There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical of this memo, but that is not one of them. We’re dealing with something that, if genuine, has been translated from English to Spanish and then rendered into English again for press-release purposes. Try that with Babelfish sometime and see what happens.
BG…if they had the memo they would have simply published it, no? Why would they have translated it into Spanish and then translated it back into English if THEY HAD THE ORIGINAL ENGLISH VERSION OF THE MEMO???
Good grief.
-XT
The original name for the operation, before Bush ordered it changed, was Operation “Blue Spoon” (The two other operations that got rolled up into Operation Just Cause were Operations “Nifty Package” and “Acid Gambit”)
You’re not thinking like a bureaucrat.
And you are really trying to hard to make this all work to your preconceived idea of what’s going on here.
So…we are both guilty.
-XT
Yes, except there’s a difference between overt ops and covert ops, no? Overt ops have market tested code names when the go overt: Operation America Kicks Ass, Operation America: Fuck Yeah!, Operation Renounce Satan and All His Works. Covert ops literally have a code name generated randomly by computer so that the code name has absolutely nothing to do with the operation. Operation Have Blue, Operation Paperclip, and so forth.
The other thing about the memo is the strange mix of vague and specific. It says things like “foment unrest” without explaining what exactly that IS. And then it names specific people, specific media outlets, in order to specifically implicate specific people.
What we are witnessing here is not the total breakdown of any pretense of rational inquiry under the pressure of an agenda-driven ideology. Nopers. Not at all. And this certainly isn’t a microcosm, either.
I have examined this post carefully, and find, to my astonishment, that there isn’t a hint of irony.
Well, I hope it’s all smoke-and-mirrors and the referendum goes forward with no disturbances.
I am at any rate very encouraged that nobody at all has yet come in here to argue the U.S. government should try to destabilize Chavez’ government.
:rolleyes:
If George Bush or Hillary Clinton or Jimmy Carter had proposed a referendum granting themselves extraordinary unchecked executive power, would you hope that there were no disturbances as the referendum went forward?
If there were massive demonstrations against the referendum, would that be bad or good? What if the Canadian government opposed the referendum, and supported domestic groups opposed to the referendum?
The fact that Hugo Chavez’s consolidation of power is opposed by the Bush administration does not therefore mean that Hugo Chavez’s consolidation of power must be a good thing.
Dude, it’s Latin America. You have to make allowances. Except when it’s someone on the right of the political spectrum. Then there are no allowances. That’s freakin’ obvious, man.
Depends on how you define “disturbances.”
That would be good, I suppose, but street demonstrations (entirely home-grown, in all likelihood) are happening now in Venezuela, which is no surprise as many such have happened before; the memo seems to contemplate “disturbances” that go way beyond that.
Let 'em, so long as they do so openly and above-board, and the Canadian equivalent of the CIA is not involved.
No, it doesn’t; but such opposition remains a bad thing.
BTW, the referendum is not just about consolidating Chavez’ power, though that’s certainly in there.
Sorry…my irony meter is currently a smoking pile of char in the middle of the floor. It’s laying next to the smoking remains of my hypocrisy meter…
I think Chavez is doing quite well enough in destabilizing his own government. He doesn’t need Bush’s help there.
-XT
I think it’s a crying shame that no one has seen fit to boot that village idiot out of office. The last thing anyone needs is a complete retardate in charge of a country.
Here’s the buffoon spouting off like a young earth creationist on YouTube:
Rough translation:
- Chavez: How many years old is the human race, Francis? 20 centuries, right? Something like 20 centuries?
- Francis: A little more.
- Chavez: A little more?
- Francis: Yes.
- Chavez: about 25?
- Francis: Yes, right.
- Chavez: 25 centuries, yes – thanks.
:rolleyes:
Sure that wasn’t an interview with W? 
(1) I’ve never heard the term HUMINT used to refer to operations. Wikipedia also lists the term as referring to a form of gathered data – not a group of people. Whoever wrote this document knows next to nothing about actual intelligence activities.
(2) The term “OPERATION” is rarely used, even in the DoD, for stuff you want to keep quiet. marshmallow is dead-on in stating that if this were real, it would be called something like COPPER NOBLE or FICKLE YELLOW. Again, the author has no idea how intelligence works in the U.S.
I’d say that they made up the memo to support their conclusions, paid lots of attention to the content, and totally ignored making it realistic or plausible.
Did you notice that every Operation you cite is a DoD movement of troops which was acknowledged by our gov’t in public? Secret operations don’t have marketing departments. They have obscure code names that are completely unconnected to the content of the information. In my old office, where some of the employees held fairly high security clearances, we used to joke that “You’re not cleared for CLYDESDALE,” and “Anything from the ANGRY DOLPHIN files has to be marked Burn Before Reading.”
Well, I just listened to a report on the election on All Things Considered, and there was no mention of an impending coup, access to polls being disrupted, etc. 
So…what conclusions do you now draw from that?
-XT