Chavez Sends Tanks to Border with Colombia; UPDATE: Ecuador Getting Into the Act Too

Hugo Chavez is all kinds of angry over Colombia taking out the leader of the left wing rebel group Farc. Colombia sent a crew into Ecuador Saturday and turned “Raul Reyes and at least 16 other rebels” room temperature. So, obviously, Venezuela needs tanks on its border:

Colombia’s defence minister had described the death of Reyes as the “biggest blow so far” to Farc.

But Mr Chavez described the strike as “a cowardly murder, all of it coldly calculated”.

He said Colombia “invaded Ecuador, flagrantly violated Ecuador’s sovereignty”.

Mr Chavez addressed his defence minister, asking him to “move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately” - a deployment likely to involve several thousand soldiers.

“The air force should mobilise. We do not want war. But we are not going to let them… come and divide and weaken us.”

Chavez also closed the Venezuelan embassy in Bogota. He’s loved by the Hollywood useful idiot crowd and it is important to note that this guy was negotiating with Farc for “the release of hostages the rebels hold…” Even though this group is holding hostages, he still had glowing words for the leader of the group, who he called a “good revolutionary.”

A few notes about Farc:

• FARC has financed itself through kidnapping ransoms, extortion, and drug trafficking which includes but it is not limited to coca plant harvesting, protection of their crops, processing of coca leaves to manufacture cocaine, and drug trade protection.
• The FARC-EP has employed vehicle bombings, gas cylinder bombs, killings, landmines, kidnapping, extortion, hijacking, as well as guerrilla and conventional military action against Colombian political, military, and economic targets, to attack those it considers a threat to its movement as well as civilian.
• In March 1999, the FARC-EP killed three U.S. Native American rights activists, in Venezuelan territory after kidnapping them in Colombia. After initial denials and claims that these U.S. citizens were CIA agents, the FARC-EP subsequently admitted that this action was a mistake…
• Human Rights Watch considers that “the FARC-EPs continued use of gas cylinder mortars shows this armed group’s flagrant disregard for lives of civilians…gas cylinder bombs are impossible to aim with accuracy and, as a result, frequently strike civilian objects and cause avoidable civilian casualties.”
• The FARC-EP is responsible for most of the ransom kidnappings in Colombia.

Chavez is upset about the “cowardly murder” of Reyes. Sounds to me like Colombia got their bin Laden.

UPDATE:

Now Ecuador is all upset too:

Correa said planes bombed rebels from Ecuador’s airspace while they slept and helicopters flew troops into the camp.

“This was a massacre … We will not allow this to go unpunished,” he said.