Cherries are such good fruit

According to the folks at the Drug Reform Coordination Network, members of the Bush administration are cherry-picking intelligence in an attempt to link Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with leftist rebels in neighboring Colombia and Islamic radicals to justify stronger action against him.

Chavez has long been a thorn in the side of US conservatives. ... [He] was elected president in 1998 on vows to end the rule of Venezuela's famously corrupt political class and to craft policies that favored the country's poor majority. Since then, he has become a leading critic of US policy on a broad range of issues, including Plan Colombia, Iraq, and Afghanistan....

A coup against Chavez last April gained a US endorsement when it temporarily seized power. However, it soon folded and Chavez returned to office.

Plan Colombia is the US program of assistance to Bogota, originally on the grounds of drug interdiction, now on the basis of anti-terrorism.

The clique of Bush hard-liners, led by Assistant Secretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs Roger Noriega (a former Sen. Jesse Helms staffer) and special envoy to Latin America Otto Reich (a key architect of the Reagan interventions in Central America in the 1980s) claim that Chavez's left-populist policies have at least created an atmosphere supportive of Colombian rebels and other US bogeymen and that Chavez isn't doing enough to support the US in its global "war on terror."

Apparently, "if you're not with us you're against us" doesn't only apply to Muslim nations. And don't you just love the "atmosphere supportive" remark? To these folks, you don't have to actually do anything to be guilty, all you have to do is be something - a leftist - and you're convicted of supporting, as the Colombian rebels have been called, "narcoterrorists" and therefore deserve whatever you get.