A Reuters report published late Saturday evening ("Obama meets Venezuela's Maduro at time of high tensions") is astonishing for what it ignores.
The unbylined report from Panama City opens by referring to how "the United States recently placed sanctions on Venezuela." Indeed, President Barack Obama did just that in an executive order on March 9, stating that he was "declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela." But Reuters completely ignored the fact that Obama told the world this week that he didn't mean it.
In an interview with EFE, which describes itself as "the leading Spanish language news agency and the fourth largest news agency in the world," Obama said two things which effectively neutered the EO's supposed broader meaning (bolds are mine throughout this post):
... We do not believe that Venezuela poses a threat to the United States, nor does the United States threaten the Venezuelan government.
... These sanctions are not intended to undermine the Venezuelan government or to promote instability in Venezuela.
A full translation of the interview went up at Fox News Latino on Thursday.
Obama's statements make it clear that the EO is limited to targeting its seven named government, military, and police individuals for sanctions, and that the administration intends to leave everyone else alone.
Before those statements, one could have interpreted the EO's reference to a longer-term intent to sanction anyone involved in "actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions," including "current or former official of the Government of Venezuela," as leaving open the possibility of the U.S. going after higher government officicals, including Nicolas Maduro, country's "elected" President but de facto tyrant. No more.
Maduro certainly feels he's in the clear, as a separate Fox News Latino report indicated on Friday. That Fox report gave Obama a measure of undeserved relief by referring to a "suppsed change of stance":
Venezuela's Maduro claims victory after Obama backtracks on 'threat' description
Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, is claiming “victory” after President Obama said in an interview earlier this week that “Venezuela is not a threat.”
Maduro is attributing Obama's supposed change of stance to his initiative of gathering 10 million signatures protesting "U.S. imperialism."
“Venezuela is not a threat to the U.S. and the U.S. is not a threat to Venezuela,” Obama told EFE, apparently changing the language used in the March 9 executive order announcing sanctions against seven government officials and calling the situation in Venezuela “an unusual threat.”
“This rectification of vocabulary means a lot and it was possible thanks to the help we received from other Latin American governments and the entire world,” Maduro said Thursday to a crowd gathered in front of the Miraflores Presidential Palace.
He said that Obama’s change of language could open a “new era” of relations between the U.S. and Venezuela.
... Asked whether the U.S. was walking back from its previous depiction of Venezuela as a national security threat, a State Department spokesman, Justen Thomas, referred to remarks by a deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, at a press briefing this week in which he said: “The wording [of the executive order], which got a lot of attention, is completely pro forma. This is a language that we use in executive orders around the world. So the United States does not believe that Venezuela poses some threat to our national security. We, frankly, just have a framework for how we formalize these executive orders.”
Readers who go through the entire article will see that Maduro's claim to have gathered and validated 10 million signatures is utterly implausible.
In the final excerpted paragraph above, Ben Rhodes was essentially saying, "Hey, we published that EO for show and didn't really mean it. But it makes us look tough for domestic consumption, doesn't it?" He effectively acknowledged that Obama has indeed substantively changed his stance, which now sharply differs from the EO.
Rick Moran at PJ Media had a sarcastic reaction to the final excerpted paragraph above:
This is actually good news. Doesn’t this mean that the president’s executive orders on immigration are merely “pro-forma” and they don’t really mean what they say? What a relief.
Too bad that that's not the case, Rick. Domestic EO's get full-press court battles, and sometimes are even carried out when the courts proscribe such activities.
This all takes us back to last night's Reuters report, which acts as if Obama and U.S. haven't really backtracked. Also note how the opening paragraph gives readers who don't continue into the rest of the story the false impression that the sanctions were on "Venezuela," i.e., the country, but later notes that they were only on certain individuals:
Obama meets Venezuela's Maduro at time of high tensions
U.S. President Barack Obama met Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro privately at a regional summit on Saturday and tried to ease tensions that surged after the United States recently placed sanctions on Venezuela.
... The U.S. government last month ordered sanctions against the seven officials, including the head of state intelligence service and the director of the national police force, saying they had committed acts of violence or abused human rights.
The sanctions included blocking or freezing their property and interests in the United States and denying them entry into the country.
The U.S. government also said Venezuela was a national security threat, a claim that drew criticism from several Latin American governments.
U.S. officials later tried to downplay the security threat designation, but the issue nonetheless hung over the weekend summit that was dominated by Obama's historic meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro, Maduro's closest ally.
In only referring to "U.S. officials," the Reuters report completely — and I would argue irresponsibly and deliberately, unless the wire service wants to admit that it is so out of touch that it is completely worthless as a news source — ignored Obama's statements cited above, even though they have effectively removed the possibility of any additional actions beyond those specifically cited in the March 9 EO.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
