President Hugo Chavez, who I am now thinking of as a category 4 hurricane bearing down on the Bush administration continues to build steam in his push to knock the U.S. out of it’s dominating role in world affairs. Go Hugo!
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UNITED NATIONS – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called
President Bush “the devil” in a fiery speech to the
United Nations, but later reached out to an audience of Americans, saying he sees himself as a friend of the United States.
The leftist leader, long at odds with Washington, appeared to be making one of his boldest moves yet to coalesce international opposition to the Bush administration. Chavez began Wednesday’s speech noting that Bush spoke from the same podium a day earlier.
“The devil came here,” Chavez said. “Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.”
He then made the sign of the cross, brought his hands together as if praying and looked up to the ceiling.
Chavez’s words drew tentative giggles at times from the audience, but also some applause.
He later spoke to hundreds of New Yorkers who filled a college hall Wednesday night, saying he hopes Americans choose an “intelligent president” in the future.
“I’m not an enemy of the United States. I’m a friend of the United States … the people of the United States,” Chavez said during his speech to an audience including union organizers and professors. “They’re two very different things — you the people of the United States, and the government that’s installed there.”
He drew a standing ovation when he said Bush committed genocide during the war in
Iraq.
“The president of the United States should go before an international tribunal,” Chavez said as applause filled the hall at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He compared the Bush administration’s actions to those of the Nazis.
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