Venezuela's Chavez: did U.S. give Latin American leaders cancer?

[Fool Count]

218. There are two questions here really:

1. Would US give cancer to foreign leaders they don't like, provided they had covert means of doing that?
2. Do they have the means of doing that?

I defy anyone to answer question 1 in the negative. Given the historical pattern of behavior, there is no
doubt in my mind that they would do it, if their leaderships perceived that it would serve US national
interest in any way.

The answer to the second question is less definitive. We know that cancers can be caused in animals and
humans by exposing them to various carcinogenic substances, viruses and ionizing radiation. We know
that radioactive elements (i.e. Polonium) were used by foreign intelligence services (FSB) to assassinate
people (Litvinenko). In that particular case the doze was enormous and it killed the target within days of
exposure. Still it was detected only because the exposure happened within a technologically advanced
nation (UK) which had the equipment and the expertise to detect it. One hundredth of the doze would have
been beyond even the most advanced detection capabilities while still likely sufficient to cause significant
radiation damage to the target. It seems reasonable to assume that US intelligence (CIA) could possess
similar or better capabilities than FSB.

Taking that together, I fail to see any factual basis for deriding Chaves' question as paranoia and dismissing
it out of hand. We have a clear motive, a pattern of behavior and, very likely, the means. The only argument
against it appears to be "US would never do such a hideous thing". This argument does not stand, simply
because we do know from history that US did worse.