Chavez's Bolivarian Destruction

Since taking office in 1999, Venezuelan ruler Hugo Chávez has embraced just about every anti-American dictator and strongman on the planet. So it was no surprise last weekend when Syrian boss Bashar Assad made his first trip to Latin America and met with Chávez in Caracas. Chávez said that Assad’s visit was aimed at building a “Caracas-Damascus axis” of strategic cooperation. He also unleashed a vicious attack on Israel. “Someday the genocidal state of Israel will be put in its place, in the proper place, and hopefully a real democratic state will be born,” Chávez bellowed. “But it has become the murderous arm of the Yankee empire -- who can doubt it? -- which threatens all of us.” Assad chimed in, saying that Israel was “based on crime, slaughter.” He also praised Chávez as an “Arab leader.”