So let’s see…..we have Iran courting the countries of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolvia, Nicaragua, and now Ecuador. This is where we’ve ended up in Latin America with Bush at the helm. Diplomacy? We don’t need no stinkin diplomacy!

Monday, January 15, 2007 - Updated: 09:38 AM EST

QUITO, Ecuador - Leftist Rafael Correa is promising to battle Ecuador’s widely discredited political establishment after taking office Monday in a ceremony that is drawing some of Washington’s fiercest critics.

U.S. foes including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Iran’s hardline leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were gathering to welcome the U.S.-educated economist into Latin America’s club of left-leaning leaders.

Correa, 43, won a November election runoff as a charismatic outsider who pledged to lead a “citizens- revolution” to make the country’s democracy responsive to its poor majority.

Correa says his first act as president will be to call a national referendum on a special assembly to rewrite the constitution _ a move he says is vital to limiting the power of the traditional parties that he blames for the country’s problems.

That could quickly put him on a collision course with Congress, which is dominated by those same parties. Lawmakers have dismissed the last three elected presidents, violating impeachment proceedings, after huge street protests demanding their ousters.

During his campaign, Correa attacked Congress as a “sewer” of corruption and ran no candidates for the legislature. And he said last week that the newly installed congressmen “do not represent anyone other than their own interests and the bosses of their political parties and that is not democracy.”

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