A very wise friend of mine from Mexico, who follows Latin American Politics noticed something about Chavez:
He noticed that Castro, in his early years, would also organize and encourage weak coup attmepts against himself in order to:
1) Scare his supporters
2) Get his opponents to expose themselves quickly.
Just for the record, four Venezuelan Generals died yesterday in a helicopter "accident".
The parallels between Chavez and previous and current dictators is disturbing.
Ed