Trust Chavez? Syria Says No!

If Chavez supports this, in Syria, why wouldn't he support the FARC?

Relatives of kidnapping victims protest
against the guerrillas today on Plaza Bolivar.

Colombians and others have long had doubts about the Venezuelan government's sincerity in the battle against Colombia's guerrillas and narcotraffickers.

Yet, the Colombian government keeps hoping...and hoping that the Venezuelans will really combat guerrillas on their territory. Venezuela once again promised to do so after last week's massacre of 12 Colombian soldiers by FARC, who then fled across the Venezuelan border.

A recent FARC bombing in the mostly
AfroColombian town of Tumaco.

We've had plenty of reasons to doubt the sincerity of the Venezuelans in the war against the FARC's terror: there have been repeated Venezuelan officials' statements and intelligence reports sympathizing with the guerrillas and even providing them material support in weapons. There were the Swedish-made rocket launchers which the Colombian military found in a FARC camp in 2009, and which the Swedes had sold to the Venezuelan military. Colombian officials have also found messages in guerrilla leaders' computers showing links between the FARC and Venezuelan government officials all the way up to Minister of Defense Henry Rangel Silva.

I could go on and on...including things people on both sides of the Colombian-Venezuelan border told me when I traveled thru there some years ago.

But the most damning proof that the Venezuelan government has no qualms about embracing vicious entities, just as long as they spout the right anti-U.S. rhetoric, are the recent barbarities in Houla, Syria. The Venezuelan government has insisted on its right to supply gasoline to the Syrian regime - an anti-U.S. ally - thus fueling the machines which massacred the men, women and children of Houla, Syria.

A protest today on Plaza Bolivar against
kidnapping by the FARC and ELN 

In the wake of that horror, while the rest of the world has denounced the Syrian government, Venezuela's leaders have kept silent - and evidently continued fueling the machines which are massacring civilians.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours