Most of us are all too well aware that there is no love lost between the presidents of the U.S. and of Venezuela. Bush Demonizes Chavez; Chavez demonizes Bush. Tit for tat.
Most of us have also likely heard about how worried Chavez is that King George will decide to invade his country and overthrow his administration. Well, now it appears that Chavez has decided to do something to allieviate that fear.
More on the flip:
Around 500,000 Venezuelans will start a four-month military training programme today to turn them into members of the country's territorial guard. They are the first group of a total of 2m Venezuelan civilians who have so far signed up to become armed reservists.
By the summer of 2007, Venezuela is likely to have the largest military reserve in the Americas, which is expected to be almost double the size of that in the United States.
The huge recruitment drive is part of President Hugo Chávez's plan to create a people's army that would answer directly to him in the event of civil unrest or an armed conflict.
Two million people! That's a lot of bodies. Chavez won't have to worry about uniforming them all, though-- as they wouldn't be wearing any.
No, they wouldn't be fighting naked. They wouldn't need uniforms because this is to be a guerilla army, ready to fight off a US invasion of their country via Iraqi insurgency methods:
General Alberto Muller Rojas, one of the members of the army high command who helped to devise the new thinking in military strategy being adopted by Venezuela's leftwing government, said: "If for example the United States were to invade Venezuela one day, and that's what many people are expecting, the only way we could repel such an attack would be a full scale guerrilla war against the foreign aggressors.
"Our professional army only numbers 80,000 soldiers, so we would need to use civilians like in Iraq to fight the Yankee forces."
Top military officials are confident that a reserve force of 2m, or one in five adults, would be sufficient to dissuade any country from invading Venezuela, the world's fifth biggest oil exporter and fifth biggest supplier of crude oil to the US.
Congrats, George. Doesn't look like 'spreading democracy' is working out too well for you, but you sure are spreading fear of US around. And you're educating the world; No Country Left Behind, one might say. In this case, on the best methods for resisting YOU and your imperial ways!