In a story that illustrates the growing paranoia of Venezuela's Marxist dictatorship, the country's navy chief has warned that U.S. troops docked in Curacao may be planning an invasion of Venezuela. Coming from dictator Hugo Chavez itself, such an accusation might easily be hot air because he often pops off on things he knows nothing about.

But this accusation was from Venezuela's naval commander, a possibly more serious source of information in some ways. We looked closer, and as a matter of fact, he wasn't. But that didn't stop the mainstream media from gullibly reporting the raving paranoid speculations of the Caracas regime to the detriment of what really happened.

We checked our sources in the U.S. military on this who say this troops—on—Curacao story is hooey. In fact, the entire story is very different from what the U.S. media dutifully reported from its Venezuelan government sources, and they didn't bother to check with the troops themselves. We did. Here is what happened:

A U.S. navy ship called the Saipan, tired and exhausted after a long humanitarian tour of duty in Haiti, finished its mission and set sail on its usual tour, making a routine port call in Curacao. The ship itself was nearly empty because its 1700 Marines had been flown for duty in Iraq (think about that for a minute!) The servicemen got off, walked around and returned to ship, with nothing secret or unusual about it.

The military had tried to publicize its humanitarian mission from Haiti, but the mainstream media completely ignored that. But the minute a tinpot regime commander accuses them of preparing to invade, a whole host of questions and speculations are raised by the mainstream media. While it might be newsworthy to report the paranoia of the Venezuelan regime, it's rather shocking that the Associated Press and other media never bothered to call the Department of Defense for some update on what happened before reporting the Venezuelan government's paranoia. In this regard, they missed the boat.

No wonder Rummy acts as he does around them in press conferences!

A.M Mora y Leon  03 01 05