Hugo Chavez: crazy like a fox?

Hugo Chavez's lunatic ravings | www.vcrisis.com :
"On his Sunday talk show, called, 'Hello, President!' he claimed the U.S. is planning to kill him ..."

The author of this article opines that President Chavez has paranoid delusions and may be a cocaine addict based in part on having turned on a dime and gone from scoffing at Fidel Castro's suggestion that he was a target of US assassination plots to repeating the charge himself. Let me offer a different take on this sudden volta face.

Chavez was a little behind the curve, but he is now singing from the same page as Fidel. The idea that the US plans to assassinate him, Chavez now understands, has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the charge. But it has the following major benefits:
1. It is virtually non-falsifiable. No matter how many US officials say it ain't so, they can't prove their denials are genuine.
2. It enhances Chavez status as a major foe of Yankee Imperialism to say that the US is plotting his demise.
3. Every day the US is presumed to have been frustrated in its efforts to kill Chavez further enhances the prestige of his security services - really important in the run-up to the communist coup that will eventually make Chavez president for life like his pal Fidel Castro.
4. Repeating this charge early and often gives the US a very strong motive to root out assassination plots that others might hatch against Chavez, a doubtless there are many Venezuelan patriots who are mulling such plans.
5. If Chavez happens to be assassinated, the US is the ready-made scapegoat for the outrage of the people. Actually, I suspect that this was the first angle that Chavez thought of and it scared the hell out of him since it might just suit the revolution to create a high profile martyr at a critical moment.