What to do about Venezuela

Unquestionable electoral fraud.  Despite Mr. Carter’s validation, an independent statistical analysis performed by a joint team of Harvard University and MIT professors in August 2004 concluded that while it was impossible to determine the actual dimension of fraud, there was no question that fraudulent activity in the electronic voting process skewed the results.

These findings were seen as unwelcome outside Venezuela.  The Organization of American States dismissed the Harvard-MIT study.  For its part, the Carter Center issued an in-house response that actually raised serious doubts about the technical capabilities of the Carter Center to observe this type of elections or to evaluate their aftermath. One stubborn fact surrounding the fraud is that the companies hired to supply the voting machines and the software for the referendum were secretly created and partly owned by the Venezuelan government.

Jimmy Carter ignored pleas from the opposition and publicly endorsed the results, despite the fact that the government reneged on its agreement to carry out an audit of the results. Carter’s actions not only gave the Venezuelan regime the legitimacy it craved, but also destroyed the public’s confidence in the voting process and in the effectiveness of international observers.

Since then, despite the fact that polls continually show the opposition holding nearly 50 percent support among the electorate, the regime has been winning regional elections by huge margins as opposition voters abstain from what they perceive to be a futile and corrupted process.

Reaping What Has Been Sown

As a new Secretary of State took office in early 2005, she confronted in Venezuela an oil-rich dictatorship that had all but defeated its democratic opponents and that has done the following:

•  created strategic alliances with designated state-sponsors of terrorism, including Cuba, Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Libya prior to the lifting of sanctions. The alliances with Iran, Cuba, and Libya involve transfers of technology (weaponry), and personnel purged the Venezuelan military of pro-U.S. officers and terminated productive security relations (including exchange programs) with the U.S., causing   U.S. military teams to depart in 2002 and replacing  them with Cuban advisers and special forces personnel from the People’s Republic of China;

•  used Venezuela’s oil wealth for subversive purposes and to prop up a state sponsor of terrorism:
  • replaced the Soviet Union as the Cuban regime’s chief supplier of heavily subsidized oil;
  • while chairing OPEC, attempted to use the cartel to wage political and economic warfare against the United States;
  • brought Saddam Hussein’s and Muammar Qaddafi’s oil managers to reorganize the state PDVSA oil monopoly and bring it under Chavez’s political control;
  • placed PDVSA under the control of Ali Rodriguez, a former Maoist guerrilla who openly identifies with extreme Islamist causes.

•  effectively merged his security and intelligence services with those of Cuba:
  • approved a treaty with Cuba granting Cuban judges and members of the Cuban state security apparatus full jurisdiction inside Venezuela;
  • placed the Venezuelan intelligence service (DISIP) under the control of the Cuban DGI intelligence service, with DGI officers openly staffing key DISIP managerial and analytical posts;
  • brought in thousands of Cuban secret police and intelligence officers to train and staff Bolivarian security forces;
  • imported thousands of Cuban civic action operatives to build a political support base among the urban and rural poor;
  • set up Cuban-style political goon squads, called Bolivarian Circles, to use intimidation and violence against political opponents and non-supporters, both among civilians and the military;
  • set up Cuban-style neighborhood block committees to spy on each member of the community and enforce political participation and control.