Christmas or no Christmas, the WikiLeaks juggernaut marches on. In this report from Juan Jesus Aznarez of Spain’s El Pais, a U.S. diplomatic cable has emerged that shows America pressuring Brazil to get Hugo Chavez to ‘show more restraint’ when speaking of the U.S. and its president, George W. Bush, who Chavez referred to as ‘El Diablo [Satan], a ‘donkey’, an ‘alcoholic’ and a ‘murderer,’ among other things.
For El Pais, Juan Jesus Aznarez reports in part:
Since his first inauguration as president, the incendiary rhetoric of Hugo Chavez has not only aggravated the United States, the main recipient of his invective, but Brazil as well. Through private messages asking Chavez to show more restraint, Brazil President Lula da Silva has sought to calm the virulence of the Bolivarian’s discourse. One emissary Lula sent to Caracas was his chief-of-staff José Dirceu, who reportedly warned Chavez about the advisability of “playing with fire. Dirceu confirmed this himself in an interview with U.S. Ambassador to Brasilia John Danilovich. There is no way to tell if Dirceu was really that cutting in his remarks to Chavez, or if the talk was just the fulfillment of a promise intended to placate the United States, which is apparently irritated by Brasilia’s silence in the face of the paratrooper ex-lieutenant’s verbal excesses.
It doesn’t appear that Lula’s suggestion had any effect, as the Venezuelan leader continued to attack the United States on all fronts. A year after his first meeting with U.S. diplomats, his insults of George W. Bush were terrible: “donkey,” “alcoholic” and “murderer” were just a few of the epithets he voiced in public. A State Department report filed by Ambassador Danilovich in April 2005 relates that Lula’s key adviser traveled to Caracas with the permission of the president, “delivering a forceful message that Chavez should end his provocative rhetoric and concentrate on the domestic problems of his country.”
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