Hugo Chavez vs. Charles Taylor

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

You can bitch about Chavez all you want, but he doesn't have child soldiers, nor did he back an insurgency in a neighboring country which would assault areas in government controlled territory and cut off the hands of everyone there so they couldn't grow food for the government soldiers, and cut open pregnant women to see the sex of the fetus as a betting game. Chavez's forces have never set up rape rooms or robbed and ravaged the countryside. Taylor did all this.

And yet which one does Pat Robertson call for the assasination of, and which one does Robertson defend and argue the US should help leave in power?

More right wing logic, not too logical.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

In a nutshell. And right wing media barons.

Chavez is the rare world leader who actually cares about the poor of his country. The megacorps can't have that.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I judge world leaders on how they treat their own people, not the US. Chavez is not a threat to the US anyway, all he's done is say some nasty things about Bush.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Taylor mainly because he is a religious.

so is Chavez.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Uribe is a bastard who runs death squads and has collaborate with AUC who are even worse than FARC. I'd have no problem with taking him out.

I don't support FARC (while I would still love to have sex with any hot female in their ranks!) as they are basically just a bunch of drug lords now and have abandoned the fight for the poor, but the government and AUC are just as much to blame for the violence there, AUC is the biggest problem, 70% of civilian casualties caused each year in Colombia are their fault. And the government is mostly just looking the other way.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Ford since you admitted Taylor is the worse person, then do you agree that Robertson is an idiot hypcortei?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

At some popint you have to make a moral judgement that you're not going to do business with a certain caste of people.  If we don't make these judgements, then America's security and dignity are finished.  Would you do commerce with Zimbabwe?  North Korea?  Apartheid South Africa?  Nazi Germany?  Who don't we do business with?  Is anything too much oppression, too much dishonor?

But then why is doing business with communists so much worse than doing business with Pinochets or other such repressive regimes? If you want to argue the US should not be trading with any repressive regimes, fine, not a bad policy, but some consistency is needed.

And of course, the person who most opposed trade restrictions and sanctions on South Africa was Ronald Reagan. He had vetoed bills establishing so that had the support of over 80% of Congress.