Here is President Bush shaking hands with Islam Karimov in the White House. Karimov is generally considered to be one of the world’s most brutal dictators; rigging elections, boiling people to death, engaging in widespread censorship of the press, and torturing his citizens.
But this, of course, is nowhere near as bad as the President of the United States shaking the hand of a democratically-elected leader at an international conference.
UPDATE: Obama’s response -
“Venezuela is a country whose defense budget is probably 1/600th of the United States’. They own Citgo. It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States. I don’t think anybody can find any evidence that that would do so. Even within this imaginative crowd, I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela.”
Sounds logical to me. I’ll never understand why anyone would be quick to disregard Venezuela anyway. Other than their social leanings, I bet they’d be a good partner to the U.S.