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Connie Mack (Se agradece difundir)
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 9:07 PM
From: M&M
Congressman Connie Mack (FL-14) Chairman, Western Hemisphere Subcommittee
Prepared Remarks for CPAC 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, DC
As Barack Obama might have said to his House majority two years ago, I won't keep you long.
It's a new day in Congress. Yes, they still have the White House. Yes, they still have the Senate. But we now have the House. And, in case somebody missed it, we're making sure the liberals know we're here.
Speaking not just for myself, but for every old member and new, this time on spending, on deficits, on the size and scope of government. This time we mean to make cutting our goal and freedom our standard.
We can't yet control the government. That will take another election. But we can define the agenda. Two years ago, Washington turned towards socialism at home and apology abroad. Our agenda is pride, freedom, and standing up for America.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, where our troops are committed, the Obama administration has signaled over and over that there is nothing they want so Zmuch as to get out of town. Well, let me tell you how I see it. You do not send young Americans to fight and possibly die in far-off lands unless you are ready to let them win.
The best way, the only way to protect freedom is to look ahead, be confident and, sure, speak softly, but carry the biggest stick on the block.
While we in the new House majority do all this, my own assignment will be to focus on a clear and present danger rising in our own hemisphere. A danger that expands its strength and reach every day. A danger that this administration, like previous administrations, has not fully understood.
I am talking about Hugo Chavez and his campaign to destroy freedom and democracy throughout Latin America.
For too long American administrations have thought of Chavez as the Clown King of Caracas. A bouncing buffoon, gesturing Evita-like from a balcony, entertaining throngs so he could rob them.
But there's nothing funny about him. Oppression, aggression, terrorism, and drugs: these are the tools of a 'thugocrat.' These are the weapons of Hugo Chavez.
With them, Hugo Chavez is making himself the Osama bin Laden and the Ahmadinejad of the Western Hemisphere. Like bin Laden, for reasons known only to him, he has declared the United States to be his mortal enemy.
Like Ahmadinejad, he has at his disposal the rights, privileges, and resources of a state. A very, very wealthy state.
And so, years ago, Chavez launched a silent war on America and all that America stands for. The world of freedom. The world of democracy. The world of enterprise. The world of law. He is against that world. We are for it. We must act to preserve, protect, and defend it.
Let's be clear about who Hugo Chavez is. He believes in intimidation and manipulation. He rules with an iron fist. As I said, he is a 'thugocrat'.
What has Chavez done? What is he doing? How should we respond?
What he has done is simple. He has systematically suppressed political freedom and democracy, imposed socialism, and exported his so-called 'Bolivarian revolution' throughout Latin America.
He has invented his own four-step system for gaining unlimited power.
Step one: Win a presidential election. Or, if you can't win, as he could not, attempt a coup, go to prison, and when you get out, steal an election.
Step two: Change the constitution and give yourself broad new powers. He did this. Then he stacked the electoral system in his favor, gave himself sweeping authority, and he began to socialize the economy. He seized control of Venezuela's oil industry and banks and generators of electricity. He asserted control over food and consumer goods prices.
Which bring us to step three: Create a crisis so you can demand even greater powers.
In the Soviet Union, the people had a joke. This is true. They asked, "What would happen if socialism came to the Sahara?" They answered, "Soon sand would be in short supply."
That's the way it's been in socialist Venezuela. Oil production has fallen. Refining capacity has deteriorated. The country must now import gasoline. Shortages of electricity and food have become facts of life. Chavez seized the coffee trade. Now Venezuela imports coffee. Inflation is well into double digits. The economy is shrinking.
Chavez says he speaks for the poor, and he seems intent on making more of them.
If you want to create an economic crisis, socialism is the one guaranteed route. In Venezuela, the crisis started early.
In 2002, four years into Chavez's rule, a million people marched on the presidential palace in Caracas, demanding his ouster. They were reacting against what they called the creeping 'Cubanization' of the nation - both political and economic. Chavez ordered the army to suppress them. The top command refused. Chavez hired gunmen. Nineteen people died.
Chavez claimed that he had foiled a U.S. engineered coup, a charge that has been investigated and found false.
But with opposition down and his economic power up, Chavez rewarded friends and punished enemies. In 2004, more than 2.4 million Venezuelans signed a petition to recall Chavez. So a Chavez-allied website published the names and national ID numbers. Soon those brave patriots could not get passports, national ID cards, or work in the public sector.
By 2009, Chavez was forcing hundreds of radio and television stations out of business or into government hands. And new so-called 'media crimes' were created for, in effect, punishing anyone who criticized Chavez.
And now we come to step four: Declare yourself president for life.
This September, Venezuela held elections. By then, those million marchers of 2002 had become most of the country. The opposition won a majority of votes cast.
So in the hemisphere's other 'most productive lame duck session ever,' the outgoing puppet majority rubberstamped the Chavez Plan B.
The Economist magazine called it the Chavez's "coup against the constitution." The outgoing National Assembly gave Chavez full decree power for the next eighteen months. They packed the Supreme Court. They extended government control to the Internet and mobile phones. They made Internet carriers subject to 'media crimes'. It all added up to, as
The Economist headlined, "Hugo Chavez castrates the newly elected legislature."
Economic and political oppression, that's what Chavez has meant inside Venezuela.
What is he doing outside?
That's where drugs, terrorism, and aggression come in.
Last year, the Colombian government went to the Organization of American States and laid out their neighbor's aggression-by-surrogate against their country.
They told the OAS that Chavez had been providing safe harbor for 1,500 Marxist-narco terrorists of the so-called FARC insurgency. And not just safe harbor. Since 2007 he had allowed more than sixty attacks from these camps against targets in Colombia. More than an attack every month. Chavez has even given oil to the guerrillas to finance their anti-Colombian war.
Colombia is not the only target of Chavez's ambitions. Chavez uses oil to support Fidel Castro and former Soviet-supported Nicaraguan communist top man and now again president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega.
And he uses oil to help like-minded, would-be strongmen undermine democracy in their countries.
Remember that four-step process for taking power?
Along with discounted oil, he's worked with greater or lesser success to export that process to Bolivia, Ecuador, and until the country's Supreme Court stopped him, Honduras.
Now, I have a couple of questions for the Obama administration.
First, why has the administration stood against constitutional democracy in Honduras while protecting Millennium Challenge funds for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? Why?
Second, why are they supporting people who stand with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez instead of people who stand for freedom?
Just to be clear, here's where I stand. When the world asks whose side is the United States on, everywhere and always, our answer must be, "We are on freedom's side."
Meanwhile, Chavez has been playing in Mexican politics. Allegedly giving financial backing to left-wing parties; giving support to terrorist groups bent on destabilizing the Mexican government; and perhaps bent on much more.
As one prominent Mexican now living in the U.S. told the
San Francisco Examiner last year, his words now, "Members of the U.S. administration don't understand what's been brewing in Mexico." He continued, "There is a huge international interest to change Mexico into a socialist, communist state."
And a high level Mexican official told the
Examiner that, "With the backing of dictators like Chavez, [subversive groups] will continue to try to destabilize Mexico."
No wonder the president of Mexico, President Calderon, has been quoted in one of the Wikileaks released cables as imploring U.S. officials that Latin America, in his words, "needs a visible U.S. presence" to counter Chavez's influence.
Yes. and we also must secure the border and stop the flow of terrorists and illegal drugs into the United States of America.
Mr. President, you must do this and you must do it now!
You have heard how Chavez has courted Iran. Diplomatic trips. A pledge of full military cooperation. According to the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, possibly providing uranium to the Iranian atomic weapon program - and he may be helping to finance that program, too.
According to the former district attorney of Manhattan in New York City, "Venezuela has an established financial system that Iran. can exploit to avoid economic sanctions."
Perhaps you've even heard that Chavez has established direct commercial flights from Tehran to Caracas.
Sounds innocent enough, right?
Except that he's also established safe houses in Caracas for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists -- passengers on that Tehran-Caracas shuttle.
What's the next stop for the terrorists after Caracas?
We believe that some of them go to the war zones inside Mexico near our southern border. From there, how many have slipped into here? Where are they now? Our government should know. It doesn't know. We're going to make them find out.
Everywhere around the world it's the same story. Day and night Chavez is cultivating alliances with countries that would like to undermine the U.S.'s power and position -- to make the world a more dangerous place for us.
Russia, China, Syria, Libya, Belarus, and North Korea all are his diplomatic ports of call.
Meanwhile Venezuela has become a port of call for the Russian navy.
And now there is talk of basing Iranian-supplied missiles in Venezuela, and Chavez is making moves that look like he wants to acquire nuclear weapons.
Add all that to Chavez's global weapons buying spree, including planes and submarines that have no defensive purpose.
Can we doubt what he has in mind?
Slinking through the shadows of diplomatic back alleys around the world with a murmured "it's time" here, and a whispered "come on" there, he has been gathering a gang of thugs like himself to take down the American sheriff of what Charles Krauthammer once called the 'unipolar' world.
This is what I meant by a clear, present, and developing danger.
I mentioned oil politics, giving out cheap oil to win influence and control in a country.
There is someplace else he does this, right here in the United States of America
And he has an accomplice, I am sorry to say, a low man with a great name, Joe Kennedy.
President John Kennedy said, "We will pay any price, bear any burden to insure the survival and the success of liberty."
It is a disgrace that a nephew of the president who spoke those magnificent words, and the son of his brother and attorney general. It is a disgrace that this man is the front man in Chavez's oil-for-influence campaign here.
Joe Kennedy hasn't paid any price, but he's taken one.
In defending himself, he says he opposes 'some' of what Chavez has done.
So let me ask this question, when he says 'some,' that sounds like there are one or two small details where he thinks Chavez is wrong, which one or two small details?
Is it Chavez's suppression of broadcasters and the press? Or the Internet?
Does he include economic policies that have created shortages in food, coffee, gasoline, electricity and that have hit the Venezuelan poor so hard? Not to mention the double-digit inflation.
Do the 'some' things include assuming dictatorial powers? Or backing murderous FARC drug thugs? Or throwing DEA agents out of the country? Or making Venezuela an accomplice in the global drug trade? Or working to undermine democracy in so many nations of this hemisphere, including on our southern border? Or aiding and abetting the transit of terrorists? Or acquiring tanks, jets, submarines, missiles, and bombs far beyond any defensive need?
Which of these one or two small things make up the 'some' things that Mr. Kennedy opposes?
You know, I come from a baseball family with a deep baseball heritage. So I take personally the insult to America's greatest game that the Chavez-controlled company that Joe Kennedy shills for, CITGO, has up in Joe's hometown, Boston. I am talking about the giant CITGO sign that looms over the hallowed Green Monster in Boston's Fenway Park.
If Joe Kennedy wants to show he is really concerned about 'some' things Chavez is doing, he can see to it that the Boston CITGO sign is turned off. He can see to it that the Fenway Park CITGO sign is covered up until freedom and democracy return to Venezuela.
Transforming Venezuela into an oil-rich Cuba is what Chavez has been doing.
Exporting his so-called 'Bolivarian revolution' and undermining U.S. security are what he is doing.
What should we do?
Here is a partial list.
Last year, and again this year, I have called on Secretary of State Clinton to put Venezuela on our state-sponsor of terrorism list. This should be done now.
Venezuela is the third largest supplier of oil to us, after Canada and Saudi Arabia. In other words, our money is financing Chavez's war against us. We should do all we can to encourage an increase in Canadian supply. We should open up domestic drilling throughout the United States and in our waters, and then we should put a halt to buying Chavez's oil.
By the way, because of its high sulfur content, Venezuelan oil is not in big demand on the global markets. If we won't buy it, Chavez can't sell it, most of it anyway. So let's not buy it.
Along with cutting off purchases of their petroleum, we should impose a full-scale economic embargo on the country.
Chavez wants to work as one with Ahmadinejad. We ought to treat him the way we treat Ahmadinejad. No more happy handshakes at world conferences. No ignoring the menace of what Chavez has called the Iranian-Venezuelan "Axis of Unity."
Then, too, we should get serious about communications to the people of Latin America.
We should launch an aggressive campaign to tell the people of the region that we support them, their democracies, their struggle to improve their lives, and their fight for freedom.
Our story is the story Latin Americans want to hear, not Hugo Chavez's story, and it is time we told it.
It's time to be proud to be an American, a defender of freedom.
We should let those who stand with us know that we stand with them. So Congress should pass the Panama and Colombian free trade agreements early this year. And when Latin Americans stand up for their constitutional processes and against Chavez-style tactics, as happened in Honduras, American diplomats should stand with them. They should never stand against them.
When there is a clear and present danger rising, we should meet it, not ignore it.
And when heroes for freedom put themselves on the line, heroes like former Colombian president Uribe, we should support them in every way we can.
It's time we stopped apologizing for America.
It's time that, in this hemisphere and around the world, we stand up for America and the freedom and human dignity America stands for. Stand against America's enemies, and stand with America's friends.
That is my message to you today.
__._,_.___
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Tuesday, February 15, 2011 9:07 PM
From: M&M
Congressman Connie Mack (FL-14) Chairman, Western Hemisphere Subcommittee
Prepared Remarks for CPAC 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, DC
As Barack Obama might have said to his House majority two years ago, I won't keep you long.
It's a new day in Congress. Yes, they still have the White House. Yes, they still have the Senate. But we now have the House. And, in case somebody missed it, we're making sure the liberals know we're here.
Speaking not just for myself, but for every old member and new, this time on spending, on deficits, on the size and scope of government. This time we mean to make cutting our goal and freedom our standard.
We can't yet control the government. That will take another election. But we can define the agenda. Two years ago, Washington turned towards socialism at home and apology abroad. Our agenda is pride, freedom, and standing up for America.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, where our troops are committed, the Obama administration has signaled over and over that there is nothing they want so Zmuch as to get out of town. Well, let me tell you how I see it. You do not send young Americans to fight and possibly die in far-off lands unless you are ready to let them win.
The best way, the only way to protect freedom is to look ahead, be confident and, sure, speak softly, but carry the biggest stick on the block.
While we in the new House majority do all this, my own assignment will be to focus on a clear and present danger rising in our own hemisphere. A danger that expands its strength and reach every day. A danger that this administration, like previous administrations, has not fully understood.
I am talking about Hugo Chavez and his campaign to destroy freedom and democracy throughout Latin America.
For too long American administrations have thought of Chavez as the Clown King of Caracas. A bouncing buffoon, gesturing Evita-like from a balcony, entertaining throngs so he could rob them.
But there's nothing funny about him. Oppression, aggression, terrorism, and drugs: these are the tools of a 'thugocrat.' These are the weapons of Hugo Chavez.
With them, Hugo Chavez is making himself the Osama bin Laden and the Ahmadinejad of the Western Hemisphere. Like bin Laden, for reasons known only to him, he has declared the United States to be his mortal enemy.
Like Ahmadinejad, he has at his disposal the rights, privileges, and resources of a state. A very, very wealthy state.
And so, years ago, Chavez launched a silent war on America and all that America stands for. The world of freedom. The world of democracy. The world of enterprise. The world of law. He is against that world. We are for it. We must act to preserve, protect, and defend it.
Let's be clear about who Hugo Chavez is. He believes in intimidation and manipulation. He rules with an iron fist. As I said, he is a 'thugocrat'.
What has Chavez done? What is he doing? How should we respond?
What he has done is simple. He has systematically suppressed political freedom and democracy, imposed socialism, and exported his so-called 'Bolivarian revolution' throughout Latin America.
He has invented his own four-step system for gaining unlimited power.
Step one: Win a presidential election. Or, if you can't win, as he could not, attempt a coup, go to prison, and when you get out, steal an election.
Step two: Change the constitution and give yourself broad new powers. He did this. Then he stacked the electoral system in his favor, gave himself sweeping authority, and he began to socialize the economy. He seized control of Venezuela's oil industry and banks and generators of electricity. He asserted control over food and consumer goods prices.
Which bring us to step three: Create a crisis so you can demand even greater powers.
In the Soviet Union, the people had a joke. This is true. They asked, "What would happen if socialism came to the Sahara?" They answered, "Soon sand would be in short supply."
That's the way it's been in socialist Venezuela. Oil production has fallen. Refining capacity has deteriorated. The country must now import gasoline. Shortages of electricity and food have become facts of life. Chavez seized the coffee trade. Now Venezuela imports coffee. Inflation is well into double digits. The economy is shrinking.
Chavez says he speaks for the poor, and he seems intent on making more of them.
If you want to create an economic crisis, socialism is the one guaranteed route. In Venezuela, the crisis started early.
In 2002, four years into Chavez's rule, a million people marched on the presidential palace in Caracas, demanding his ouster. They were reacting against what they called the creeping 'Cubanization' of the nation - both political and economic. Chavez ordered the army to suppress them. The top command refused. Chavez hired gunmen. Nineteen people died.
Chavez claimed that he had foiled a U.S. engineered coup, a charge that has been investigated and found false.
But with opposition down and his economic power up, Chavez rewarded friends and punished enemies. In 2004, more than 2.4 million Venezuelans signed a petition to recall Chavez. So a Chavez-allied website published the names and national ID numbers. Soon those brave patriots could not get passports, national ID cards, or work in the public sector.
By 2009, Chavez was forcing hundreds of radio and television stations out of business or into government hands. And new so-called 'media crimes' were created for, in effect, punishing anyone who criticized Chavez.
And now we come to step four: Declare yourself president for life.
This September, Venezuela held elections. By then, those million marchers of 2002 had become most of the country. The opposition won a majority of votes cast.
So in the hemisphere's other 'most productive lame duck session ever,' the outgoing puppet majority rubberstamped the Chavez Plan B.
The Economist magazine called it the Chavez's "coup against the constitution." The outgoing National Assembly gave Chavez full decree power for the next eighteen months. They packed the Supreme Court. They extended government control to the Internet and mobile phones. They made Internet carriers subject to 'media crimes'. It all added up to, as
The Economist headlined, "Hugo Chavez castrates the newly elected legislature."
Economic and political oppression, that's what Chavez has meant inside Venezuela.
What is he doing outside?
That's where drugs, terrorism, and aggression come in.
Last year, the Colombian government went to the Organization of American States and laid out their neighbor's aggression-by-surrogate against their country.
They told the OAS that Chavez had been providing safe harbor for 1,500 Marxist-narco terrorists of the so-called FARC insurgency. And not just safe harbor. Since 2007 he had allowed more than sixty attacks from these camps against targets in Colombia. More than an attack every month. Chavez has even given oil to the guerrillas to finance their anti-Colombian war.
Colombia is not the only target of Chavez's ambitions. Chavez uses oil to support Fidel Castro and former Soviet-supported Nicaraguan communist top man and now again president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega.
And he uses oil to help like-minded, would-be strongmen undermine democracy in their countries.
Remember that four-step process for taking power?
Along with discounted oil, he's worked with greater or lesser success to export that process to Bolivia, Ecuador, and until the country's Supreme Court stopped him, Honduras.
Now, I have a couple of questions for the Obama administration.
First, why has the administration stood against constitutional democracy in Honduras while protecting Millennium Challenge funds for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? Why?
Second, why are they supporting people who stand with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez instead of people who stand for freedom?
Just to be clear, here's where I stand. When the world asks whose side is the United States on, everywhere and always, our answer must be, "We are on freedom's side."
Meanwhile, Chavez has been playing in Mexican politics. Allegedly giving financial backing to left-wing parties; giving support to terrorist groups bent on destabilizing the Mexican government; and perhaps bent on much more.
As one prominent Mexican now living in the U.S. told the
San Francisco Examiner last year, his words now, "Members of the U.S. administration don't understand what's been brewing in Mexico." He continued, "There is a huge international interest to change Mexico into a socialist, communist state."
And a high level Mexican official told the
Examiner that, "With the backing of dictators like Chavez, [subversive groups] will continue to try to destabilize Mexico."
No wonder the president of Mexico, President Calderon, has been quoted in one of the Wikileaks released cables as imploring U.S. officials that Latin America, in his words, "needs a visible U.S. presence" to counter Chavez's influence.
Yes. and we also must secure the border and stop the flow of terrorists and illegal drugs into the United States of America.
Mr. President, you must do this and you must do it now!
You have heard how Chavez has courted Iran. Diplomatic trips. A pledge of full military cooperation. According to the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, possibly providing uranium to the Iranian atomic weapon program - and he may be helping to finance that program, too.
According to the former district attorney of Manhattan in New York City, "Venezuela has an established financial system that Iran. can exploit to avoid economic sanctions."
Perhaps you've even heard that Chavez has established direct commercial flights from Tehran to Caracas.
Sounds innocent enough, right?
Except that he's also established safe houses in Caracas for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists -- passengers on that Tehran-Caracas shuttle.
What's the next stop for the terrorists after Caracas?
We believe that some of them go to the war zones inside Mexico near our southern border. From there, how many have slipped into here? Where are they now? Our government should know. It doesn't know. We're going to make them find out.
Everywhere around the world it's the same story. Day and night Chavez is cultivating alliances with countries that would like to undermine the U.S.'s power and position -- to make the world a more dangerous place for us.
Russia, China, Syria, Libya, Belarus, and North Korea all are his diplomatic ports of call.
Meanwhile Venezuela has become a port of call for the Russian navy.
And now there is talk of basing Iranian-supplied missiles in Venezuela, and Chavez is making moves that look like he wants to acquire nuclear weapons.
Add all that to Chavez's global weapons buying spree, including planes and submarines that have no defensive purpose.
Can we doubt what he has in mind?
Slinking through the shadows of diplomatic back alleys around the world with a murmured "it's time" here, and a whispered "come on" there, he has been gathering a gang of thugs like himself to take down the American sheriff of what Charles Krauthammer once called the 'unipolar' world.
This is what I meant by a clear, present, and developing danger.
I mentioned oil politics, giving out cheap oil to win influence and control in a country.
There is someplace else he does this, right here in the United States of America
And he has an accomplice, I am sorry to say, a low man with a great name, Joe Kennedy.
President John Kennedy said, "We will pay any price, bear any burden to insure the survival and the success of liberty."
It is a disgrace that a nephew of the president who spoke those magnificent words, and the son of his brother and attorney general. It is a disgrace that this man is the front man in Chavez's oil-for-influence campaign here.
Joe Kennedy hasn't paid any price, but he's taken one.
In defending himself, he says he opposes 'some' of what Chavez has done.
So let me ask this question, when he says 'some,' that sounds like there are one or two small details where he thinks Chavez is wrong, which one or two small details?
Is it Chavez's suppression of broadcasters and the press? Or the Internet?
Does he include economic policies that have created shortages in food, coffee, gasoline, electricity and that have hit the Venezuelan poor so hard? Not to mention the double-digit inflation.
Do the 'some' things include assuming dictatorial powers? Or backing murderous FARC drug thugs? Or throwing DEA agents out of the country? Or making Venezuela an accomplice in the global drug trade? Or working to undermine democracy in so many nations of this hemisphere, including on our southern border? Or aiding and abetting the transit of terrorists? Or acquiring tanks, jets, submarines, missiles, and bombs far beyond any defensive need?
Which of these one or two small things make up the 'some' things that Mr. Kennedy opposes?
You know, I come from a baseball family with a deep baseball heritage. So I take personally the insult to America's greatest game that the Chavez-controlled company that Joe Kennedy shills for, CITGO, has up in Joe's hometown, Boston. I am talking about the giant CITGO sign that looms over the hallowed Green Monster in Boston's Fenway Park.
If Joe Kennedy wants to show he is really concerned about 'some' things Chavez is doing, he can see to it that the Boston CITGO sign is turned off. He can see to it that the Fenway Park CITGO sign is covered up until freedom and democracy return to Venezuela.
Transforming Venezuela into an oil-rich Cuba is what Chavez has been doing.
Exporting his so-called 'Bolivarian revolution' and undermining U.S. security are what he is doing.
What should we do?
Here is a partial list.
Last year, and again this year, I have called on Secretary of State Clinton to put Venezuela on our state-sponsor of terrorism list. This should be done now.
Venezuela is the third largest supplier of oil to us, after Canada and Saudi Arabia. In other words, our money is financing Chavez's war against us. We should do all we can to encourage an increase in Canadian supply. We should open up domestic drilling throughout the United States and in our waters, and then we should put a halt to buying Chavez's oil.
By the way, because of its high sulfur content, Venezuelan oil is not in big demand on the global markets. If we won't buy it, Chavez can't sell it, most of it anyway. So let's not buy it.
Along with cutting off purchases of their petroleum, we should impose a full-scale economic embargo on the country.
Chavez wants to work as one with Ahmadinejad. We ought to treat him the way we treat Ahmadinejad. No more happy handshakes at world conferences. No ignoring the menace of what Chavez has called the Iranian-Venezuelan "Axis of Unity."
Then, too, we should get serious about communications to the people of Latin America.
We should launch an aggressive campaign to tell the people of the region that we support them, their democracies, their struggle to improve their lives, and their fight for freedom.
Our story is the story Latin Americans want to hear, not Hugo Chavez's story, and it is time we told it.
It's time to be proud to be an American, a defender of freedom.
We should let those who stand with us know that we stand with them. So Congress should pass the Panama and Colombian free trade agreements early this year. And when Latin Americans stand up for their constitutional processes and against Chavez-style tactics, as happened in Honduras, American diplomats should stand with them. They should never stand against them.
When there is a clear and present danger rising, we should meet it, not ignore it.
And when heroes for freedom put themselves on the line, heroes like former Colombian president Uribe, we should support them in every way we can.
It's time we stopped apologizing for America.
It's time that, in this hemisphere and around the world, we stand up for America and the freedom and human dignity America stands for. Stand against America's enemies, and stand with America's friends.
That is my message to you today.
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