Hugo Chavez Unplugged

He was interviewed by Ted Koppel for ABC's Nightline several weeks ago, just after Pat Robertson's fatwa. I saw it, and it was very good. You can read the transcript here. Some excerpts:

You know where right now my medical team is? In the presidential plane, 200 kilometers from here. The government of the United States, in violation of the laws of the United States and conventions, prevented my doctors from coming to New York. Where is the chief of staff of my military detachment and my chief of security? On the plane. They've been locked into the plane, two days. They can't come out of the plane.

Those are the signals we're receiving.

And so perhaps Christ recommends that when we get a slap in our cheek, we turn the other cheek. We have both cheeks red and blue because we've turned the cheek so many times. But we... do love the people of the United States. We want to be brothers and sisters of the people of the United States, independently of their government.


Practically no one in the United States knows that we've donated millions of dollars to the governorship of Louisiana, to the New Orleans Red Cross. We're now giving care to more than 5,000 victims, and now we're going to supply gasoline, freely in some cases, and with discounts in other cases, to the poorest of communities, starting with New Orleans and its surroundings.


...nobody can say that Venezuela is a country that commits aggression against the United States or is an enemy of the United States because it has open relations with [the] world. We have open relations with China. With Colombia we have very good relations. We have good relations with everyone.

The only country, the only administration with whom we don't have good relations on the face of the earth is the administration of Mr. Bush. That's the only example.

I have friends throughout the entire world, kings, princes, presidents, prime ministers. Only with Washington is where the relationship doesn't work.