Hollywood, are you listening? Liberals who think at least Chavez isn’t the monster he’s often portrayed as, are you paying attention? <\/p>\n
\nPresident Hugo Ch\u00e1vez has risked international ire by lauding Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan terrorist notorious for a series of bombings, kidnappings and hijackings across Europe, as a "revolutionary fighter" unjustly imprisoned for trying to defend the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n
The leftist Venezuelan leader praised Carlos \u2014 whose real name is Ilich Ramirez S\u00e1nchez \u2014 as "one of the great fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation", denying he was a terrorist and claiming his lifetime imprisonment in France was unfair. <\/p>\n
"I defend him," he said during a speech on Friday night. "It doesn\u2019t matter to me what they say tomorrow in Europe." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Of course, this is now in addition to all his other BFFs.<\/p>\n
\nThe fiery anti-American leader sought to defend leaders he said were wrongly branded "bad guys", heaping praise on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is to visit Venezuela later this week, and the Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, who he called "brothers". <\/p>\n
He drew the wrath of Ugandans after casting doubt on the crimes of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. "We thought he was a cannibal," said Mr Ch\u00e1vez of Amin, whose regime was notorious for torturing and killing suspected opponents in the 1970s. "I have doubts … Maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n