From the Beeb:
Mr Walters said [Venezuelan president] Mr Chavez had failed to root out corrupt officials or to deny Venezuelan ports and airfields to smugglers.
Such failure, he said, came from more than neglect.
“It goes beyond ‘I can’t do it’ to ‘I won’t do it’. And ‘I won’t do it’ means that ‘I am colluding’,” Mr Walters said.
“I think it is about time to face up to the fact that President Chavez is becoming a major facilitator of the transit of cocaine to Europe and other parts of this hemisphere.”
Someone might say something very similar about President Bush and the failure, despite a massive militarization of the southern border, to intercept traffickers. In fact, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb did, though it had to do with another Bush. From PBS:
Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of that sub-Committee, had this to say about the recent allegations raised by Mr. Webb and others, “There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, or on the payroll of the CIA were involved in drug trafficking while involved in support of the Contras…”
Update: Apologies to Stormcrow for the disappeared post. Some days, all ten fingers go fat. Thanks for reminding me to do the link to the BBC article. Thanks also for the link to Michael Fletcher in the Washington Post, who wrote:
White House officials arranged for top officials at the Office of National Drug Control Policy to help as many as 18 vulnerable Republican congressmen by making appearances and sometimes announcing new federal grants in the lawmakers’ districts in the months leading up to the November 2006 elections, a Democratic lawmaker said yesterday.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said documents obtained by his panel suggest that the appearances by the drug control officials were part of a larger White House effort to politicize the work of federal agencies that “may be more widespread than previously known.”
Waxman cited a memo written by former White House political director Sara M. Taylor showing that John P. Walters, director of the drug control office, and his deputies traveled at taxpayer expense to about 20 events with vulnerable GOP members of Congress in the three months leading up to the elections….
The drug control office has had a history of being nonpartisan, and a 1994 law bars the agency’s officials from engaging in political activities even on their own time.
As Stormcrow noted, Walters is a fine one to talk about lawbreaking, considering how casually he breaks them.