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Caribbean-Latin America
Chavez Now Wants Conscription To Boost His "Peoples' Army"
2006-07-22
Apparently volunteers for Hugo Chavez's proposed expansion to Venezuela's security forces is running into some problems. Volunteers for the new armed militia have not been forthcoming in sufficient numbers to meet goal of two million troops.

As a result, proposals for a draft are being floated. Venezuela currently has a draft, and the active forces, which number 85,000, normally include 30,000 short-term conscripts. With that small number of conscripts required (less than twenty percent of the young men coming of age each year), exemptions and deferrals can be easily had.

This results in no significant opposition to conscription. But once you start eliminating all that slack, and taking a lot of people who don't want to go, unrest grows. But, then, maybe not. Chavez's militia is basically a part-time operation whose main purpose is keeping Chavez in power.
Posted by:Anonymoose

#6  And, not being satisfied with the AK-100 purchase from Russia of 100 000 guns, he is building a factory to license manufacture them...
Posted by: john   2006-07-22 13:48  

#5  You're marketing the volunteer thing wrong, Hugo.
Try "Free guns!".
Posted by: tu3031   2006-07-22 13:37  

#4  Good god. the fat little man with delusions of adequacy has... revived the ancient and honorable tradion of the press gang!
Way to go, Hugo, straight back to the 18th century. Your mother will be so proud.
Posted by: Sgt. Mom   2006-07-22 13:18  

#3  Venezuelan military will stop a bus, order all the conscription age boys off and ship them all to a military camp.
There are many tales of mothers going to training facilities to retrieve their under-age sons, picked up from the street corner, head shaved and put in army green.
Posted by: john   2006-07-22 09:31  

#2  Volunteers for the new armed militia have not been forthcoming in sufficient numbers to meet goal of two million troops.

Might have something to do with all those horror stories about the Imperialist Yankee killers in Iraq. When you keep talking up the drivel about how the Yankee is going to invade and they see all the terrible things the BBC says about them doing to anyone raising a RPG against them, even peasants think twice.
Posted by: Slavising Sholuting4450   2006-07-22 09:16  

#1  Not exactly the "popular revolution" it's marketed to be, now is it Hugo...
Posted by: Shinegum Thraiger5571   2006-07-22 02:45  

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