Bush did more than repeat the usual "freedom", "up or down vote," "voluntary personal savings account" talking points before the lapdogs of the White House press today.
He also met with one of his contract employees, Maria Corina Machado of the Venezuelan anti-Chavez group Sumate, according to the pretty picture at the White House Web site.
Machado is facing charges of conspiracy for accepting at least $31,000 from the National Endwoment for Democracy and $50,000 from the US Agency for International Development (and who knows how much from the CIA), to push for and "monitor" the unsuccessful recall of democratically elected Chavez last August.
The recall was necessary, from the Bushite neocon point of view, because the CIA coup in April 2002 failed miserably.
More below
As in this country, it is evidently illegal in Venezuela for partisan groups to accept money from foreign nations.
Machado maintains that her group, founded three months before the coup, is, in the words of the White House caption writer, "an independent, democratic, non-governmental organization to defend the electoral and constitutional rights of all Venezuelan citizens and to monitor and report on the performance of Venezuela's electoral institutions."
But Machado, before the coup failed, was one of the anti-Chavez leaders who backed the coup all the way, according to this Newsday story.
The gleaming presidential palace was abuzz with activity as nearly 400 prominent citizens signed a decree that would fleetingly transform the fragile democracy into a dictatorship.
Signers of the document -- which Chavez voided after his supporters dramatically swept him back to power hours later -- included Maria Corina Machado, an activist from one of Venezuela's leading families.
The Carmona Decree, named after coup leader and president-for-a-day Pedro Carmona, dismantled all three branches of Venezuela's government. In the aftermath, Machado's civic group was awarded tens
of thousands of American tax dollars from two major U.S. agencies -- The National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The funds were used partly to encourage voter participation in a subsequent effort to oust Chavez, this time through a recall referendum.
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Educated and dressed like a fashion plate, Machado in many ways typifies the opposition to Chavez. Like most of those who held sway in the racially divided country until the copper-toned Chavez took office in 1999, she is fair-skinned and comes from an elite family.
She holds a degree in industrial engineering and speaks a fluent English that she perfected in frequent trips to the United States, where she has vigorously lobbied for international pressure on Venezuela to drop conspiracy charges against her and Sumate president Alejandro Plaz.
Though she refuses to accept Chavez's defeat of the Sumate-led recall referendum, whose results were upheld by the Organization of American States and the Carter Center, Machado contends her work is nonpartisan.
Nonpartisan, is that a joke, or is she just good at the Rovian tactic of shamelessly repeating the lies, no matter what?
Machado supports a coup that would do away with democracy in Venezeula, and she gets free money from the National Endowment for Democracy and a visit with Bush.
So we've determined that there's nothing "democratic" at all about Machado and her group.
And how independent can she be when she's on the Bushite payroll?
Venezuela is off the radar for most people, but it remains the most likely next target of the neocons' campaign to control oil. And Machado is the pretty face they will use to try to whitewash a bloody, pre-emptive war for Venezuela's oil.