Danilo Anderson, the Venezuelan prosecutor investigating the 2002 coup attempt by the opposition to Hugo Chavez, was assassinated Thursday evening in Caracas. Anderson was killed when his SUV exploded in an apparent terrorist act, the Chavez government is already
pointing a finger of blame at the opposition.
More on the flip
"The attack against Danilo Anderson is an attack against all of us,'' Chavez said in a televised address to the nation, adding that it was also an attack on Venezuelans' dreams of democracy.
The president's spokesman, Andres Izarra, earlier accused expatriate ``terrorists'' of being behind the assassination. ....
Izarra said the assassination was aimed at attacking the judicial branch and derailing Anderson's investigations and prosecutions of those who supported the coup against Chavez, in which 19 people were killed and almost 300 wounded.....
``The fascists and terrorists that acted against the prosecutor'' want to derail Chavez's social revolution, Chavez's spokesman told a news conference. ``Some of them train and constantly make pronouncements from Florida, United States.''
Venezuela is pretty much mixed nuts, and Chavez is hardly an angel, still....
Much of the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was harboring terrorists.
Political violence of this sort is despicable, and it raises serious questions about the intergrity of the war on terror if the Bush admnistration has allowed American territory to be used as a base of terrorist operations against the democratically elected government of Venezuela. The AP has the story. It will be interesting to see if this has legs, because this could do tremendous damage to President's standing in the war on terror.