Kill Me, No Oil

We can call Chavez paranoid and crazy if we want to but if he turns up dead ...

"Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said Sunday that he would stop oil exports to the United States if the U.S. government tries to assassinate him.

'If anything happens to me, forget about Venezuelan oil Mr. (George W.) Bush,' said Chavez during his weekly radio and television show.
Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro accused the United States last week of planning to assassinate Chavez.

'If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States. You must take action if this happens,' Chavez said to listeners of his show.

Relations with the United States, Venezuela's main oil buyer, have deteriorated in the past months due to Washington's criticism of weapons purchases by Venezuela.

Venezuela is the world's fifth oil exporter and is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States, shipping nearly 1.2 million barrels of crude to U.S. ports daily.

However, relations have been tense under Chavez, a strong critic of U.S. involvement in Iraq and free market deals backed by Washington.

Chavez has accused the U.S. government of being behind a 2002 coup attempt that it was slow to condemn. "