Hugo Chavez’s Nonsensical Rejection of Obama’s Ambassador-Designate

Ray Walser /

Always impulsively anti-American, Venezuela’s authoritarian populist President Hugo Chavez is once more attempting to cast himself as the victim of campaign of lies and calumnies conducted by the Obama Administration.

In another act of bullhorn diplomacy, Chavez announced on August 8 that Larry Palmer, U.S. ambassador- designate to Venezuela, “disqualified himself as ambassador. He disqualified himself by breaking all the norms of diplomacy by attacking us, and even the Armed Forces.”

Chavez continued: “The best thing that the U.S. government can do is to seek another nominee to be considered, but we cannot receive him [Palmer]; it’s impossible for us to do so and the first to understand this has to be the U.S. government.” (more…)