to be a home to several opposition groups. Gaddafi became more of a liability because Western powers had now allowed a historical enemy to buy his way into the circuits of influence. Now he appeared to be using the momentary peace to pursue new goals that were ultimately far more threatening than any supply of weapons to the IRA had been, and those goals involved a central Libyan leadership role in an integrated Africa. In addition, no sanctions, new wealth, and influential friends in the West, along with promised reforms, threatened to extend the life of the Libyan Jamahariya under Gaddafi.

–Maximilian C. Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (2012)

Those who are horrible, despicable assholes view the workers with hatred and disdain:

These are the lifelong misfits, the slovenly obese, theclueless and singularly dimensional schmucks led by the Obama Jihad propaganda machine that says; “We be dah future…gimme what be mines…MMM MMM MMM.”

Fire every last bastard that walks off the job. Those companies can then take new applications from more of the 80% of high school ‘push-throughs’ who can’t read or form a coherent sentence. And then, if those clowns can’t pack a sack with what you ordered, it’s time to send these worthless deadbeats back to their beloved continent, via a 500 mile long caravan of cargo ships. Happy Tribaling!

As it currently stands, this is the highest rated out of 120+ comments in the thread with 44 likes. The rest of the thread, as you can imagine, isn’t much better. Another quick sampling:

As far as I am concerned, these comments are the purest distillation of White America that exists at the moment. Don’t get in between an angry fascist and his McDouble, or he’ll send you to Africa.

I’m beginning to see a pattern here.

Post supports Southcom’s planned “Partnership of the Americas” maritime surge to the Caribbean to be led by the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington. The deployment will help us to counter President Hugo Chavez’ courtship of Caribbean countries and his attempts to pit them against the United States. The ship visit will provide benefits to participating nations that offer a stark contrast to the Venezuelan Government’s failures to provide concrete help against drug trafficking and to promote sustainable economic development. Finally, the deployment advances U.S. interests by feeding into Chavez’ increasingly paranoid behavior and by creating conditions in which the Venezuelan leader could make a mistake.
[...]
Chavez sees conspiracy theories behind most U.S. actions. The involvement of his perceived allies in the region may constrain his ability to paint the deployment as a U.S. invasion. He is likely, however, to paint it as a dry run or an attempt to gather intelligence for a future attack. Timely notification that the Ambassador will visit the George Washington may contribute to Chavez’ paranoia. Planned port calls of the destroyer U.S.S. Stout to Curacao, the cruiser U.S.S. Monterey to Aruba, and the frigate U.S.S. Underwood to Trinidad and Tobago will play a useful role, as well.

If Chavez takes the bait, the deployment will expose the international community to apocalyptic statements and Venezuela-centric views of the region that make Chavez appear at best silly and at worst clinically paranoid in the eyes of many observers. He will alienate himself if he publicly suggests participating countries are collaborating in the U.S. military’s alleged machinations against him. The deployment is also consistent with Post’s broader strategy to force Chavez to react to the USG rather than allowing him to define the bilateral relationship.

Making Chavez feel temporarily isolated may provoke additional BRV missteps. Venezuelan diplomats lash out at their foreign counterparts when they are outnumbered on a particular issue. In addition, Chavez has shown an increasing tendency to provoke international leaders other than President Bush when he feels snubbed (REFTEL). Because Chavez fancies himself a regional leader, seeing much of the Caribbean participating in a U.S. military deployment will get his goat.
[...]
Any Chavez attempts to portray regional states as “colonies” of the empire will further undermine the Bolivarian President’s credibility.

This was some incredibly cynical and disturbing psy-ops on the part of the US.

(Related story here.)