For years, Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, as a matter of routine, regularly accused the United States of preparing to invade his Latin American nation. Chavez used the claim as a rallying point upon which to distract his people from the ever-growing reality of his tyrannical regime. From the onset, Chavez’s claim was ludicrous at best, not only did the US have no strategic interest in attacking Venezuela, but to do so would cause more harm than good particularly for the oil obsessed US, nonetheless Chavez perpetuated the myth amongst his sheep-like citizenry, and so we coined the phrase “pulling a Mussolini,” as Chavez’s policies of distraction bore a striking resemblance to the bread and circus politics of the Italian dictator.

Today, even Chavez has shied away from the claim, no doubt realizing that after eight years in power, even the Venezuelan population would not fall for the ruse indefinitely. Chavez’s Mussolini-esque tactics have not been ignored by other tyrants, looking to justify their authoritarian policies.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il and the “tyrants of Pyongyang” (not to be confused with the “tyrants of Beijing” or the “mullahs of Tehran”) now claims that the US is stepping up preparations for an inevitable US led invasion of the Stalinist regime, a claim which is not only refuted by fact, but common sense as well. Nonetheless, the claim has been used by the North as justification for their ongoing nuclear weapons program.

North Korea is a perfect case study into the failure of appeasement politics. In 1994, the US government under Clinton (and former President Carter) signed an agreement to reward the North for not developing nuclear weapons by providing “peaceful” nuclear technology. Low and behold, it wasn’t long before it was discovered that North Korea had ignored the agreement and went ahead with its weapons program, just as Iran is doing today. The North, like the Iranians today and the Nazis decades ago, viewed these concessions as signs of weakness. America and the west cannot afford to let Iran go the way of North Korea.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/12/D8GA4IHG0.html