Falkland Island Situation in the Caribbean?

I was reading Pravda online last week and came up with an interesting item. Seems that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela at a recent meeting with the Dutch Defense Minister, Henk Kamp, called the Dutchman “a pawn of Washington” and a “truly ridiculous man.” Chavez thinks that the Dutch are being manipulated by the United States and that the Dutch Islands off the coast of Venezuela (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao) could be used by the U.S. as a staging ground for a U.S. attack on Venezuela. Some in the Dutch government think it’s possible that Chavez might launch an attack on the Dutch Islands, just as Argentina did in 1982 against the British in the Falkland Islands.

Oddly enough, this is history repeating itself. In the late 19th century, a Venezuela dictator threatened the same Dutch Islands and the Dutch responded by sending a fleet to blockade Venezuelan ports. Washington pretended to ignore the situation in spite of the Monroe Doctrine which looked unkindly on European nations sending fleets to threaten nations in the Western Hemisphere. But the U.S. was unhappy with the Venezuelan dictator and let the events unfold. The U.S. has experienced difficulty with many Latin American dictators. Currently the list includes Chavez and Castro of Cuba. Coincidentally, the name of the Venezuelan dictator that threatened the Dutch Islands in the late 1800s was, are you ready, Castro.

I wish some foreign leader would call our Secretary of Defense a “truly ridiculous man” to his face. Besides being a truly frightening individual contemplating a possible nuclear attack on Iran, Donald Rumsfeld, along with Vice President Cheney and President Bush, is a ridiculous, dangerous man. This trio seems to enjoy putting American fighting men and women in harm's way.--Walter Haan, www.war-books.com