Tit tat, pattywhack

I love the last line.

Responding to Venezuela's expulsion of a U.S. naval officer from Caracas, the State Department on Friday declared a senior Venezuelan diplomat persona non grata and gave her 72 hours to leave the United States.

Spokesman Sean McCormack said Jeny Figueredo Frias, the embassy chief of staff, has been ordered to leave.

On Thursday, President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela was expelling U.S. naval attache John Correa for allegedly passing secret information from Venezuelan military officers to the Pentagon.

In Caracas, a senior Venezuelan Foreign Ministry official, Mari Pili Hernandez, criticized the expulsion of Figueredo. Whereas Correa had engaged in spying, she said, Figueredo had done nothing wrong.

"The situations are not at all comparable," she said.

The tit-for-tat expulsions marked another chapter in the steady deterioration in U.S.-Venezuelan relations under Chavez, who has warned repeatedly that Washington has plans to invade Venezuela.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld drew a parallel between Chavez and Adolf Hitler.

"He's a person who was elected legally _ just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally _ and then consolidated power," Rumsfeld said in a National Press Club appearance.

State Department Sean McCormack did not repeat the comparison with Hitler on Friday but acknowledged U.S. concern about the way Venezuela is governed.

"It has, we believe, been governed in a nondemocratic way," McCormack said.

Still, he said, the United States "stands ready to work with the Venezuelan government on a variety of different issues. We have a positive agenda for the hemisphere. We stand ready to work with them on counternarcotics efforts."

McCormack said the U.S. expulsion of the Venezuelan diplomat was a direct response to the action taken against Correa.

"They initiated this and we were forced to respond," he said.