Wikileaks: The fun begins

Oh boy, that Wikileaks data-dump that came out today is yielding some nuggets. Here’s some truly disgusting (and very in-character) dirt on the US State Dept. and its activities in Latin America…

The digital page of the Spanish newspaper El País revealed that US diplomats tried to get various countries in Latin America to isolate Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, according to secret documents released by Wikileaks.

El País tells of the “efforts” of US diplomats “to court Latin American countries to isolate Hugo Chávez of Venezuela,” without publishing the pertinent document distributed by Wikileaks.

Wikileaks distributed secret information from the US State Department to the Spanish newspaper, as well as the British Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde of France, and Der Spiegel of Germany.

According to the documents, the US secretary of state requested information on the “state of mental health” of Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández. The pertinent document was not published by El País.

The paper indicated that on Monday it will offer details over this revelation and “the suspicions the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, awakened in Washington.”

The Wikileaks information shows “unsuspected details” which the United States obtained “regarding the personalities of some distinguished leaders” of foreign countries and “the role they played in the most intimate human facets of political relations.”

“This was particularly evident in Latin America, where they have made known the judgments of US diplomats and many of their spokespeople over the character, affiliations and sins of the most controversial figures,” according to El País.

Translation mine.

I’m not a bit surprised that they tried to isolate Chavecito. Anyone who follows this blog or any other non-mainstream source will be yawning at that; it was hardly a secret, and the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Boy, was THAT an epic fail or what?

But the bit about Cristina Fernández shows just what low blows they’re willing to resort to. Inquiring about the state of her mental health. I’m presuming this was in conjunction with the recent death of her husband, Néstor Kirchner, although they might have also probed into it sooner, like whenever Cristina said something anti-imperialistic that didn’t sit well with Her Royal Clintoness or Auntie Condi. Either way, it sounds to me like the usual CIA shenanigan of looking for a weak spot to exploit. I don’t think they found shit; Cristina Fernández strikes me as an extraordinarily strong woman. And from all that I’ve seen, her marriage to Néstor was solid. They’d have had no luck with her. Unless, maybe, they tried to pull what they did with poor Frank Olson.

Meanwhile, what Hugo Llorens did in Honduras proves him to be a putschist fucking dick. The NYT has the cables in which he admits that it was a coup, that Manuel Zelaya was illegally removed from power, and that the reasons given for doing so were spurious. Nothing that you or I could not have known sooner; the only thing new is that now we have documentation showing that Llorens was in it up to his eyeballs, covering for the putschists and essentially doing nothing while Hondurans died and continue to die, and while their real president remains in exile and his life remains in danger. Just in case the Old Grey Bandit gets all shy, though, here’s Otto with the same data. Llorens is still dead wrong on key details–Zelaya was NOT looking to extend his term, and what he was doing with his “fourth ballot” referendum was perfectly legal. Meanwhile, Honduras continues to live with a fake, illegitimately “elected” president, and no new constitution, and consequently, no democracy.

And the fun has just begun.